I sort of tapped out because “very long posts with an explosion of quotes” is a smell for me, but I wanted to continue because other indicators suggest “teaching and/or learning in good faith” <3
Finally posting now because of a big update from elsewhere...
On your “WHY”, you seem to be presenting reasons why other people not believing your model shouldn’t count as strong evidence against it. Which is all fair. But I’m still curious for positive evidence to believe your model in the first place.
For me, evidence happens at the point of measurement. Then often measurements are summarized in language by people who don’t think clearly, or worry about standard misinterpretations of simple measurements… so careful reading is sometimes required just to acquire evidence able to distinguish between models.
So for me, the default is to need to think about mechanistic timecourse evidence through the screen of “how it was confusingly explained to me” by people who often aren’t worried about mechanistic timecourse dynamics.
I kinda don’t care if people don’t believe my model, I just want my models to get better over time… and I’m happy to explain them to people, and I like teaching… but if people don’t believe me, then it is their tragedy that they believe false things, not my tragedy. (Conversely, people teaching me things is awesome!)
But to make my models better I don’t just import other people’s posterior believes about how a mechanistic system works, but rather see if my own model can “round trip” through my best guess of the raw data that they observed in a specific situation. If people have bad reasoning, then their posteriors are even less safe to import than otherwise...
FWIW, just tonight I got around to reading this cousin comment by Connor and it swiftly tipped me over almost entirely. Three doses… might work? Sure.
I already thought there were empirical reasons to think it, so for me I think the key words in Connor’s post started somewhere around:
And not only does it increase count, secondary responses vastly increase antibody affinity and produce different antibody types, e.g. the primary response is more IgM whereas secondary response produces more IgG and IgA (the latter aiding especially in mucosal immunity). [Citations for this can be found on pgs 413-414 of the Janeway immunobiology book, and I can maybe link pictures.]
The filter I have I think, is that I want to hear about mechanisms when it comes to biological theories.
I’m not saying button mashing doesn’t work. That plus “copy the winner” is how most actual technical innovation occurs and scales in practice most of the time. Its fine <3
But… a HUGE filter that avoids adding broken bits to my general reasoning capacities is whether someone can offer keywords that connects their proposed mechanism to ALL THE OTHER MECHANISMS in physics and chemistry and evolution and all of it.
I have paragraphs and paragraphs of text from my first attempt at a response, trying to explain “I don’t know and neither do you (but politely and at length)”.
They are deleted from this response. Maybe “two people debugging epistemics in the face of ignorance” is useful somehow for something, but I’m not attached to it. I could PM it maybe if you care?
Practical upshot: empirically more doses has worked, and now I have heard some “new magic mechanism words” from Connor, who seems to me to clearly knows his shit backwards and forwards and also seems to be in tentative favor of a third dose :-)
Maybe interesting: my main argument AGAINST a third dose is part of why I thought it might be smart to give single doses as fast as possible several months ago. Now that like… “mechanisms are mechanically different (giving more than just lots of IgM)” I feel like I learned enough to even notice errors in past thinking?
But also… weirdly(?) this same body of empirical results says that the second reaction works BETTER after … <missing mechanism that somehow is time dependent> has had 12 weeks to <do something> instead of just 3 weeks?
I sort of tapped out because “very long posts with an explosion of quotes” is a smell for me, but I wanted to continue because other indicators suggest “teaching and/or learning in good faith” <3
Finally posting now because of a big update from elsewhere...
For me, evidence happens at the point of measurement. Then often measurements are summarized in language by people who don’t think clearly, or worry about standard misinterpretations of simple measurements… so careful reading is sometimes required just to acquire evidence able to distinguish between models.
So for me, the default is to need to think about mechanistic timecourse evidence through the screen of “how it was confusingly explained to me” by people who often aren’t worried about mechanistic timecourse dynamics.
I kinda don’t care if people don’t believe my model, I just want my models to get better over time… and I’m happy to explain them to people, and I like teaching… but if people don’t believe me, then it is their tragedy that they believe false things, not my tragedy. (Conversely, people teaching me things is awesome!)
But to make my models better I don’t just import other people’s posterior believes about how a mechanistic system works, but rather see if my own model can “round trip” through my best guess of the raw data that they observed in a specific situation. If people have bad reasoning, then their posteriors are even less safe to import than otherwise...
FWIW, just tonight I got around to reading this cousin comment by Connor and it swiftly tipped me over almost entirely. Three doses… might work? Sure.
I already thought there were empirical reasons to think it, so for me I think the key words in Connor’s post started somewhere around:
The filter I have I think, is that I want to hear about mechanisms when it comes to biological theories.
I’m not saying button mashing doesn’t work. That plus “copy the winner” is how most actual technical innovation occurs and scales in practice most of the time. Its fine <3
But… a HUGE filter that avoids adding broken bits to my general reasoning capacities is whether someone can offer keywords that connects their proposed mechanism to ALL THE OTHER MECHANISMS in physics and chemistry and evolution and all of it.
Gimme a word like “IgA” and I can find my way to new and helpful parts of the truth mine! I can round trip it through general science, and so on.
I have paragraphs and paragraphs of text from my first attempt at a response, trying to explain “I don’t know and neither do you (but politely and at length)”.
They are deleted from this response. Maybe “two people debugging epistemics in the face of ignorance” is useful somehow for something, but I’m not attached to it. I could PM it maybe if you care?
Practical upshot: empirically more doses has worked, and now I have heard some “new magic mechanism words” from Connor, who seems to me to clearly knows his shit backwards and forwards and also seems to be in tentative favor of a third dose :-)
Maybe interesting: my main argument AGAINST a third dose is part of why I thought it might be smart to give single doses as fast as possible several months ago. Now that like… “mechanisms are mechanically different (giving more than just lots of IgM)” I feel like I learned enough to even notice errors in past thinking?
But also… weirdly(?) this same body of empirical results says that the second reaction works BETTER after … <missing mechanism that somehow is time dependent> has had 12 weeks to <do something> instead of just 3 weeks?
F-ing immunology, man. Its crazy.