Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which definitely is science; QED.
Proofs are math, science is uncertain (otherwise why bother running experiments)
No, science is - literally - knowledge.
A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
211–220 of 221 posts
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Proofs are math, science is uncertain (otherwise why bother running experiments)
No, science is - literally - knowledge.
> No, science is - literally - knowledge.
No, science is a means of generating (and justifying) beliefs, it is not knowledge itself.
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that's the healthiest attitude. The pursuit here is knowledge , not prestige. Getting personal doesn't do anything for the higher goal. I read once that the attitude in NASA over Space Shuttle code was very focused not on who wrote the bug, but how to fix the bug. The thought was that who caused the failure was not nearly as important as preventing the failure, as "failure" in that context generally mean…
Of course it turned out that NASA's two biggest failures were human/cultural, and which led to the loss of two shuttles. Besides, as you say it's not about prestige, it's about knowledge, and if you're publishing something with basic math errors, it leads to questions about whether you'd know "knowledge" if it bit you.
Right, but there's something to be said for fostering a culture where fixing errors - in schematics, in research, in source code, whatever - is considered more valuable than assigning blame.
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not entirely certain but I think it was The modern synthesis of contrasting styles of thought in “east” and “west” *Nisbett, R. E., Masuda, T. (2003). Culture and point of view. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100, September 16, 2003, 11163-11170
Interesting. As a physicist, I tend to put extra trust in PNAS credibility due to their history of critical editors and reviewers, and therefore am less likely to question results published there. Maybe it's the same fallacy, but at the same time we can't all be experts at everything and have to defer to trust at some point. Anyway, thanks for the contextual tidbit.
PNAS is notorious for inconsistent quality, and has recently had to modify their direct submission process, partly as a result. I don't know about physics, but I've seen them publish a lot of very poor work.
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it turned out that NASA's two biggest failures were human/cultural, and which led to the loss of two shuttles. Besides, as you say it's not about prestige, it's about knowledge, and if you're publishing something with basic math errors, it leads to questions about whether you'd know "knowledge" if it bit you.
Right, but there's something to be said for fostering a culture where fixing errors - in schematics, in research, in source code, whatever - is considered more valuable than assigning blame.
Agreed, but when you're dealing with a culture that abhors critical thinking and sees something harmless like this bot as "bullying", we're a long way from that culture of fixing errors.
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intersubjectivity is a major part of modern psychology. It is a relatively new concept. Its influence grows slowly as more and more people find it usefully applicable to their work. Like most science, actually. Intersubjectivity is not a normative idea or a theory, but more of a point of view. It is a heuristic that says, in order to study a thing, study the subjective experiences of that thing and their relations. O…
Thanks for the explanation. >This isn't pedantry or navel gazing or postmodern bullshit, this is hard-nosed critical thinking. I don't think it is any of that -- to me it smells more like a new word for classical philosophical skepticism/relativism. Which is very hard-nosed critical thinking and perniciously difficult to dismiss (see G.E. Moore's 'rejection' of skepticism -- "here is one hand") In fact while you say…
I only brought up gender because I was clarifying what the quoted author meant because the person I originally replied to found it confusing and spurious. I think the key is that the intersubjective nature of science means that it is open to social analysis, a subset of which is feminist analysis, and basically I've just been giving my interpretation of what the quoted author was saying.
You brought up a lot of interesting points but I only have the energy to respond to one of them given my reception lately :)
> To that point, I would really be interested in hearing a little more about how intersubjectivity plays out in the mathematics research community.
1. What constitutes a correct proof? A proof has to convince other humans. Two mathematicians who work together a lot can sketch out an informal proof that they both agree on, but it's harder to write a proof that is widely considered rigorous enough. A fully formal proof that a computer can verify isn't anywhere near feasible. What constitutes rigor today is different from what constituted rigor for Euler is different from what constituted rigor for Euclid.
2. Most mathematics isn't done as symbol manipulation. Mathematicians rely on their human intuitions. We share a lot of the same cognitive structures but we each have our own preferences.
"It must be admitted that the use of geometric intuition has no logical necessity in mathematics, and is often left out of the formal presentation of results. If one had to construct a mathematical brain, one would probably use resources more efficiently than creating a visual system. But the system is there already, it is used to great advantage by human mathematicians, and it gives a special flavor to human mathematics." - Ruelle (1999)
Interesting idea: if there are differences between how men and women think, there could be a male and female mathematics. I doubt there is any significant difference though. Likewise, autonomous AI will almost definitely do mathematics with a distinctly different flavor from human mathematics even though they should be mutually intelligible.
3. What we think is important to study is what we think our peers and superiors value. A grad student does mathematics their adviser thinks is interesting. A grad student chooses their adviser based on their interests. Which fields get grant money? Which are "hot"? Which fields are all but abandoned even if they have legitimate open questions?
4. Mochizuki has published a proposed proof of the ABC conjecture. That's a huge result. It has not yet been widely accepted because he worked alone for several years and the concepts he has come up with are very foreign to every other mathematician. So, a lot of the work of "proving" the ABC conjecture is teaching his ideas to other people even though he has produced a detailed proof. You can't just read the proof and understand it.
5. This isn't math, but physics. It's in the news recently that a time crystal may have been constructed. It's not entirely clear if a time crystal can even exist. How can two physicists look at the same experimental data and hold two different positions on this question?
6. Likewise, https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140827-quark-quartet-fuels-...
Physicists, hardest scientists of them all, getting really emotional about QCD? But I thought science was about objective facts! "Objectivity" is what remains when the science has settled, it is not the science itself, and it certainly is not a permanent state.
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you're putting the cart before the horse. Science is building a picture of """objective reality""" from human subjectivity. Data points aren't reality, they have to be interpreted. No matter how you try to do it, at some point you have to accept that a human being is doing science and the way science is done is fundamentally an intersubjective phenomenon. Science isn't reality. Scientific knowledge isn't real…
This is pretty interesting. Society and science don't always get along so it's certainly valuable to study the subjective relationship. I think most of us who would disagree with you do so from the assumption that there exists an objective reality, regardless of whether an observer is aware of it at all. In other words, the general consensus asserts that the universe doesn't care whether you or I know, understand or…
I believe in an objective reality too, I just don't think it's a scientific concept. Perhaps we can say that the existence of an objective reality is what makes science worth doing even if science cannot directly access it. I think I can agree with that.
P.S. you might find our different points of view well described as the difference between substance metaphysics and process metaphysics (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/).
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you're putting the cart before the horse. Science is building a picture of """objective reality""" from human subjectivity. Data points aren't reality, they have to be interpreted. No matter how you try to do it, at some point you have to accept that a human being is doing science and the way science is done is fundamentally an intersubjective phenomenon. Science isn't reality. Scientific knowledge isn't real…
There's this funny thing I've noticed with your posts where the more words you use, the less utility I get from understanding the post. It's almost like you use overintellectualization to bury that you aren't saying much at all.
I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. The people I was talking to found my posts intelligible and interesting. I doubt you want to ask me to clarify my points or point out in particular where I'm difficult to understand. I think you've just assumed I am communicating in bad faith instead of trying to communicate a complex idea but I shouldn't jump to conclusions like that :^)
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That anyone in the field of psychology would even be comfortable publically espousing a non-scientific worldview like that means that psychologists are not being properly educated in the scientific method. This is a generalization about psychologists from a sample size of one psychologist, to suggest that they don't understand science?
One ex-president of the psychologists professional association, a person who was literally deliberately selected by the community of psychologists to represent them. It would similarly be completely inappropriate to generalize the policy positions of Hillary Clinton to the Democratic party, yes?
Saying that psychologists don't understand the scientific method is similar to a saying that democrats don't understand something as basic as the separation of powers in government
Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I made a huge stink about it (and this was just one example of many comments of that type). This was at Penn in 2007.
An upvote for outing her for clearly bad science and bad teaching, if she actually did this. There are few things that offend me, a teacher damaging impressionable students like this is one of those.
I think she mostly damaged herself there, the student seems to have come out all right (but there was a risk they wouldn't have).