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Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#61

Post by Asdfbla »

nurettin wrote: post #36

Not disputing the paper or the scientific method applied here, but how is "bayesian factor" different than p-values?

Well, for one thing it doesn't carry that subconscious bias of interpreting something below 0.05 as guaranteed significant as people tend to do with p-values, but is a softer metric that reflects your belief in one or the other hypothesis, given the data. I think that in itself makes it easier to evaluate and reason about.

The fact that you can incorporate (and reflect on) a priori assumptions about the likelihood of one or the other model is another advantage imho.

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#62

Post by [deleted] »

forapurpose wrote: post #59
aetherson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While most modern psychology seems to be, well, kind of bullshit, the problem isn't with the idea of observing behavior and trying to deduce underlying principles from that. How do you think that we arrived on those lower-level phenomena that you're lauding? It wasn't by getting an electron microscope and a particle collider from God and starting from there. And we disproved phlogisten without use of lower-level prin…

> most modern psychology seems to be, well, kind of bullshit Based on what? What better source do we have that contradicts it? Identifying, defining, and measuring psychological phenomena is much more difficult than doing the same with physical phenomena, for obvious reasons. That leads to lower accuracy. Should humanity not even try, leave these questions unanswered, and suffer the consequences? While there are many…

[deleted]

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#63

Post by traverseda »

forapurpose wrote: post #59
aetherson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While most modern psychology seems to be, well, kind of bullshit, the problem isn't with the idea of observing behavior and trying to deduce underlying principles from that. How do you think that we arrived on those lower-level phenomena that you're lauding? It wasn't by getting an electron microscope and a particle collider from God and starting from there. And we disproved phlogisten without use of lower-level prin…

> most modern psychology seems to be, well, kind of bullshit Based on what? What better source do we have that contradicts it? Identifying, defining, and measuring psychological phenomena is much more difficult than doing the same with physical phenomena, for obvious reasons. That leads to lower accuracy. Should humanity not even try, leave these questions unanswered, and suffer the consequences? While there are many…

>Based on what? What better source do we have that contradicts it?

Based on the "psychology replication crisis" obviously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psycholo...

Psychology is a big field, and often when you hear that claim it's complaining about social psychology, not clinical psychology.

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#64

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

haberman wrote: post #44
tinymollusk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this is an interesting statement because it highlights the difference between true and useful. For several years, since I read the book Willpower (an intro piece to ego depletion), I've meditated on the idea. I've decided that even if it's not scientifically true, it can be useful to me. Some may see it as self-help tripe ("Eat your frogs in the morning!"), but it's a useful mental model for me to push myself…

I personally believe that a lot of religion falls onto the "useful" side of this divide. Which is why I have no reason to go out of my way to tell people that I think their religion is not literally true. If it works for them, great. I think this also applies to beliefs like the 10,000 hour hypothesis. I strongly doubt it is true, but some people really like it as a motivational tool. I have no reason to burst their…

I find it much more useful to break the world down into functions. Then we can simply ask in what contexts are these functions useful.

We can model religions as perceptual sets & then find their uses. I'm designing a religion of absurdity as a cultural experiment in teaching the models I'm developing and can testify to the usefulness of being able to find absurdity in everything. It also helps to not judge things beyond "Does this sustainably contribute to life or not?" I'm still trying to nail down the definitions, but the point is it doesn't matter what we believe, but what we do with those beliefs.

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#65

Post by canjobear »

colemannugent wrote: post #56
aetherson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While most modern psychology seems to be, well, kind of bullshit, the problem isn't with the idea of observing behavior and trying to deduce underlying principles from that. How do you think that we arrived on those lower-level phenomena that you're lauding? It wasn't by getting an electron microscope and a particle collider from God and starting from there. And we disproved phlogisten without use of lower-level prin…

Phlogiston was actually disproved by applying the lower level principle of weight to the supposed phlogiston reaction. The idea was that phlogiston was released when things burned. This was disproved when it was observed that some things gained weight when burned. Either the concept of weight was wrong, or the concept of phlogiston was wrong. The scientific method requires you to reduce your reasoning into the lowest…

Sometimes you don't need knowledge of the lower-level phenomena. Darwin's arguments for evolution by natural selection were persuasive even though neither he nor contemporaries could conceive of what the chemical basis of gene transmission would look like.

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#66

Post by dang »

edilastic wrote: post #50
colemannugent wrote: post #18

I always get the feeling from reading academic material on psychology that people are trying to apply the scientific method on top of unscientific principles. It feels rather like alchemists trying to explain fire via phlogiston: an attempt to quantify high-level phenomena when you don't understand any of the lower levels. All the data comes from psychology students at a college in the US who either were able to use…

What the hell are you reading? By your reasoning no sciences should exist until we completely understand the mechanisms at a lower level. Plenty of phenomena are observed and even experimentally manipulated all the time without understanding mechanisms. This happens in lots of biology all the time--infectious disease being one prominent example but there are thousands of other examples you could pick. This also happe…

> What the hell are you reading?

Uncivil attacks will get you banned here. Please don't do that.

Also, would you please stop bulk-creating HN accounts? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a community. If users don't have some consistent identity for others to relate to, we may as well have no usernames and no community at all. That would be quite a different kind of forum. Anonymity is fine, and throwaways for a specific purpose are ok—just not routinely.

More here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#67

Post by BeetleB »

KirinDave wrote: post #12
nonbel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, there is no reason to mention "bayesian" in the title other than using it as a hype term like "blockchain" or "deep learning". Also, the real difference is whether they test a "null hypothesis" vs testing an "actual hypothesis". Like almost all psych, this falls in the first category.

You say this but then you go read a paper with a cruddy t-test and then injure your eyes with the spasmodic rolling that it induces, like I did. It's kinda remarkable how many people don't actually use modern bayesian analysis techniques, which is why it's such a policy war. It's the difference between "older statistical methods uninformed by the glut of modern processing power" and "things which require a computer t…

>It's kinda remarkable how many people don't actually use modern bayesian analysis techniques, which is why it's such a policy war. It's the difference between "older statistical methods uninformed by the glut of modern processing power" and "things which require a computer to do well, and preserve uncertainty."

There's an old joke: There are two types of statisticians. Those who use Bayesian techniques, and those who use both.

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#68

Post by eeZah7Ux »

danschumann wrote: post #32

According to marines, will power depletion is bs. This is anecdotal, sure, but I believe in momentum. If you have momentum, at some point, you don't want to fail at any will power task, because you are on a winning streak.

You are confusing the [in]ability to take more and more decisions with momentum/inertia.

Often momentum is kept by NOT taking more difficult decisions.

Also, if you don't trust psychologists you should trust the marines even less.

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#69

Post by BeetleB »

meesterdude wrote: post #47

I'm all for replication and ensuring scientific accuracy - but this does not change my perspective of ego-depletion. I have observed it in myself, time and time again. If not it directly, something similar enough. Even at a glucose level, various studies have shown relation between our blood sugar and ability to tolerate frustration and make decisions. So while the accuracy of ego-depletion may be in question, I can…

>Even at a glucose level, various studies have shown relation between our blood sugar and ability to tolerate frustration and make decisions.

I think it is exactly these kinds of studies that are being questioned. Can they be reproduced?

Re: Bayesian analysis of ego-depletion studies favours null hypothesis

#70

Post by watwut »

BeetleB wrote: post #69
meesterdude wrote: post #47

I'm all for replication and ensuring scientific accuracy - but this does not change my perspective of ego-depletion. I have observed it in myself, time and time again. If not it directly, something similar enough. Even at a glucose level, various studies have shown relation between our blood sugar and ability to tolerate frustration and make decisions. So while the accuracy of ego-depletion may be in question, I can…

>Even at a glucose level, various studies have shown relation between our blood sugar and ability to tolerate frustration and make decisions. I think it is exactly these kinds of studies that are being questioned. Can they be reproduced?

Stay hungry (e.g. On low calorie diet) for few days and then watch yourself more nerveus and making dumber decisions.
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