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The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

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Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#111

Post by noelsusman »

breischl wrote: post #78
apo wrote: post #76

>... He Who Shall Not Be Named predictably rejects all of the studies that do not support his position as being “fatally flawed,” or as having been “refuted by experts”—namely, by himself and his close collaborators ... This speaks to part of the problem - the undue weight that non-scientists place on expert opinion. Trained scientists see appeal to authority arguments for what they are: bullshit. I see this most fre…

>>the undue weight that non-scientists place on expert opinion Speaking as a non-scientist, I can recognize an appeal to authority probably just as well as a scientist. But having recognized one, what do I do? I lack the training, knowledge, and time necessary to evaluate the research directly. I can choose to only trust studies that are peer reviewed, or in major journals, or backed by whatever relevant government b…

The alternative is consensus. As part of my research I found that a particular method of estimating disease prevalence in small geographic areas performed better than this other method when tested on real data from schools.

The tendency of the general public would be to look at that study and say the first method is better than the second method (assuming the general public would care at all, which they don't). That's incorrect. I would only conclude that method is actually better if several other people found similar results for similar methods in separate studies.

People tend to place far too much importance on one paper or one study. In theoretical research this can be okay sometimes, but in applied research this is almost always the wrong way to go.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#112

Post by nmrm2 »

jerf wrote: post #70
bikamonki wrote: post #65

And then there is the bullshit that permeates from science research into bullshit blogs that later folk people use to guide their decisions (and editors/writers use to drive ad prints): what to eat or not according to recent research, how to raise children or not acording to recent research, how long a workout, how to be happy, how to this and how not to that. The bullshit then jumps from blogs into everyday conversa…

"I see an entire civilization confused by a ubiquous mass communication tool which they invented to do exactly the opposite: enlight them." There was never a stream of pure, refined truth available, that just somehow lacked a distribution method. All there ever was was a confusing mixture of an uncountable varieties of different possibilities, theories, and facts of varying veracity. Now you can have more direct acce…

> There was never a stream of pure, refined truth availablem, that just somehow lacked a distribution method

Academic educational programs have exactly been the source-without-a-scalable-distribution-method for at least the past century.

You're unlikely to find a treatment of mathematics or physics or even Computer Science that is as well-curated, free of coercive bias, and well-presented as it often is in the undergraduate programs at universities that care deeply about their educational programs. (Such universities and colleges do exist; they unfortunately also tend to be expensive, selective, and not always well-represented in top N lists -- especially in the US.)

The reason the distribution method of university education is lacking has more to do with economics than anything else. Hiring truly high-quality people to teach small groups of people difficult content in a rigorous way is expensive. If you skimp on any of those features, the quality of the end result goes way down (c.f. typical MOOCs and the university courses to which they are purportedly equivalent, in pretty much any dimension.)

> There were things that claimed to be streams of pure, refined truth. Those claims didn't become false. They always were false.

Again, I fail to see how this critique applies in any meaningful way to high-quality undergraduate education programs in hard sciences. Nothing is perfect -- and in fact I doubt any of those programs ever claimed to be "streams of pure, refined truth". But they come far closer than your comment seems to suggest.

Now, going back to the contents of the article, universites certainly aren't "streams of pure, refined, and new truth". Such streams very likely don't exist.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#113

Post by jimbokun »

AlgorithmicTime wrote: post #31
pjc50 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Discrediting" only works on some people. If it was universally applicable then Donald Trump wouldn't be the leading Republican candidate.

I'm convinced Trump could kill Marco Rubio on live TV in Times Square and receive a bump in the polls.

Well, Trump has basically already claimed as much himself.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/24/donald-trump-...

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#114

Post by jimbokun »

"In the case of Lord Voldemort, the trick is to unleash so many fallacies, misrepresentations of evidence, and other misleading or erroneous statements — at such a pace, and with such little regard for the norms of careful scholarship and/or charitable academic discourse — that your opponents, who do, perhaps, feel bound by such norms, and who have better things to do with their time than to write rebuttals to each of your papers, face a dilemma. Either they can ignore you, or they can put their own research priorities on hold to try to combat the worst of your offenses."

So the scientific debate equivalent of the Trump campaign.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#115

Post by astine »

noelsusman wrote: post #111
breischl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>the undue weight that non-scientists place on expert opinion Speaking as a non-scientist, I can recognize an appeal to authority probably just as well as a scientist. But having recognized one, what do I do? I lack the training, knowledge, and time necessary to evaluate the research directly. I can choose to only trust studies that are peer reviewed, or in major journals, or backed by whatever relevant government b…

The alternative is consensus. As part of my research I found that a particular method of estimating disease prevalence in small geographic areas performed better than this other method when tested on real data from schools. The tendency of the general public would be to look at that study and say the first method is better than the second method (assuming the general public would care at all, which they don't). That'…

"The alternative is consensus."

That's still an appeal to authority. It's just the authority of a group rather than an individual.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#116

Post by atomic_cheese »

jimbokun wrote: post #114

"In the case of Lord Voldemort, the trick is to unleash so many fallacies, misrepresentations of evidence, and other misleading or erroneous statements — at such a pace, and with such little regard for the norms of careful scholarship and/or charitable academic discourse — that your opponents, who do, perhaps, feel bound by such norms, and who have better things to do with their time than to write rebuttals to each o…

If you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#117

Post by knowaveragejoe »

philh wrote: post #61

I find it vaguely amusing and ironic that he cites rationalwiki on the gish gallop, given that my impression is they do this themselves a bunch. (Note that running a gish gallop doesn't mean you're wrong , it just means you're intellectually dishonest.) (I try not to pay too much attention to them, and I'm not super interested in refuting their bullshit, so this comment is going to be pretty unsatisfying. Sorry.)

I haven't read much on rationalwiki, but nothing I did struck me as gish gallop. They might have a lot of angles on attack on some bunk concept, but they expand upon all of them.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#118

Post by effie »

astine wrote: post #115
noelsusman wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is consensus. As part of my research I found that a particular method of estimating disease prevalence in small geographic areas performed better than this other method when tested on real data from schools. The tendency of the general public would be to look at that study and say the first method is better than the second method (assuming the general public would care at all, which they don't). That'…

"The alternative is consensus." That's still an appeal to authority. It's just the authority of a group rather than an individual.

I think he meant consistent experimental results by "consensus" there.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#119

Post by Balgair »

bunderbunder wrote: post #109
Balgair wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is nearly the opposite of what the PhD was designed to do. Modern academic training comes out of the church and the old guilds of middle Europe and is still in use today in many fields (chefs and plumbers to name a few). The Bachelor's degree is loosely similar to an apprentice's role. The young boy (they were almost exclusively male) worked in a shop or with a priest for some time. He learned the trade, the too…

The problem is that nobody's doing replication work in undergrad, either, nor does it happen in Master's programs. I do think it makes sense to stick with the PhD meaning you're a world class expert in some area, but if so then we need to adjust our expectations for what Master's level work means in the sciences. Right now it seems to just represent a hurdle you need to whiz past on your way to the PhD.

Its really dependent on the department, but yeah, the MS is now the HS degree for a lot of places. Especially in Engineering. Good luck trying to get hired with only a BS. Credential creep is real. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credentialism_and_educational_...

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#120

Post by Lawtonfogle »

matheist wrote: post #85
otoburb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does attribution and second/third authorship work if you "just" bounced ideas off your supervisor or fellow students in verbal discussions? I'm trying to gauge how strict attribution rules are in what I would consider a gray area.

In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no "first" or "second" author. In the situation you describe, the paper would probably be singly authored, and the author would write something like "Thanks to my advisor _____ and to my colleagues ____ for many helpful discussions" in an acknowledgments section. If the contributions were more serious, then possibly the auth…

>In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no "first" or "second" author.

Is there any research showing this standard to be fair? People pay more attention to the first item of a list than to the middle ones, making me think that one's position on such a list could have a small benefit. Less important if there are overall less multiple name papers, which it seems from the rest of your comment, but still a factor as long as multiple names on a paper do happen.

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