Group averages obscure how an individual's brain controls behavior: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Group averages obscure how an individual's brain controls behavior: study

#51

Post by mmooss » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:45 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #46

mmooss wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole point of science is that anyone can make an informed critique and self-evaluation of it, with no necessity of depending on a priesthood to interpret it. That's a misinterpretation: > anyone can (Of course nothing stops them, but I don't think that's your point.) > anyone can make an informed critique and self-evaluation of it, with no necessity of depending on a priesthood to interpret it. Science is spec…

Your reading of my comment seems perfectly charitable, but it also seems to find more in my comment than what I said. > > anyone can make an informed critique and self-evaluation of it, with no necessity of depending on a priesthood to interpret it. > Science is specifically not the wisdom of the crowds - that is pre-scientific. It is the wisdom of emprical facts, which are usually so complex and voluminous that it t…

I generally agree, though I think calling it the "ideal of science" goes too far. It's more the ideal of democracy.

> imperfect human practice

Whether human social habits affect it or not (I agree they probably do), it would be impossible to spend time examining every amateur idea. And if you see the quality of many amateur ideas - even in a relatively sophisticated population like HN - the payoff gets worse.

Re: Group averages obscure how an individual's brain controls behavior: study

#52

Post by mmooss » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #45

mmooss wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is also true that HN commenters can be quite good at spotting math errors They can be quite good at making that claim, which is cheap. And others like to rally around it - just like the comments rejecting most OPs that make their way to the top. I'd need to see evidence that the claims are actually valid. Most similar HN take-downs, for fields I have knowledge of, are pretty poor.

> I'd need to see evidence that the claims are actually valid. This would indeed be best, no argument here. But this comment thread was more about whether, without evidence, that automatically dismissing a comment because it was on HN or automatically accepting a claim because it was from 'stanford researchers' was ok.

I wouldn't automatically accept the researcher's claim, but for a HN quick-take critique the burden of establishing legitimacy is on the commenter.

Re: Group averages obscure how an individual's brain controls behavior: study

#53

Post by bbor » Thu, May 07, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #31

bbor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn’t that they found subgroups, the point is the method they used to find them — namely, analyzing individual brain scans rather than averaging them out first.

Same sort of thing - how would you expect to find subgroups by assigning the aggregate to individuals. It would be bad design. It's like they're surprised that they used a good design.

Yeah but that bad design was state of the art not even a decade ago! We are truly in a pregallilean era of cognitive science, tho not for much longer…