[FRIAM] IS: Rhetoric in scientific arguments WAS: FW: Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs

[Roger Critchlow]

Here's a spin on Eric's question about how is trusting a scientist
different from trusting an authority or a scholar.


http://sometimesimwrong.typepad.com/wrong/2017/03/looking-under-the-hood.html

concludes

but, you might say, scientists *are *more trustworthy than used car
> dealers!  sure,****** but we are also supposed to be more committed to
> transparency.  indeed, transparency is a hallmark of science - it's
> basically what makes science different from other ways of knowing (e.g.,
> authority, intuition, etc.).  in other words, it's what makes us better
> than used car dealers.


The proposal is that authors of papers need to share more about the context
of the paper so journals and readers get stuck with fewer lemons.

-- rec --

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 9:25 PM, Vladimyr Burachynsky <vburach at shaw.ca>
wrote:

> Eric,
>
>
>
> I doubt an idea before I ever apply for a grant. Then I deceptively claim
> to be trying to replicate an authorities claims. But the devil within me
> recalls that at least once maybe more often , I have noticed
>
> that the authority’s prediction failed. That knowledge is my group’s
> secret until publication. Then it becomes everyone’s knowledge.
>
>
>
> I have in my memory a perfect “Black Swan” event. I suppose that I have
> more faith in water birds than in statisticians. Perhaps we often hide
> behind obscure math to shield our superstitious insights.
>
> Some times using the math first reveals an outcome that is used as a gloss
> to hide the unknown. For instance the Griffith’s Crack Theory  widely held
> in Classic Mechanics. Exactly what is the use of a singularity zone
>
> when a crack propagates in wild directions? The material does not use it
> but then at that scale the material uses Quantum Mechanics but the engineer
> favours The Classic Mechanics. So indeed certain materials do emit light
>
> from crack tips. At the edges of any discipline anomalies will define
> limits or boundaries for paradigms. Without doubt and secret devilish
> memories Science would not evolve so quickly.
>
>
>
> At this point I am reminded of an eminent chemist , Polanyi? who received
> the Nobel Prize and afterward became a philosopher who suspected something
> like superstition, drives many scientists much like
>
> Isaac Newton.
>
> I think as civilized people we prefer to stick with conduct rules knowing
> perfectly well how to violate them and the consequences of doing so.
>
> vib
>
> I guess we should never believe the whole of PR.
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Eric
> Charles
> *Sent:* March-02-17 1:04 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] IS: Rhetoric in scientific arguments WAS: FW:
> Fractal discussion Landscape-bird songs
>
>
>
> Glen,
>
> To "Peirce-up" the discussion of doubt a touch. To doubt something is to
> be unable to act as-if-it-were-true without reservation. So, for example,
> you do not doubt Newtonian mechanics under a wide range of conditions (you
> are willing to act as if it is true under many circumstances), however,
> there are conditions under which you would be nervous acting as if they
> were true. Your doubt is not absolute, and the "caveats" you refer to,
> could be expressed as a description of the circumstances under which you
> start to get nervous.
>
>
>
> Your description of replication is good, but non-typical (particularly
> among the chemists, which are Peirce's favorite scientist). We now think of
> replication as part of the falsification process, but that is actually a
> weird way to think about (a symptom of the degenerate state of many current
> fields). The most natural reasons to replicate a research report is a)
> because the outcome is itself useful or b) because you intend to build upon
> it. For example, if someone publishes a novel synthesis for artificial
> rubber, I would probably try to replicate it because I need artificial
> rubber, or because I intended to start with that artificial rubber and try
> to synthesize something new. Under those conditions, anyone trying to
> replicate would be very frustrated by a failure (given some tolerance for
> first attempts).
>
>
>
> Nick,
>
> I think Glen is prodding, in his second part at an extremely important
> point, and one that I have been wrestling with quite a bit lately. It is
> quite unclear why "trusting the work of other scientists" - as currently
> practiced - is not simply another deference to authority. The current
> resurgence of assertions that people shouldn't argue with scientists (e.g.,
> that we should care what an astrophysicists thinks about vaccines, or what
> a geneticist thinks about psychology) is bad, and "science-skeptics" are
> not wrong when they attach a negative valence to such examples. Let us
> ignore those flagrant examples, however. How do I determine how much weight
> to give to a report in a "top journal" in psychology? Does it matter that I
> know full well most articles in top journals turn out to have problems (as
> flashy reports of unexpected results are prone to do)? And if I am
> suspicious of that, what do I make of the opinion of a Harvard full
> professor of psychology vs. a bartender who has been helping people with
> their problem for 5 decades? Etc. etc. etc. I think there is a very deep
> issue here, which I'm not sure I've ever seen explained well. I think, in
> part, it is a challenge that was not as prevalent even 50 years ago, but
> that may just be imagined nostalgia.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Supervisory Survey Statistician
>
> U.S. Marine Corps
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 4:13 PM, glen ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Heh, your lack of social salve has left me unclear on whether I should
> respond or which parts to respond to. >8^D  So, I'll just respond to what I
> think is the most important point.
>
> >  That implies that what you say below supports arguments from authority.
> [NST==>I don’t think we can EVER escape arguments from authority.  Science
> is locked in a matrix of trust.  Doubt in science is really important, but
> it has to be relatively rare, or we would never know which of a million
> doubts to take seriously.  <==nst]
>
> I think you use "doubt" differently than I do.  Even if we replace "doubt"
> with "falsified", it's not a binary thing.  When I doubt something an
> authority says, I'm not refuting, denying, or rejecting it.  I'm simply
> expressing that the saying probably has caveats, some of which I might know
> about, some of which I might not.  The same is true of (critical
> rationalist) falsification.  Even though we know Newtonian physics isn't
> end-all, be-all True with a capital T.  It's satisficing in most
> circumstances.  To (When I) say it's been falsified simply means it has
> caveats.
>
> And, in this sense of the two terms, doubt and falsification are _rampant_
> in science.  When you try to replicate some other lab's experiment, you
> must doubt, say, the methods section in their paper, usually because you
> don't have the exact same equipment and the exact same people ... doubt is
> what promotes reproducibility to replicability. ... at least in this
> non-scientist's opinion.
>
> >  I.e. we can't treat a lack of salve as an assertion of objectivity
> without implicitly asserting that every statement without such salve is
> fallacious. [NST==>Yep.  All statements are more or less fallacious.  So
> does that render all statements the same?  If I flip the coin once and it
> comes up heads, what evidence do I have that the coin is biased.   None.
> If I flip it twice, a little.  If I get a hundred heads, the probability
> that the coin flips represent a population of fair coin-flips is finite,
> but vanishingly small.  I’ld bet on it, wouldn’t you?  All statements of
> certainly of that character.  <==nst]
>
> No, not all fallacies are the same.  Different statements are fallacious
> in different ways.  And the argument from authority fallacy, in my opinion,
> is the worst one because it's opaque.  You can't learn from it.  At least
> with, say, assuming the conclusion, it encourages us to understand the
> relationship between premises and conclusion... it helps us grok deduction
> as well as the host of concepts surrounding languages, formal systems,
> algebras, etc.
>
> Your inductive argument, by the way, isn't obviously an argument from
> authority (obvious to me, anyway -- see how annoying it is), particularly
> with (as someone recently phrased it) interpersonally assessable things
> like coin flipping.  Anyone with the usual complement of sensorimotor
> manifolds (!) can put in place the kernel and carry out the iteration.  The
> only authorities involved are whatever physical structures are required for
> coin flipping and counting.
>
> But, more importantly, self-consistency (local coherence) is the governor
> of induction.  Can you imagine if "successor" were redefined at each
> iteration?  So, it helps make my larger point that it's irrelevant what you
> or I believe or state with authority.  What matters is whether the
> method(s) hang(s) together.
>
> --
> ☣ glen
>
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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