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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 02:03pm PT
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Marlow:
Your responses to my disagreements have been eye-openers for me. I'm glad you wrote.
I took it that you were always arguing that objective science gets it right more often and more reliably than people's subjective understanding.
Your "list of 10" post earlier provided what I thought were rather strong claims. Most of my disagreements requested evidence for those claims. However, most of your responses made reference to your beliefs and intuitions. You've not indicated any studies to share with me--with one exception.
You have cited Ioannidis as support for the efficacy of metacognition and metascience. I find this very surprising. I believe that you have it all wrong. Here's where you took the quote from. (Others can check my reading of it.)
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/
Ioannidis' use of meta-studies is a via negativa approach, not a positive or positivistic one. He says that looking through many research studies exhibits inconsistencies, contradictions, and contradistinctions. He's not proving the efficacy of the scientific method; he is disproving that its application has been working well in medicine.
If there was ever an article that undercuts the efficacy and so-called truth that's developed by the application of the scientific method (and the people who run research operations), it is this very article! (I sometimes have wondered to what extent you have been a part of research studies, the extent to which you have studied the science of science, and to what degree that you have learned the pitfalls and biases in research. These were the very things that philosophy of science and post-modernism complains about.)
The tentativeness, inconclusiveness, and incommensurability of scientific research have been my points from day one (also, see Ed's notion of "provisionalism"). My other point has been (with Largo) that subjectivity is not objectivity and that objective approaches and metrics are unlikely to link-up to subjective experience: neither can represent or stand in for the other.
I've been at the game for 25-30 years. I've sincerely lived the theoretical life. I've taken it seriously. ;-) The more closely I looked at what I was reading and learning, the more I saw holes and groundlessness. It drove me to ask myself what I could rely upon. I found that reasonable people (yes, in science) had the same concerns. I followed my investigations to the edge of a cliff in myself and in a world I initially thought was concrete and real. I jumped off, and at first all I could see was hopelessness. Slowly, things began to change in and around me.
Pema Chödrön:
We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.
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I used to have a sign pinned up on my wall that read: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us...It was all about letting go of everything.
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As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don't deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.
Be well.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 13, 2011 - 02:34pm PT
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MikeL
You say:
"Your "list of 10" post earlier provided what I thought were rather strong claims. Most of my disagreements requested evidence for those claims. However, most of your responses made reference to your beliefs and intuitions. You've not indicated any studies to share with me--with one exception.
You have cited Ioannidis as support for the efficacy of metacognition and metascience. I find this very surprising. I believe that you have it all wrong. Here's where you took the quote from. (Others can check my reading of it.)"
Answer:
I am not getting anything wrong. To use Jan's word insinuation. Your insinuation that I am wrong is strongly biased.
There is bad science and there is good science. Ioannidis is showing us that very much of medical science is "bad" science because of bias, but there are exceptions.
As he says: "The scientific enterprise is probably the most fantastic achievement in human history, but that doesn’t mean we have a right to overstate what we’re accomplishing.”
That is also my view.
Here from the web site of Ioannidis about the production of bias:
"First, let us define bias as the combination of various design, data, analysis, and presentation factors that tend to produce research findings when they should not be produced. Let u be the proportion of probed analyses that would not have been “research findings,” but nevertheless end up presented and reported as such, because of bias. Bias should not be confused with chance variability that causes some findings to be false by chance even though the study design, data, analysis, and presentation are perfect. Bias can entail manipulation in the analysis or reporting of findings. Selective or distorted reporting is a typical form of such bias. We may assume that u does not depend on whether a true relationship exists or not. This is not an unreasonable assumption, since typically it is impossible to know which relationships are indeed true. In the presence of bias (Table 2), one gets PPV = ([1 - β]R + uβR)/(R + α − βR + u − uα + uβR), and PPV decreases with increasing u, unless 1 − β ≤ α, i.e., 1 − β ≤ 0.05 for most situations. Thus, with increasing bias, the chances that a research finding is true diminish considerably. This is shown for different levels of power and for different pre-study odds in Figure 1. Conversely, true research findings may occasionally be annulled because of reverse bias. For example, with large measurement errors relationships are lost in noise [12], or investigators use data inefficiently or fail to notice statistically significant relationships, or there may be conflicts of interest that tend to “bury” significant findings [13]. There is no good large-scale empirical evidence on how frequently such reverse bias may occur across diverse research fields. However, it is probably fair to say that reverse bias is not as common. Moreover measurement errors and inefficient use of data are probably becoming less frequent problems, since measurement error has decreased with technological advances in the molecular era and investigators are becoming increasingly sophisticated about their data. Regardless, reverse bias may be modeled in the same way as bias above. Also reverse bias should not be confused with chance variability that may lead to missing a true relationship because of chance."
Corollaries about the probability that a research finding is indeed true:
"Corollary 1: The smaller the studies conducted in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Small sample size means smaller power and, for all functions above, the PPV for a true research finding decreases as power decreases towards 1 − β = 0.05. Thus, other factors being equal, research findings are more likely true in scientific fields that undertake large studies, such as randomized controlled trials in cardiology (several thousand subjects randomized) [14] than in scientific fields with small studies, such as most research of molecular predictors (sample sizes 100-fold smaller) [15].
Corollary 2: The smaller the effect sizes in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Power is also related to the effect size. Thus research findings are more likely true in scientific fields with large effects, such as the impact of smoking on cancer or cardiovascular disease (relative risks 3–20), than in scientific fields where postulated effects are small, such as genetic risk factors for multigenetic diseases (relative risks 1.1–1.5) [7]. Modern epidemiology is increasingly obliged to target smaller effect sizes [16]. Consequently, the proportion of true research findings is expected to decrease. In the same line of thinking, if the true effect sizes are very small in a scientific field, this field is likely to be plagued by almost ubiquitous false positive claims. For example, if the majority of true genetic or nutritional determinants of complex diseases confer relative risks less than 1.05, genetic or nutritional epidemiology would be largely utopian endeavors.
Corollary 3: The greater the number and the lesser the selection of tested relationships in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. As shown above, the post-study probability that a finding is true (PPV) depends a lot on the pre-study odds (R). Thus, research findings are more likely true in confirmatory designs, such as large phase III randomized controlled trials, or meta-analyses thereof, than in hypothesis-generating experiments. Fields considered highly informative and creative given the wealth of the assembled and tested information, such as microarrays and other high-throughput discovery-oriented research [4,8,17], should have extremely low PPV.
Corollary 4: The greater the flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Flexibility increases the potential for transforming what would be “negative” results into “positive” results, i.e., bias, u. For several research designs, e.g., randomized controlled trials [18–20] or meta-analyses [21,22], there have been efforts to standardize their conduct and reporting. Adherence to common standards is likely to increase the proportion of true findings. The same applies to outcomes. True findings may be more common when outcomes are unequivocal and universally agreed (e.g., death) rather than when multifarious outcomes are devised (e.g., scales for schizophrenia outcomes) [23]. Similarly, fields that use commonly agreed, stereotyped analytical methods (e.g., Kaplan-Meier plots and the log-rank test) [24] may yield a larger proportion of true findings than fields where analytical methods are still under experimentation (e.g., artificial intelligence methods) and only “best” results are reported. Regardless, even in the most stringent research designs, bias seems to be a major problem. For example, there is strong evidence that selective outcome reporting, with manipulation of the outcomes and analyses reported, is a common problem even for randomized trails [25]. Simply abolishing selective publication would not make this problem go away.
Corollary 5: The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Conflicts of interest and prejudice may increase bias, u. Conflicts of interest are very common in biomedical research [26], and typically they are inadequately and sparsely reported [26,27]. Prejudice may not necessarily have financial roots. Scientists in a given field may be prejudiced purely because of their belief in a scientific theory or commitment to their own findings. Many otherwise seemingly independent, university-based studies may be conducted for no other reason than to give physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure. Such nonfinancial conflicts may also lead to distorted reported results and interpretations. Prestigious investigators may suppress via the peer review process the appearance and dissemination of findings that refute their findings, thus condemning their field to perpetuate false dogma. Empirical evidence on expert opinion shows that it is extremely unreliable [28].
Corollary 6: The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true. This seemingly paradoxical corollary follows because, as stated above, the PPV of isolated findings decreases when many teams of investigators are involved in the same field. This may explain why we occasionally see major excitement followed rapidly by severe disappointments in fields that draw wide attention. With many teams working on the same field and with massive experimental data being produced, timing is of the essence in beating competition. Thus, each team may prioritize on pursuing and disseminating its most impressive “positive” results. “Negative” results may become attractive for dissemination only if some other team has found a “positive” association on the same question. In that case, it may be attractive to refute a claim made in some prestigious journal. The term Proteus phenomenon has been coined to describe this phenomenon of rapidly alternating extreme research claims and extremely opposite refutations [29]. Empirical evidence suggests that this sequence of extreme opposites is very common in molecular genetics [29].
These corollaries consider each factor separately, but these factors often influence each other. For example, investigators working in fields where true effect sizes are perceived to be small may be more likely to perform large studies than investigators working in fields where true effect sizes are perceived to be large. Or prejudice may prevail in a hot scientific field, further undermining the predictive value of its research findings. Highly prejudiced stakeholders may even create a barrier that aborts efforts at obtaining and disseminating opposing results. Conversely, the fact that a field is hot or has strong invested interests may sometimes promote larger studies and improved standards of research, enhancing the predictive value of its research findings. Or massive discovery-oriented testing may result in such a large yield of significant relationships that investigators have enough to report and search further and thus refrain from data dredging and manipulation."
Have a good time!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 13, 2011 - 03:13pm PT
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Where Marlow looses his way is in trying to homoginize all of reality into physical properties for which measuring can be applied and a "right" or 'wrong" answer can be derived. I wrote about this earlier. When Einstein said his theories came from unquantifiable experience, Marlow bawked. Marlow insists that experience can be measured in the standard ways or quantified somehow as to be right or wrong but to do so he must try and reel experience back to matter he believes "creates" experience, and then measure the atomic activities or meta-functions thereof and call those measurements objectified experience. This is the purest folly, of course, but no amount of empirical evidence can apparently budge him on this matter.
Fact is, numerical measuring works fantastically on matter. Not so on experience. The criteria for being "right" in the material world basically
breaks down to numerical accuracy. Since numerical accuracy has little bearinig on subjective reality, trying in impose same on our experience inevitably leads to the homoginizing of the sugjective with the objective, with the material and the experiential, with first and third person reality, whereby the map is said to BE the territory, your Uncle is your Aunt and heads is tails. But none of these beliefs will ever be empirically true.
Like the man said, your folks might have "made" you, but you ain't them.
JL
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Nov 13, 2011 - 03:23pm PT
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Plato, Einstein, Dylan, Rushdie, King, Garcia, Lopez....
Shimmy shimmy coco bop, shimmy shimmy bop.
Round and round we go with the supertopo philosophers getting nowhere.
I hope you guys are beginning to realize that with all your high thinking, you're not getting any further than the politard threads with their entrenched positions.
Somehow I thought y'all would do better.
Once the minds little wheels get locked into their grooves, the ability to absorb the "other" and emrace it gets smaller.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 13, 2011 - 03:30pm PT
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Largo says: "Where Marlow looses his way is in trying to homoginize all of reality into physical properties for which measuring can be applied and a "right" or 'wrong" answer can be derived."
Answer: Not true. Just read what I have written earlier.
Largo says: When Einstein said his theories came from unquantifiable experience, Marlow bawked."
Answer: What I said was that his pre-knowledge based on other scientists findings was necessary to reach the conlusions he reached. His deep and broad knowledge about the subject matter was more important than imagination though imagination certainly contributed.
Largo says: "Marlow insists that experience can be measured in the standard ways or quantified somehow as to be right or wrong but to do so he must try and reel experienced back to matter he believed "creates" experienced, and then measure the atomic activities or meta-functions thereof and call those measurements objectified experience. This is all folly, of course, but no amount of empirical evidence can apparently budge him on this matter."
Answer: Please show me where I have said such a thing. Again - I have never said that. Your imagination is very biased.
Largo says: Fact is, numerical measuring works fantastically on matter. Not so on experience."
Answer: Ioannidis results show that this is often not true even when it comes to matter. We use scientific method wrong. There is bias.
I will not repeat what I have said earlier about the other points of Largo since it is just one more round of repetition.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 13, 2011 - 05:39pm PT
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Largo says: When Einstein said his theories came from unquantifiable experience, Marlow bawked."
Answer: What I said was that his pre-knowledge based on other scientists findings was necessary to reach the conlusions he reached. His deep and broad knowledge about the subject matter was more important than imagination though imagination certainly contributed.
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Marlow, at least have the itegrity to say that this is your take on it, since Einstein himself said the exact opposite about HIS OWN EXPERIENCE. He said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge" (facts and figures). That's a direct quote, Senor.
Reinterpret Lil' Al Einstein at your own peril, but don't suppose the rest of us to take you seriously.
What's more, per your belief that you can quantify experience itself, much as you quantify matter - and not objective functioning, atomic/chemical activities, but actual experience. Really? Are you going back to that dead dog?
We've already established, incontrovertibly, that 1st and 3rd person, subjective and objective, material and experiential are not the same things. So kindly provide your empirical evidence that experience itself is open to numerical representation in the same sense that El Capitan is 3,027 feet high.
JL
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 13, 2011 - 05:48pm PT
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Largo
I don't reinterpret Einstein. I just tell you he's wrong if what he is telling us is that his knowledge was less important than his imagination.
Einstein being wrong about that is no big deal. Neither is me being right.
You have got too much respect for authorities Largo. That is what my imagination keeps telling me.
If we had two groups of men. In one we had men of extremely high imagination with nothing more than ordinary knowledge about physics. In the other group we had men of high imagination with knowledge about disiplines related to physics and broad and extremely deep knowledge about physics. In which group do you think the next "break-through" within physics would have highest probability of happening?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 06:11pm PT
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Largo is not entirely correct, of course, the measurement of human behavior is a critical part of understanding why humans make errors, and how to set up situations where errors are less likely when an error can have huge consequences... e.g.:
THE ROLE OF HUMAN FACTORS IN IMPROVING AVIATION SAFETY
"Human error has been documented as a primary contributor to more than 70 percent of commercial airplane hull-loss accidents. While typically associated with flight operations, human error has also recently become a major concern in maintenance practices and air traffic management. Boeing human factors professionals work with engineers, pilots, and mechanics to apply the latest knowledge about the interface between human performance and commercial airplanes to help operators improve safety and efficiency in their daily operations."
I don't know where Largo comes down on this sort of research, but it is incontrovertible that such measurements of human behavior (including experience) has played an enormous role in reducing the number of airline accidents, as well as a number of other accidents.
Almost anyone involved in high consequence activities understands the role that "human factors" play in accidents.
It's hard to see how this is any different than any other human behavior, which may too be subject to measurement.
Just because you make up "laws" and repeat them over and over again doesn't make them so... the "experience" that Largo is talking about doesn't exist the way he has constructed it, but the construction is one that says you can't measure "mind" or "experience" but that is what has been done in these instances.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 08:27pm PT
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Thadood:
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
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I don't know what to say. Relying upon my great command of the English language, I'll say nothing at all.
Ye Gods, I'm starting to understand Werner . . . especially his approach.
John: Namaste.
Marlow:
Come to your own thoughts.
Be well, all.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 13, 2011 - 08:32pm PT
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Just because you make up "laws" and repeat them over and over again doesn't make them so... the "experience" that Largo is talking about doesn't exist the way he has constructed it, but the construction is one that says you can't measure "mind" or "experience" but that is what has been done in these instances.
What I have railed against and chided here and humbugged people about is basically the simple fact that all methods of inquiry and investigation are limited, just as the subjected and objective, the 1st and 3rd person, and the subjective and objective are themselves limited. Physicalists have the hardest time accepting that there are limitations to their mode, and strive to find examples to where measuring holds, even if it means trying to reinvent experience to be behavior or reactions or actions.
Ed has accused me of "constructing" experience to "be" this or that which I claim is not quantifiable by normal, numerical methods. Then he cites various behavioral modalities related to aeronautical accidents as proof that human error has "incontrovertibly" contributed to accidents, thereby the quantifiable conclusions of said accidents are themselves direct measurements of human experience.
I suppose that since behavior and actions/reactions are part of our human experience they could be viewed experientially, and this, of course is what Ed and all the other materialists are aiming at - to try and nudge things down the causal chain far enough to where the physical body does something REAL in the material world and we can get back to quantifying. But of course this is more accurately viewed at the physical/behavioral output of experience; and if we look at our choice in everything from women to bungling the sequence on that off width, we can start arguing about our infallibility and how the subjective cannot be trusted to be "right" and so on.
But just for a moment, consider experience BEFORE you are moved to consciously do something. And yes, there is plenty of unconscious doing going on under awareness, but just to pause and "do nothing" brings experience into a new focus.
Notice in all of this I have never disparaged measuring as a vital part of existence, invaluable for all things technological. But the question to those who have made measuring a profane God still stands; Where do you see the limitation of measuring? And is your value system so constructed that anything falling outside the purview of measuring is deemed of no value whatsoever?
Oddly, it would seem that there are still those out there that think experience IS quantifiable in the same way and with the same reliability as we can measure the heigth of El Capitan.
Go figure . . .
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 10:23pm PT
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But the question to those who have made measuring a profane God still stands; Where do you see the limitation of measuring? And is your value system so constructed that anything falling outside the purview of measuring is deemed of no value whatsoever?
I have done nothing of the sort, Largo... but there are things to be known there, as you know. My strategy here is just to keep bringing up examples, and have you say they are irrelevant... brain disease or damage and the effect they have on a person's experience, the measurement of errors committed by humans and why they do, on and on... all irrelevant... the fact that when we measure our response, it seems our consciousness might be lagging a bit... maybe not involved....
but all is irrelevant to the "experience" and experience which you cannot tell is an illusion often is not considered being "in your right mind" if it is sleeping and dreaming or if you just got your bell rung in a collision with that right facing dihedral you happened to swing into on your fall.
Perhaps you could use a bit of "not doing" when you go to respond to some of these posts and rather than playing a character who is outraged at the attack on your argument by some bully making up profane gods, perhaps engage a bit in an intellectual discussion.... and perhaps we could make a bit of progress on these interesting topics...
just take a bit of time and look at the sunset, and don't try to argue with it...
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MH2
climber
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Nov 13, 2011 - 10:56pm PT
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survival says:
Round and round we go with the supertopo philosophers getting nowhere.
thaDood asks:
where is this going? does anyone know?
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Nov 13, 2011 - 11:07pm PT
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I'd argue that's a nice sunset. It seems that Ed and Largo could probably work it all out over about a half dozen pitches, trading leads, no words just
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 13, 2011 - 11:34pm PT
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Perhaps you could use a bit of "not doing" when you go to respond to some of these posts and rather than playing a character who is outraged at the attack on your argument.
I think this is the biggest non-starter of all - that I am presenting an "argument," a mental construct of what experience "is." Of course a simple question such as - What is the limitation of quantifying in the whole of human life, will likely never get answered honestly, that is, without quantifying the response to say whatever is unquantiable is of "no importance," can not be proven to be so, is prone to be wrong, or illusional or delusional and so forth. Meanwhile we have Marlow telling us how wrong Einstein is, and then accusing me of being a boot licker for siding with Al, as opposed to silly Marlow. Back into that corner you buffoon.
But what am I saying, really.
I've simply challenged people to quantify a tear, the breeze on your back, the mental buzz of solving a problem or a riddle, the grip of fear, one3 of Ed's divine photos, sex, drugs, rock and roll, emptiness, states totally devoid of feeling, detachment, the smell of bacon, and so forth. Of course we cannot quantify these because they are fluid. Ed says I refer to experience that doesn't even exist. What doesn't exist is a first person subjective experience, which is usually an amorphous process, that presents with the fixed and constant characteristics of a photon or gold brick. It is true that we cannot totally know or collar or grasp a moving target so we might be "wrong" about our tears, our fears, the wind, sex, music, and so forth, especially if we have some liquor on board. But wrong only applies to something that is constant, or specifically definable as one thing. And experience is many things to many people - and rarely if ever the same thing.
The real world limitation of all quantifying is that it is only viable with constants or with processes that we can statistically wrangle. I contend that materialists won't hear one word of this, and will either try and formulate experience into a material thing, or they'll attack the amorphous nature of experience as being "unreal," which we have seen is simply another word for unquantifiable.
JL
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Nov 13, 2011 - 11:49pm PT
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I remember a professor who said his mind was blown when he realized that virtually everything could be described by the normal distribution. He said he couldn't go to class for a week.
My final take:
Largo = subjective /= quanta
Ed = experience = physical origin
I tend to fall into the meat as the base model.
Subjective experience/consciousness that can't be quantified (something that doesn't have a "physical" measurable origin) is too hard for me to warp my head around. I was thinking, there is matter, an it's "opposite"? Also, there is Largo. Thus, is there anti-Largo? Really the heart of his posts seems anything but.
Cheers
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wack-N-dangle
Gym climber
the ground up
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Nov 14, 2011 - 01:12am PT
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I just liked the word negatron. It sounds like some kind of post-modern superhero
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 14, 2011 - 01:37am PT
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Anyone here for a bit of transcendence, maybe some Sufism?
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2011 - 01:59am PT
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Its always better to have an intelligent discussion rather then an intellectual discussion ......
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 14, 2011 - 03:04am PT
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I have enjoyed this discussion greatly. It might not be going anywhere, but it did get us all thinking.
I am now in a very different place than I began. I can see Largo's point, subjective experience is almost by definition impossible to quantify, but it can be described in many circumstances. As has often been pointed out, the health of the brain does directly relate to the function of the mind.
I still think that the mind resides in the brain. Where else is it?
You can have a religious point of view that is really outside this discussion because it involves supernatural views. Which is OK if that floats your boat. No harm there.
I have come to agree with JL about subjective experience invading every moment of our lives. I even agree that quantifying it may not be the best approach to understanding the mind. It isn't a computer. It is far stranger. It operates on all kinds of weird levels, and makes good use of subjective input.
Now for a question. If you nabbed somebody from the 10th century and put them in the 21st, it would be a good test of how much of our decisions and behaviour are learned from previous experience.
You know. Put them behind the wheel of an 18 wheeler in rush hour traffic and see what happens.
They would be totally lost in not only the technology, but also ethics and other subjective constructs.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 03:13am PT
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Now for a question. If you nabbed somebody from the 10th century and put them in the 21st, it would be a good test of how much of our decisions and behaviour are learned from previous experience.
I think that Jan already related a story that relates to this, up thread... about the ability of children from a rural region of Nepal to adapt to the use of computers and the web, etc... I think it an apt simile for your question...
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