A suspicion I had about the field during my bachelor that turned out to be a big deal

[Yimpa]

Why did the scientist cross the road?

He didn’t. He’s still studying the road.

[Bobby_2021]

12 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

Why did the scientist cross the road?

He didn’t. He’s still studying the road.

?

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

I have linked the pdf above in my replies. 

Like I said, there is no mention of "music" in the MAAS.

 

2 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Chess is not repetitive. Boxing & running is the most repetitive sport. There is only a limited set of actions you can do in such sports. There huge variability in chess and football.

Whatever "repetitive" means in this case is so incredibly vague. For example, what is the defining level of analysis for "action"? Is a punch really just one action, or does it involve a huge set of actions? A successful punch will depend on a lot of factors (timing, speed, precision, force, stance, movement of the opponent, movement of yourself, etc.), which are all factors that constantly change in a fight. No two fights are the same, and no two punches are the same. From that perspective, boxing cannot be repetitive. But again, unless you have a good way of quantifying it, it's meaningless to try to draw any sharp distinctions.

 

2 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Boxing and running has the lowest mindfulness requirements.

You simply need to keep running fast while learning to ignore all the stimuli ==Mindless ness. 

Chess/football is the being aware of the entire football ground/chess board while cooking up strategies/tactics. You need to be open to all stimuli as much as possible to increase your chances of success. 

== Super high mindfulness. 

If you "ignore" stimuli while running (any style; long-distance, sprint), you'll not be a good runner. If anything, your ability to run maps on perfectly with your ability to enter a flow state, which overlaps conceptually with mindfulness. Same with boxing. You can't "ignore" anything. If you do, you'll get bopped on the head. Why is mindfulness so often associated with martial arts? Shaolin monks? Bruce Lee? ("Be like water"). Even Joe Rogan talks about it.

 

2 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

How can you compare this kid with Messi? ?

Why not?

 

2 hours ago, Bobby_2021 said:

I don't think you have come up with a valid counter example to be honest.

It's very harder to play football smarter than Messi. Messi is clearly the best football player of all time. Maradona might come second. 

1. Some Ace of a kind greek demi God will not play footballer better than Messi if he is less mindful than Messi. 

2. If some player is better than Messi, he for sure has higher mindfulness than Messi. If you can compete with Messi in mindfulness levels, then you have a solid chance of beating him. But there are many other factors of course. 

So is your position unfalsifiable then?: you cannot be as good as Messi if you're less mindful than Messi, so you can't find a counterexample of somebody who is as good as Messi who is less mindful than Messi.

So again, what would it take for you to change your mind? So far, it doesn't seem like anything can change your mind.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Bobby_2021]

26 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Whatever "repetitive" means in this case is so incredibly vague. For example, what is the defining level of analysis for "action"? Is a punch really just one action, or does it involve a huge set of actions? A successful punch will depend on a lot of factors (timing, speed, precision, force, stance, movement of the opponent, movement of yourself, etc.), which are all factors that constantly change in a fight. No two fights are the same, and no two punches are the same. From that perspective, boxing cannot be repetitive. But again, unless you have a good way of quantifying it, it's meaningless to try to draw any sharp distinctions.

Not really. You simply need to train a thousand pushups and thousands of punches a day like a chimp without thinking, It's all baked into the "muscle". They are working on training the muscles in the body. They do not work their MIND. That's why it is a mindless activity.

Repetitive tasks can be done without thinking. It is executing the same set of tasks over and over again until you get good at it. Notice that according to your definition, there is no such thing like a repetitive task because apparently you cannot cross the same river twice, because so many things are different the second time you do it. Yeah it is different, but all you have to focus on is to punch and dodge and to practice it a thousand times. There is nothing much to use your mind on. You do not write down the speed at which you hit your opponent. You throw a punch like a gorilla. There is some footwork and dodging, but that is pretty much it. You punch as fast as possible as much as your genetics allows you to. 

Do not look get lost in definitions. Look where you apply your mind. Does boxers need to use the mind as much as footballers or chess players? No. That's all that matters. 

It's said that boxers can go completely unconscious and still keep fighting, because they train their muscles so hard that they begin to develop a mind and memory on their own.

In football, you cannot get good at it simply because you are good with the ball. Your awareness of the ground is a key skill in football. You cannot get good at football simply by kicking the ball a thousand times. That is the big difference.

42 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

If you "ignore" stimuli while running (any style; long-distance, sprint), you'll not be a good runner. If anything, your ability to run maps on perfectly with your ability to enter a flow state, which overlaps conceptually with mindfulness. Same with boxing. You can't "ignore" anything. If you do, you'll get bopped on the head. Why is mindfulness so often associated with martial arts? Shaolin Monks? Bruce Lee? ("be like water"). Even Joe Rogan talks about it.

I did not say to ignore stimuli. I was comparing it with sports that required more stimuli. 

More stimuli = = More Mindfulness

Less stimuli = = Mindlessness 

And it is not just merely perceiving stimuli. Mindfulness is about taking in stimuli, and even processing the stimuli in your mind. The stimuli has to go through your mind to be properly mindful. 

Flow state's can't be measured or quantified so as to compare.

44 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Like I said, there is no mention of "music" in the MAAS.

Not explicitly. There is question on listening to someone and doing something else. That is as good as listening to music and doing something else.

47 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

So is your position unfalsifiable then?

I am making a case for Truth. So if my position is unfalsifiable, that does not mean there is something wrong. Truth need not be falsifiable. It is a tautology. 

50 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

So again, what would it take for you to change your mind? So far, it doesn't seem like anything can change your mind.

What does it take for you to change your mind? 

I think I am pretty reasonable in what I stated. I am more than willing to seek out contradictions in my positions. So far I have not got any.  I do not state what I say as absolute Truth. But it will remain a relative Truth until someone bring up a better reasoning.

[Scholar]

From my second hand accounts of the inner workings of academia in regards to psychology, I feel like a lot of it is not really motivated by a pursuit of truth but rather by job security. I feel like people just create opportunities for themselves so they then get paid, and they sell their own work such that they get paid.

It all feels very circle jerky to me and like everyone is just moving around money hoping it will end up in their hands. And aside from the money, the second motivation seems to be ideological rather than a pursuit of truth.

[Bobby_2021]

On 16/9/2023 at 0:50 AM, Leo Gura said:

I do not agree at all.

By any sane scientific measure the rapid Covid vaccine saved millions of lives.

My stance was that it was just neutral.

Here are the number of people that dies each year in the United States:

2019 - 2,854,838

Then covid happened in 2020 due to which a lot of people died.

2020 - 3,378,414

By the end of 2020, they developed the vaccine and started distributing it at scale by early 2021. So you should expect the number of deaths to come down.

2021 - 3,385,364

Apparently after the vaccine, even more people died in the year.

2022 - 3,389,088

Even More people died in 2022. Let us wait for 2023 stats. 

If vaccine was truly effective, why has the number of deaths not gone down?

I am not stating that the vaccine was bad or killed anyone. But you need to show up for the number if you take a strong stance like the vaccine was effective. My stance is that vaccine was simply not necessary and forced. It did not accomplish anything. Else the absolute number of deaths should have gone down.

@Leo Gura

 

If anyone wants the sauce: 

https://deadorkicking.com/death-statistics/us/2022/

I have checked other web sites for death statistics and the numbers are mostly similar with slight variations.

[Bobby_2021]

19 minutes ago, Scholar said:

From my second hand accounts of the inner workings of academia in regards to psychology, I feel like a lot of it is not really motivated by a pursuit of truth but rather by job security. I feel like people just create opportunities for themselves so they then get paid, and they sell their own work such that they get paid.

It all feels very circle jerky to me and like everyone is just moving around money hoping it will end up in their hands. And aside from the money, the second motivation seems to be ideological rather than a pursuit of truth.

This is not just a problem with psychology. Even hard science like AI/ML are full of these trash studies. We did all that to have a paper under out name. The data that used as if it was real world results was generated with a tool on the internet. Not a single peer review guy asked a question although that was not the case for some of my collogues. Sometimes your professor can be a pain in the ass. But there is zero surprise to see a lot of junk floating around. They dug this pit for themselves to be honest. 

Albert einstein's paper on relativity had zero references. Today you need 20 references in your paper to be published. Imagine is someone came up with a groundbreaking study and it was rejected for not having enough references. lol total clownshow.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Bobby_2021 said:

What does it take for you to change your mind?

I haven't made a claim yet. Like I stated earlier, my goal with engaging with your points and providing counterexamples was to demonstrate the fact that you can always bring up counterexamples or competing hypotheses. And I can continue doing that, or I can just restate my point:

I think it's generally OK to make some observations on a topic and present a hypothesis without doing an in-depth empirical investigation. That is just what we do as humans. That said, if you want to do an actual serious investigation into a question like "does x correlate with y?", you should probably want to rigorously test your hypothesis at some point.

And at that point, it makes little sense to only confine yourself to a small amount of observations. Instead, you probably want to survey a large sample of observations and see if there is a pattern there. That way you can also more easily get a measurement of how strong or weak the supposed correlation is. And that is what quantitative science does.

So my critique to you is that, sure, what you're saying could be a good hypothesis, but are you willing to test it to see if it matches up to reality? (and this topic is about the degree to which our attempts to do that are commendable or even possible).

[SeaMonster]

On 9/14/2023 at 3:28 AM, Carl-Richard said:

So you're saying my philosophical observation sucks

No, I'm just saying I wouldn't try and give scientists some rudimentary, barebones philosophical education because they'll inevitably make a hash out of their science trying to apply it.  They are very different mental skillsets and knowledge bases.

On 9/14/2023 at 5:15 AM, zurew said:

Whats your take on teaching scientists at least philosophy of science? - Because I think thats very much relevant to the development of their field.

It's fine, but people have this crazy idea that science is this Platonic pursuit of Truth uncorrupted by real world considerations (laws, politics, government/state priorities, powerful people in their fields flexing their power to marginalize contrarian ideas, etc.)

In other words, I don't know how much good it would do.  Ultimately science is as good as the institutions of science and society ALLOW it to be.

[UnbornTao]

Our culture's notion of intelligence is rather narrow. A lot of intelligence and mindfulness are involved in sports.

Edited September 18, 2023 by UnbornTao

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

have you ever played soccer?

a lot of intelligence is involved. Top athletes are extremely intelligent and mindful when playing almost as if they had a sixth sense.

It's just that our cultural notion of intelligence is pretty narrow, it is held as memorising stuff and little more

Who me? Yes, I've played soccer actively in my early youth. The goal of the conversation above was not to make the case that soccer players are less mindful or intelligent (or the opposite). The goal was to deconstruct Bobby's addiction to the availability heuristic and allergy to quantitative science.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, SeaMonster said:

No, I'm just saying I wouldn't try and give scientists some rudimentary, barebones philosophical education because they'll inevitably make a hash out of their science trying to apply it.  They are very different mental skillsets and knowledge bases.

Well, then it's a shame that this is exactly what they're doing, at least in my program which is aimed towards research. Our first course has been almost nothing but philosophy of science and questions around the limitations of methodologies, standards of scientific practice, etc. And let me demonstrate that by calling your position "nothing but" a pessimistic take on Kuhn: "just stick to your dusty old paradigm and do normal science; that's what scientists do best, that's how science really progresses" (even though Kuhn didn't think psychology even qualifies as a scientific paradigm... maybe I demonstrated your point for you ?).

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, SeaMonster said:

It's fine, but people have this crazy idea that science is this Platonic pursuit of Truth uncorrupted by real world considerations (laws, politics, government/state priorities, powerful people in their fields flexing their power to marginalize contrarian ideas, etc.)

In other words, I don't know how much good it would do.  Ultimately science is as good as the institutions of science and society ALLOW it to be.

Maybe a weird question, but what do you consider a noble profession or pursuit in life?

[Scholar]

On 16.9.2023 at 5:09 PM, Leo Gura said:

You can design a study to have 1000 people snort 5-MeO-DMT for 30 days and analyze their results.

By your limited logic pharmaceutical science isn't science.

Also, your vision is so limited here. A scientist could use 5-MeO-DMT to generate revolutionary new insights into all kinds of material theories, like physics.

And say we do that study, and it turns out that most people would not come to the conclusion you have, or interpret their experience the same way you do. Then, you would of course say "They are all doing it wrong, they have to actually do the proper intellectual work beforehand", which basically translates, they have to have the same ideas about reality as you do before they take the substance.

From the scientific point of view, what is then more likely, that you idea about reality influences the experience, or that you somehow discover actual reality through the experience? How will you even go beyond this problem? Even if everyone had the same experience, that wouldn't tell you that experience is true, but merely that the drug creates a consistent effect in the human brain. None of that is surprising, and you still have the same problem.

And what revolutionary new insights into material theories were made using psychedelics? Sure, psychedelics make you more creative, but what if we keep doing these trials and nobody actually will improve physics at all, or bring new material theories that have scientific validity? What would you say then? That you are wrong about the nature of existence? No of course you will not say that. Then you will say "Well, turns out these experiences are so beyond the relative they will not help you with this!".

 

On 16.9.2023 at 5:09 PM, Leo Gura said:

I make many claims, some od which are too radical for 3rd person validation but many of then not.

For example, I claim that humans can move objects with their minds or read other minds. This is easily verifiable in 3rd person.

So, let us say we do the studies and it turns out that people cannot do so whatsoever, that all the studies you refer to that already have proven this statistically were actually in error. What would you say then, that your hypothesis about the nature of reality is false? No, of course you will not say that, you will juust say "Of course the experience does not translate into physical reality, because God imagines physical reality exactly as he already wants it to be! Your little ego wanting to move objects around is not the same as your True Self wanting the universe to be exactly as it is!".

You would never admit you are wrong, none of these studies could ever possibly prove you wrong, and you know that. By definition, your claims are unfalsifiable. Even if I did the experiment myself and did all you said and then concluded you are wrong, you would still tell me I am doing it wrong.

[Bobby_2021]

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

You would never admit you are wrong, none of these studies could ever possibly prove you wrong, and you know that. By definition, your claims are unfalsifiable. Even if I did the experiment myself and did all you said and then concluded you are wrong, you would still tell me I am doing it wrong

Just think about this for a moment. What do you mean by falsifiable?

"Give me the Truth"

Here is the Truth.

"But but, it's not falsifiable. It's too True"

Wut?

How can Truth be falsifiable? Can't you see the contradiction? 

You should be happy if you found something that is not falsifiable. It's obviously means it's, well, True. 

[Scholar]

18 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Just think about this for a moment. What do you mean by falsifiable?

"Give me the Truth"

Here is the Truth.

"But but, it's not falsifiable. It's too True"

Wut?

How can Truth be falsifiable? Can't you see the contradiction? 

You should be happy if you found something that is not falsifiable. It's obviously means it's, well, True. 

This is irrelevant, we are discussing whether or not these types of things can be integrated into the scientific methode. Leo proposes certain things to do so, which does not make much sense considering you cannot falsify any of his claims, even if you do exactly what he does and have the exact same experiences. The entire point about the scientific method evolving becomes mute at that point.

[SeaMonster]

21 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

And let me demonstrate that by calling your position "nothing but" a pessimistic take on Kuhn: "just stick to your dusty old paradigm and do normal science; that's what scientists do best, that's how science really progresses" (even though Kuhn didn't think psychology even qualifies as a scientific paradigm... maybe I demonstrated your point for you ?).

This is all very nice -- they've taught you how to deconstruct your methodologies a bit.  How are you actually going to apply that deconstruction to become a better scientist, considering much more important limiting factors that I mentioned below? Have they taught you that and will they?

If they really wanted to make you better scientists, they would teach you Sociology of science, History of science, Politics of science, Ethics of science, etc.

Paradigm busting is a political/sociological matter much more than a scientific one.  Are you and your colleagues ruthless and Machiavellian enough to pursue that? I don't know if it's what you had in mind going for your graduate degree.

Quote

Maybe a weird question, but what do you consider a noble profession or pursuit in life?

Pretty much anything where you're not professionally obligated to lie in some manner (whether it's actively or by silence or omission or pretending to believe in something you know is not true.)

[Carl-Richard]

1 minute ago, SeaMonster said:

This is all very nice -- they've taught you how to deconstruct your methodologies a bit.  How are you actually going to apply that deconstruction to become a better scientist, considering much more important limiting factors that I mentioned below? Have they taught you that and will they?

Well, addressing the crisis in the field does start with questioning one's methodologies and then making them more rigorous and maybe changing them. We've been given many examples of all of those things. For example, should we move from the Null Hypothesis Significance Testing paradigm to a Bayesian paradigm for our inferential statistics? Should we mostly focus on how we construct our hypotheses (theory-focused) or how we test them (empirically focused)? Should we focus on doing direct replications or conceptual replications? Are there better alternatives to preregistration? The list goes on.

 

20 minutes ago, SeaMonster said:

If they really wanted to make you better scientists, they would teach you Sociology of science, History of science, Politics of science, Ethics of science, etc.

I would say there is a mix of all that in this course, maybe not so much politics of science. The beginning parts were mostly philosophy of science and scientific methodology.

 

19 minutes ago, SeaMonster said:

Paradigm busting is a political/sociological matter much more than a scientific one. Are you and your colleagues ruthless and Machiavellian enough to pursue that? I don't know if it's what you had in mind going for your graduate degree.

Again, very Kuhnian of you. Remember, we also had some heavy hitters after Kuhn, e.g. Lakatos, who had a more mixed view on that (Popper was mostly a "good science = progress" guy; Kuhn was again more sociological; Lakatos was in-between). I've had a soft spot for Feyerabend and his anarchism since I first read about him years ago, but we didn't get to read much about him now (he is a bit fringe I guess).

 

26 minutes ago, SeaMonster said:

Pretty much anything where you're not professionally obligated to lie in some manner (whether it's actively or by silence or omission or pretending to believe in something you know is not true.)

I'll think about that.

[Carl-Richard]

I'm reading probably the most comprehensive paper on the topic right now, and it presents some alarming statistics regarding the lack of replicability in fields like medicine:

Quote

Bayer HealthCare reported that of 67 attempts to reproduce published findings in fields of oncology, women’s health, and cardiovascular disease, about 25% of the replications clearly reproduced the published evidence (Prinz, Schlange, & Asadullah, 2011). This low rate was not attributable to publishing journal prestige, closeness of the replication attempt, or the subdiscipline of investigation. Likewise, Begley and Ellis (2012) reported an effort by Amgen to replicate 53 landmark studies of basic research for cancer treatment. Just 6 (11%) of the replications confirmed the original, published result. They noted, “Some non-reproducible preclinical papers had spawned an entire field, with hundreds of secondary publications that expanded on elements of the original observation, but did not actually seek to confirm or falsify its fundamental basis” (p. 532). Finally, an informal assumption among venture capital firms for biomedical research is that more than 50% of published studies from academic laboratories cannot be replicated in industrial laboratories (Osherovich, 2011). In these latter cases, the industrial laboratories pursued replications of academic research because there are considerable incentives for doing so. Investing hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new treatment that is ineffective is a waste of resources and an enormous burden to patients in experimental trials. By contrast, for academic researchers, there are few consequences for being wrong. If replications get done and the original result is irreproducible, nothing happens.

Scientific Utopia: II. Restructuring Incentives and Practices to Promote Truth Over Publishability - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691612459058

[Leo Gura]

19 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

By contrast, for academic researchers, there are few consequences for being wrong. If replications get done and the original result is irreproducible, nothing happens.

I have a solution to this problem:

If an academic publishes a study that cannot be replicated, we lock him in a cage with a crocodile.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Leo Gura