Eccentric Flower talk:201103/The Ashtray

DanLyke:

Seems to me that the function of a theory is to be practically applicable. The problem with theory in the "soft sciences" is that there is rarely a way to actually apply them. Or if there is, then when double-blind experiments are proposed to test the theories there's all sorts of screaming and hollering (I'm thinking in particular of a recent test in rural New York over a social services program that was supposed to help people navigate other benefits programs. By the whining in my twitter feed you'd have thought they were beating "the poor" to death with live puppies and kittens.).

At some point, if the theories don't have practical application then they're just ways for university professors to remain employed, and to justify their departments by providing rationale for employment of their students by government agencies.

-- 17:08, 8 March 2011 (GMT)

Peebles:

"No one in chemistry argues about what the outcome of a chemical reaction is going to be, except waaaaaay up at the levels where it is impossible or impractical to actually run the reaction to see what happens. I mean, you're not going to find any chemistry papers suggesting that there is a different way to interpret the outcome of a simple acid-base cancellation, because there is no room for argument."

I feel like we've talked about this.

So, no. This isn't how science is done. A good scientist knows that anything we think we know or think we have proven is just a model. The goal is to experiment around the edges of the model so that you can carve away what is untrue until your model asymptotically approaches truth, but in the end, we don't have truth, we have a model.

This is essentially the same approach taken by your so-called "soft" sciences. The physical sciences just have the benefit of (1) being older, and (2) being able to make objective measurements a little more easily.

Some time I should tell you about this neat new little field of chemistry that happens when you put an acid and a base together in the same pot and make it so that they don't react.

-- 17:10, 8 March 2011 (GMT)

Medley:

1. "No one in chemistry argues..."

I think that misapprehends where the real challenges and controversies are in the hard sciences. There are basic assumptions that most wouldn't argue about in the soft sciences, as well. And engineers and physical scientists have to make plenty of 'educated guesses' too. See: climate change. Also, see: Peebles, above.

2. There is infighting everywhere. Pettiness and squabbling abound. Personalities are one reason. Limited resources another. We're all just human. And it's hardly limited to academia, or else we wouldn't have, say, Dilbert and The Office.

2a. However, I do admit to similar disappointments when it comes to scholars and scientists. Deep inside still flickers a faint flame of idealism about how scientists should be better than that. But that's not fair. They're only human, too.

3. re Dan "function of a theory is to be practically applicable". Maybe. But there may be 10 levels of abstraction and indirection to get from theory to practice. And it may take 2 generations. And often we just don't know in advance which theoretical efforts will ultimately result in practical results. So applicability is really a poor metric to use at the outset, or (my view) almost any time, actually. Example: elliptic curves.

3a. re "results-driven" and applicability. Too much emphasis on return on investment can result in timid and incremental efforts, insufficient willingness to tackle risky topics (both politically risky as well as just 'hard problem' risky). There has to be room for exploration without knowing in advance where the path will lead, or if it will lead anywhere at all.

4. "steeped in it." It's hardly only academics who can become mired in a particular web of assumptions about what's important. Wall Street bankers and mortgage companies and their friends ended up in an insular mess that did far, far more harm to society than any results of academic myopia.

-- 17:52, 8 March 2011 (GMT)

Columbina:

Real quicklike because I have three minutes tops:

Peebles: I agree with you about how science is done, but I think we will always disagree about how much hard core of indisputable truth there is. I think there is more than you do, and no amount of trickery to prevent acid-base reactions is going to defeat that: All that does is add a new truth that sometimes you can do something to prevent an acid-base reaction from happening. Whereas, conversely, we will never know any truths about Cromwell. There is simply no way to get them.

Medley: The comment about idealism is well put; that's my basic problem, I expect scientists (whom, despite my grousing, are a class of people I hold in extremely high regard - which is how Peebles and I can disagree all the time on this and still speak to one another) to be Better Than That, and it disappoints me/pisses me off every time they're not.

-- 18:00, 8 March 2011 (GMT)

Columbina:

I think there is also a bias I have against people who devote the bulk of their attention to arguing semantic points or points of interpretation, rather than actually working toward a concrete implementation of some sort. I don't hold to this absolutely, obviously, or I wouldn't love history as much as I do, but there will always be a part of my brain that says history has less intrinsic value to society than, say, inventing a new drug or a new building material. (Given my incessant championing of history, I know this will startle some of you.)

In short, I find that my basic instinct is to declare that this quote from Seneca is exactly wrong - especially since at the end it cheers for philosophy, which is one of the only disciplines of knowledge for which I have no good words for whatsoever.*

* I can't tell you how outraged I was to find out, back in my brief college days, that LSU put its symbolic logic courses in the Philosophy department. Nooooo! Logic is mathematics - it is concrete and useful. Philosophy is a bunch of people woolgathering obvious things about the universe because they don't want to get real jobs.

-- 19:11, 8 March 2011 (GMT)

Peebles:

Ha! Scientists are what happens when poorly socialized little nerdlings grow up. Not only are we not Better Than That, we are generally a good sight Worse Than That.

There's a joke to be made here about students at the Institvte, but I believe I'm outnumbered here, and the joke is obvious, so it's left as an exercise for the reader.

-- 23:22, 8 March 2011 (GMT)

Danima:

The second article in this series (of five) is up -- just click on the author's name to get the list -- and it turns out that Kripke's theories are quite relevant to the conversation we're having now.

Also, @Medley: I agree, I find that I have to make educated guesses about Peebles quite frequently.

-- 23:58, 8 March 2011 (GMT)

Peebles:

It's a gift.

-- 18:13, 9 March 2011 (GMT)

Joy:

Thank you, Peebles, for pointing out that what we are working on is a model. We're actually working on an initiative to talk about modelling (especially computational modelling) at all levels of the curriculum here, and I talk about experiments and theories and hypotheses and hunches all being models, but I particularly like your wording and would love to borrow it.

Col, I'm glad you are alive. I was about to poke you.

-- 18:21, 9 March 2011 (GMT)