What is "anti-science"?

[TheLurch]

That and an all too frequent dose of megalomania coupled with dunning-kruger.

Having talked to a lot of people who reject various aspects of science, you have no idea how accurate that statement is. I'm currently corresponding with an engineer who's claiming the IPCC graphs show that climate models are garbage, but hasn't even taken the time to understand how the graphs were generated or what they show. It's... striking.

[Joel]

People are building other LIGO detectors - one (VIRGO) will come on line later this year, another in Japan around 2020, and there's talk of a LIGO-India. These will increase our sensitivity and provide better locational information on the events. We'll see more things, and be better able to point telescopes at anything we detect. Obviously, that's not anti-science.

Anti-science would be refusing to accept that gravitational waves had been observed until you had built your own detector. Which is a direct analogy to what the flat earth crowd is doing.

I'm not sold on the key part I bolded. It may just come down to a difference in definition of empirical science? I tend to define it as questioning and testing/observing. And that as long as one doesn't reject questioning and observing, then one isn't anti empirical science. I think you are saying that examining and trusting the LIGO data is part of the required observing (please correct me if I've misunderstood you yet again).

But as oxmixmudd suggested above regarding the person who would build his own LIGO,

...that person would need...the help of numerous experts which that person would need to trust implicitly to make the right decisions about how to build such a device. That trust and expertise would be itself built on trust in volumes of previously exercised scientific experiments, the sum of which would be impossible to validate in a similar exercise by any single human being. And then that project would need to be validated by other experts before anyone would trust its results.

It is impossible to build a complete, personal first hand knowledge of what we now call modern science. Trust in the work that has gone before is required, and without it modern civilization would effectively fall.

Trusting the LIGO data involves implicit trust of numerous people. Which I would think goes beyond the bounds of mere empirical physical science. That such trust of other people is required in practice in modern science seems to me to rather indicate the limitations of bare empiricism, and to indicate that in practice one needs a broader epistemology than just empirical science. And thus a person could reject the broader epistemology, without being anti science, because what the person is rejecting is something other than empirical science itself. Though doing so may still be irrational, because the whole of reason is broader than empiricism.

So I'm not at all saying that there is not strong rational reason to trust the experts who built LIGO (even such that it is irrational to not trust them). The rejecting of that "broader epistemology" may very well be irrational, but that doesn't mean it's anti-science. For example, a person could have an irrational fear that the rest of mankind is joined in a conspiracy to deceive him, and be in favor of questioning and testing and thus be pro empirical science. Likewise another example could be, as oxmixmudd suggested, a "dose of megalomania coupled with dunning-kruger."


I have another question, which might help the discussion. What would you think of a person who just doesn't have the time right now to examine the LIGO data (or to first develop the expertise required to interpret the data, etc), and thus suspends judgement? Is it anti-science to refrain from making a judgement prior to examining the data? Now, I can see that there would be a line there: If someone willfully refrains from examining the data because they are afraid that what they find there will contradict their cherished beliefs, but claims to rationally suspend judgement because they haven't yet examined the data, then that would be anti-science and willful ignorance. But I could also imagine someone being on the other side of that line: someone who would love to see and understand the data and use that to correct/improve their understanding of the world, and wishes that they had time to do so, but other higher-priority things prevent it for now, but suspends judgement in the meantime. The latter person would seem to not be anti-science.

[Joel]

Since you're so set on defending ingenuousness

I didn't see Chrawnus anywhere defend ingenuousness.

And asking for clarification for answers that you don't understand fully is not the same as "repeat[ing] questions as if they had not already been answered".

It is when you haven't bothered to read the cited reference which can provide the requested clarification.

Are you referring to the Wedge Document? I've read it. Not only does it not contain an admission of lying, it provides no explanation for why they would want to propagate their ideas at all if they believe them to be false. It is far more plausible that they think that their ideas are true.

[TheLurch]

I'm not sold on the key part I bolded.

Generalize it beyond LIGO, and it involves refusing to accept any result you hadn't generated personally. Which means refusing to accept nearly every result obtained through the scientific process, since the number of experiments any one individual could do personally is pretty small. Let's say you decide to verify physics experiments; you're going to end up rejecting the entirety of astronomy, biology, geology, chemistry, and more. And within physics, you'll probably not be able to get beyond classical mechanics and maybe a bit of quantum. So kiss relativity goodbye, along with the Standard Model, statistical mechanics, materials science...

So, you end up rejecting nearly all of science, along with the process that produced it. Which, to me, is anti-science.

Or, extend the logic just a bit further: what if you decided that you'd only accept the results of experiments you had done yourself, but then chose to do no experiments. From that perspective, there hasn't ever been a single valid scientific result . That is the logical endpoint of your stance.

How can you possibly argue that rejecting every scientific result ever produced isn't anti-science?

Trusting the LIGO data involves implicit trust of numerous people. Which I would think goes beyond the bounds of mere empirical physical science.

No, it really doesn't. As we've noted repeatedly above, the LIGO team has described in exacting detail, through dozens of papers, the theoretical underpinnings of their work, the process they're using to identify signals, the hardware they've built to embody that process, the software that monitors its output, etc. And it's not trusting any one person. The LIGO team has hundreds of physicists and engineers on it. Each of the dozens of papers they've published has been peer reviewed, and are based on and/or extended by independent researchers in hundreds of other papers. And the funding setup has meant that the whole thing has been evaluated multiple times under different National Science Foundation administrations. And independent teams in India and Japan have examined the concepts and chosen to build very similar hardware.

I'm not trusting "numerous people". I'm trusting the entire process of science (not to mention my own ability to evaluate the LIGO design). If LIGO screwed up, then there's very little in physics that can be trusted. And i trust that because it's been shown repeatedly that it works.




The rest of this is less important - if you respond to anything, please respond to the above. I'm including the below simply for completeness.

So I'm not at all saying that there is not strong rational reason to trust the experts who built LIGO (even such that it is irrational to not trust them). The rejecting of that "broader epistemology" may very well be irrational, but that doesn't mean it's anti-science. For example, a person could have an irrational fear that the rest of mankind is joined in a conspiracy to deceive him, and be in favor of questioning and testing and thus be pro empirical science. Likewise another example could be, as oxmixmudd suggested, a "dose of megalomania coupled with dunning-kruger."

And i'd say that the pathology that produces the problem is less important than the end result. If you look at enough people, you can find all sorts of reasons for rejecting the scientific process; none of those reasons mean they reject it any less.

That such trust of other people is required in practice in modern science seems to me to rather indicate the limitations of bare empiricism, and to indicate that in practice one needs a broader epistemology than just empirical science.

You keep speaking as if empirical science doesn't already involve a broader epistemology than simply doing experiments personally. The history and philosophy of science would both tell you that you're mistaken here.

What would you think of a person who just doesn't have the time right now to examine the LIGO data (or to first develop the expertise required to interpret the data, etc), and thus suspends judgement? Is it anti-science to refrain from making a judgement prior to examining the data? Now, I can see that there would be a line there: If someone willfully refrains from examining the data because they are afraid that what they find there will contradict their cherished beliefs, but claims to rationally suspend judgement because they haven't yet examined the data, then that would be anti-science and willful ignorance. But I could also imagine someone being on the other side of that line: someone who would love to see and understand the data and use that to correct/improve their understanding of the world, and wishes that they had time to do so, but other higher-priority things prevent it for now, but suspends judgement in the meantime. The latter person would seem to not be anti-science.

I don't find this an interesting question. If you have to split so many hairs and define so many unlikely hypotheticals just to get to a situation that you think might be illustrative, then it should tell you something more than any answer to your question could.

[HMS_Beagle]

I didn't see Chrawnus anywhere defend ingenuousness.

He was actually trying to defend your disingenuous behavior, which is pretty indefensible.

[JonathanL]

That's simply not true. Beagle explained why he felt Joel was being disingenuous in posts #125, #138, #141, #148, #150

So, in post #138 we have Beagle putting words in Joel's mouth ("you certainly implied otherwise with your weasel wording [where the heck does he get any 'weasel wording' out of Joel's posts?]"). The rest of the posts you referenced are either baseless accusations by Beagle where he fails to showcase intent (that's the important part here, intent) or simply a case of differing opinions on a matter.

and maybe others I've missed.Since you're so set on defending ingenuousness, you might try explaining why you linked to Beagle's short final dismissal of Joel ("Strike three, you're out.") and not to any of the earlier posts where Beagle did explain why he considered Joel was being dishonest.

I'll stop defending Joel's ingeniousness when you guys are able to demonstrate that his intent with his posts in this thread is dishonest. That, or until I'm too tired of seeing you guys repeat your accusations without bothering to back them up.

It is when you haven't bothered to read the cited reference which can provide the requested clarification.

And such a behaviour is necessarily disingenious?


Are you sure you guys haven't simply been burned because of having to deal with Jorge and people like him too much?

[JonathanL]

He was actually trying to defend your disingenuous behavior, which is pretty indefensible.

I agree, hard to defend something that isn't there.

[HMS_Beagle]

I agree, hard to defend something that isn't there.

If you want to pretend Joel's behavior wasn't duplicitous, go right ahead. The rest of reserve the right to have a different opinion based on our experiences.

[Zymologist]

If you want to pretend Joel's behavior wasn't duplicitous, go right ahead. The rest of reserve the right to have a different opinion based on our experiences.

I've read quite a few of Joel's past interactions, and interacted with him myself via PM on a few occasions. I would never describe any of them as duplicitous--no "pretending" on my part.

[JonathanL]

If you want to pretend Joel's behavior wasn't duplicitous, go right ahead. The rest of reserve the right to have a different opinion based on our experiences.

I'm not pretending in the slightest.

[HMS_Beagle]

I've read quite a few of Joel's past interactions, and interacted with him myself via PM on a few occasions. I would never describe any of them as duplicitous--no "pretending" on my part.

That's nice. It also has nothing to do with how he acted in this thread.

[Zymologist]

That's nice. It also has nothing to do with how he acted in this thread.

I've read how he acted in this thread. I disagree with your interpretation of it.

[HMS_Beagle]

I'm not pretending in the slightest.

Hallucinating then. Or possibly just trolling. Either way you opinion only matters to you, not to the people concerned.

[HMS_Beagle]

I've read how he acted in this thread. I disagree with your interpretation of it.

So? It's not just my interpretation BTW.

[Zymologist]

So?

I just thought I'd throw my opinion in here, since you (I think it was you) mentioned a couple times that others had noticed something similar.