Let’s take your ideas on a flight test
Martin,
I saw a much different side of you in your last message. I think we are starting to get to know each other.
I agree with your analysis of “Science”, but only as a generalization. I also agree that every “scientist” is human and bases their presentations on assumptions (mostly unknown to them) and personal positions. ( That’s what Part 4 of my Medium series talks about. Rather than read my website, it would be better to look at the Medium posts because they are more condensed.) But to a “critical thinker”, these behaviors are taken into account as a given, in the process of collecting information from a wide range of sources. What is important is the ability to find scientists willing to listen and act on challenges to their work. Such people are hard to find. The saving grace for science, however, is the openness of its literature. So, over time, the swing of social ideas can go back and capture the full range of scientific opinions.
Your points about the “new atheist” movement are well based, and a history I share with you. I was active in the humanist movement when Paul Kurtz started the Secular Humanists, CSICOP, and Skeptical Inquiry magazine. I eventually dropped out of all of those organizations because they became dominated by narrow minded extremists. That was the motivation that pushed me to study the breakdown of communication in society (which is summarized in Part 4 and Part 5 of my series). So I appreciate all you are saying. Again, this is where being a “true” critical thinker is a good goal that we both should try to achieve — paying full attention to your warning that it is easy to unknowingly “defend.. assumptions and personally held positions every time [we] publicly speak.” I know Randi had a lot of bias and ego in his tests. But I also believe that if an interaction with a supernatural “realm” was possible, it wouldn’t be so feeble that it couldn’t easily pass Randi’s tests. So, my respect for his effort was just that it created such a wide ranging opportunity for people to come forward. I actually screened a number of people who contacted me for help to make a presentation to Randi. None of them were even close to credible.
You posed the question, “Does that mean that all of the supernatural claims are real?” and answered, “Of course not. It is indeed unlikely that any of them are, given available evidence…” Notice how the “extreme” word “ALL” slipped into your statement. I don’t think it was intentional. Which brings me back to seeing an “emotional” element, which I thought I saw in your statement, “it is the character and conduct of these self-proclaimed champions of science and reason that is quite often appaling.” While I agree with you about that, over time, I’ve learned how to detect and control many of the cases where I’m not staying detached from the hypocrisy. (Again, Part 4 and 5 provide explanations.)
The question I would present to you about Randi would be more along the lines, ‘did you see any cases that might have been true that we should look into?’ I did look up the “sTARBABY” incident. I knew Kurtz pretty well. Though he presented many great insights, unfortunately, I believe he was capable of this. The sad part, from my view is that, if there was some correlation going on, the world lost the opportunity to find it due to the scandal. The amplification of the polarization by extreme media titles just makes things worse.
Your experience with “emotional” astronomers is a puzzle that I did finally resolve. The explanation is in Part 4. In short, society’s action to make universities businesses, rather than centers of wisdom, caused this problem. To maximize revenue, the credentials called “scientist” had to be broadened. Since “business” is based on a Darwinian “bacterial” model, the selection of scientists favors winning through competition. Ethics and the pursuit of knowledge for its own value is just window dressing for the public.
I’m familiar with both analog and digital control system analysis, including the use of Bayesian methods. If you want to go deeper into any of your ideas, I’ll be able to follow you. Here’s my reaction to your “logical process” approach.
Fuzzy logic is a diversion the way quantum mechanics has become. The only reason that fuzzy logic came up is that the founder (Lotfi Zadeh) was misled into thinking that 1, 0, yes, no was a requirement of logic. It’s like setting up particle motion as a wave. True / false logic is an arbitrary construct that makes math simple in some cases. Most systems I’ve designed don’t use it. True / false, for example, has limited meaning in audio systems except when the constraint of digital computers is added.
You propose, “a feedback loop between a “discovery” and the actual state of the subject of study”. While I said that quantum exclusion is an artifact of wave models, it doesn’t mean that experimental design can’t also introduce it. For example, measuring the motion of a particle using light, does affect the particle. The same interference occurs when scientists go into a tribe to observe the tribe. On the other hand, if animals are studied using infrared cameras that the animals are not aware of, then the animals’ behaviors are not influenced. My point is, for your first “feedback” proposition to apply, it must be an actual element of the observation. It may not apply in all cases — for example, retrospective studies. The influence of the observations can also vary from significant to nil.
I saw this misunderstood repeatedly. I was involved doing diet studies on wolves. The problem was, the wolves were in cages out on the open tundra. Sure, they were still in Alaska. But their social and environmental situations were completely unlike their natural setting.
You propose, “operating with a complex set of possibilities instead of one singular thing with clearly defined properties”. There is nothing wrong with this either. Many studies use only a singular focus because the researchers don’t have the tools, knowledge or ability to deal with multiple variables.
I saw an amazing use of “complex set” ideas at Lawrence National Lab in California. For them, the “scientific method” was too slow. By “scientific method”, they meant the “tried and true” approach of holding all variables except one constant, and exploring the result of changing the single variable. The “Lawrence Lab” approach, which they were renowned for, to get quick results, was to “wiggle” all the variables small amounts around some “best guess” starting values. At the end of a test, all values were set to new “starting” values using the values observed, individually, to produce the “best” incremental results. Most of the time, the results were excellent and much faster than “tried and true”. A few times, we went down some strange blind alleys.
To really understand your approach in detail, you probably need to use a specific example. So, go for it!
