

Thinking Scientifically - tokenadult
http://sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/thinking-scientifically/

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wslh
I'll put this near "scientific extremism", a lot of science discoveries have
as a trigger chance and intuition, even if we don't have a precise idea of how
they works scientifically, probably trial and error is a good way to express
it, but the trial sources can be non scientific while the validation is
scientific.

Food for thought and brain crawling:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_anarchism>

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aplusbi
I think you are taking the article out of context. At best intuition leads to
a hypothesis. By itself it is definitely not a source of scientific knowledge.
The author even explicitly states this:

>Under a scientific framework, input from _intuition_ , tradition, experience,
common sense, experts, and logic might be incorporated during the construction
of a preliminary hypothesis

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wslh
I would say that it's difficult to assert this in a scientific way. Or better:
magic thinking, religion and other sources can be input as well and produce
scientific outcomes.

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aplusbi
The difference is between:

    
    
        My intuition is telling me this is true.
    

and

    
    
        My intuition is telling me this is true.  Let me test it.

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wslh
What I wrote is that we can say the same thing with every source of
information, even purely unscientific things like magic thinking, rituals,
etc. That's the paradoxical thing about science. And also, there are a lot of
things that you can't test and can't probe but they are true.

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mattgreenrocks
How's this for some ideological heresy?

> Humans are poor data gathering machines. We have numerous biases, cognitive
> flaws, and psychological errors that prevent our unguided minds from
> grasping reality in any accurate way.

What if we're not supposed to always be "data gathering?" What if I just want
to do human things?

Sometimes (in my more depressive moods), I wonder about the ultimate utility
of "grasping reality in the most accurate way possible." At those times, I
feel more able to see things, and yet, am less happy. Studies confirm that
happier people have a larger 'shield' against reality, maintaining cognitive
biases that aren't necessarily true but abstract over the difficult realities.
I'll be the first to say that a dark cloud is over my perceptions then, so
they cannot always be trusted. But there's something to the notion that the
more you know, the less happy you become. And it isn't that we should be happy
all the time, but there's a balance that must be struck. I see people
insisting on living this 100% logical life...as if they needed to make it
perfectly defensible on Internet discussion boards, or something.

(I'm interested in talking about it from a purely worldview perspective, _not_
from the viewpoint of 'human progress.')

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skylan_q
The author makes the mistake of equivocating rationalizing with rationalism.

"For example, suppose that (1) watching a scary movie usually makes a person
fearful or anxious, and that (2) being fearful or anxious usually causes the
person’s heart rate to increase. Applying logic we would conclude, therefore,
that watching a scary movie raises a person’s heart rate."

This is why we say things like "sufficient but not necessary" or other nice
things like this.

The author is ambiguous in this example and logic requires rigor, not
equivocation.

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aangjie
I have seen Rationalism mistaken for sound proof used in lot of
arguments.Comfortably, ignoring that the validity of the conclusion is
dependant on the validity of the premises. To be honest, logical reasoning is
very useful in designing experiments, and multiple chains of logical reasoning
is not my strongest point, but the refusal to define the conclusions
beforehand is what makes me suspicious, when someone uses long chains of
reasoning to convince me.

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rytis
ok let me apply some "science" to this. where did 70% come from? it's a very
convenient number as it gives just below 50% outcome, to "prove" that "more
often than not" our assumptions are wrong.

let's bump this "guestimate" by 1%. and, whoa, now we "more often than not"
are right.

don't get me wrong. science is good and all that. but our gut feeling got us
through some really rough ride, so let's not write it off just yet...

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vacri
The author doesn't write it off: "Gut-feelings and common sense are not
enough; they may get us somewhere, but not always to the truth."

