Comment by nickpsecurity
12 hours ago
I think what these papers prove is my newer theory that organized science isn't scientific at all. It's mostly unverified claims by people rewarded for throwing papers out that look scientific, have novelty, and achieve policy goals of specific groups. There's also little review with dissent banned in many places. We've been calling it scientism since it's like a self-reinforcing religion.
We need to throw all of this out by default. From public policy to courtrooms, we need to treat it like any other eyewitness claim. We shouldn't beleive anything unless it has strong arguments or data backing it. For science, we need the scientific method applied with skeptical review and/or replication. Our tools, like statistical methods and programs, must be vetted.
Like with logic, we shouldn't allow them to go beyond what's proven in this way. So, only the vetted claims are allowed as building blocks (premises) in newly-vetted work. The premises must be used how they were used before. If not, they are re-checked for the new circumstances. Then, the conclusions are stated with their preconditions and limitations to only he applied that way.
I imagine many non-scientists and taxpayers assumed what I described is how all these "scientific facts" and "consensus" vlaims were done. The opposite was true in most cases. So, we need to not onoy redo it but apply scientific method to the institutions themselves assessing their reliability. If they don't get reliable, they loose their funding and quickly.
(Note: There are groups in many fields doing real research and experimental science. We should highlight them as exemplars. Maybe let them take the lead in consulting for how to fix these problems.)
I have a Growing Concern with our legal systems.
> We need to throw all of this out by default. From public policy to courtrooms, we need to treat it like any other eyewitness claim.
If you can't trust eyewitness claims, if you can't trust video or photographic or audio evidence, then how does one Find Truth? Nobody really seems to have a solid answer to this.
It's specific segments of people saying we can't trust eyewitness claims. They actually work well enough that we run on them from childhood to adulthood. Accepting that truth is the first step.
Next, we need to understand why that is, which should be trusted, and which can't be. Also, what methods to use in what contexts. We need to develop education for people about how humanity actually works. We can improve steadily over time.
On my end, I've been collecting resources that might be helpful. That includes Christ-centered theology with real-world application, philosophies of knowledge with guides on each one, differences between real vs organized science, biological impact on these, dealing with media bias (eg AllSides), worldview analyses, critical thinking (logic), statistical analyses (esp error spotting), writing correct code, and so on.
One day, I might try to put it together into a series that equips people to navigate all of this stuff. For right now, I'm using it as a refresher to improve my own abilities ahead of entering the Data Science field.
> It's specific segments of people saying we can't trust eyewitness claims.
Scientists that have studied this over long periods of times and diverse population groups?
I've done this firsthand - remembered an event a particular way only to see video (in the old days, before easy video editing) and find out it... didn't quite happen as I remembered.
That's because human beings aren't video recorders. We're encoding emotions into sensor data, and get blinded by things like Weapon Focus and Selective Attention.
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