Comment by SoftwareMaven
13 years ago
No, we aren't using the word empirically differently. I'm just saying that the interesting conversations revolve around where to look, not whether to look or not.
"Empirically" there is something interesting on that island. I'd love to hear ideas of what it could be, along with ways to test those ideas. The former without the latter is how snake-oil gets sold, but shutting down all conversation because snake-oil could be sold doesn't move us forward.
Really, it's intellectual pedanticism at it's finest.
It's amusing that people are so worried about being correct (and others being correct) on the Internet. Insisting on only talking about empirically measurable things is not a fail-safe way to raise the S/N ratio of a site; it just dulls the topics to those we already know well.
Meanwhile, it potentially rules out threads on things that we're still trying to discover the inner workings of: nutrition, aging, sleep, and many others. Those topics are extremely interesting because they can veer into uncharted intellectual territory. And we may only have anecdotes to go on. Quelle horreur!
We use empirical evidence to talk about things we don't fully understand all the time. That's what theoretical physics is, in fact.
> I'm just saying that the interesting conversations revolve around where to look, not whether to look or not.
And we find out where to look based on empirical evidence most of the time.
> shutting down all conversation because snake-oil could be sold
This has nothing to do with empirical evidence.
And we find out where to look based on empirical evidence most of the time
-- This is most often not true.
Conscious thought is terribly inefficient. Most 'looking' is instinctive, or intuitive. That's not to say it has not been educated or modified by empirical data at some stage. But this illusion of such hyper-rationality is worth avoiding.
What is interesting (sometimes) is to hear other people's intuition and prioritization as the evaluate what to look for. This is typically what seperates out class in real world performance. This can be considered "framing" done loosely. when, why and where people create a box (in which to think, in the manner you are suggesting above).
To the parent's point, it's often times boring to disregard an interesting framing (out of hand) because of a technical flaw. Similarly, there is endless boredom to be had reading articles with reasoned logic in flawed or boring frames (ie, those which exclude or impugn the interesting bits).
We see this alot in the media, now, because its part of the PR spin game. The formula is to put bounds around the problem that suit your desired result. Journalists also often due this due to ignorance of a technical subject matter. We also see this as part of the fairness doctrine -- every story needs 'two sides' so a (often false) dichotomey is cookie cutter textbook inserted into every 'analysis'. ect.