Consider a random area of intellectual inquiry, and a random intellectual who enters this area. When this person first arrives, a few different points of view seemed worthy of consideration in this area. This person then becomes expert enough to favor one of these views. Then over the following years and decades the intellectual world comes to more strongly favor one of these views, relative to the others. My key question is: in what situations do such earlier arrivals, on average, tend to approve of this newly favored position?
People strongly favor models with as many moving pieces as average free working memory size (ie 4). Untangling double counted evidence in a high factor model with various correlation between factors was prohibitive until computers.
Good post. Another reason to focus on strong evidence is that it probably correlates with *strong effects* in many cases. For instance, it is normally easier to find strong evidence that one intervention is more effective than another if the difference in terms of effects is large. But it also matters more then.
Was the em book based on weak clues? If so, does your reappraisal of weak clues speak to some misdirection? What evidence led you to reject an emphasis on weak clues? (Were those clues weak or strong?) There's so much that might be addressed!
Weighing the first, abstract part of this post, I concluded that if early arrivals don't approve of later trends, then either the trends aren't caused by the evidence, or the early arrivals' approval isn't.
I'll take for what it's worth your inside view that the intellectual world doesn't respond to weak or complex evidence. But the first half of this post is an attempt to set up an outside view, and you seem to elide the fact that on that outside view it could just as easily be you who is wrong.
It's interesting that the question is framed in terms of convincing fellow intellectuals of an argument through evidence. Those people will have had, if not training in formal logic, training in evaluating information and understanding the strength of an argument. The majority of the population has not had an education that prepares them in this way, and so arguments that are popular and appeal to what makes people "feel good" tend to win out (examples: Brexit, Trump).In the context of a community of intellectuals, the net movement of opinion is towards the newest facts and findings. But what would this look like in the general population? We know that changes in the outlook of a society do happen (e.g. 1960s & 70s sexual revolution), but is the rate of change slower? I don't know if there's existing research on this (I'm an engineer by trade), and I would love to learn more.
As a result, I have prioritized my search for strong and clear evidence on interesting questions.
Robin, you've recently complained about publication delay. Why not cite to it (as in publication) to provide examples? I wonder what "strong and clear evidence" you have in mind.
[On the subject of what near-mode evidence produces far-mode belief change: see "Cognitive Dissonance: The Glue of the Mind" ( http://juridicalcoherence.b... ) It is the beginning of a series that seeks to synthesize cognitive dissonance theory, construal level theory, and reactance theory.]
Surely capitalism plays a big role. A wise man once said:
"There cannot be science without an effective social mechanism for the elimination of failure, based on extra-rational criteria, inaccessible to cultural capture."
Yes of course most strong and clear evidence arose out of more weak and complex evidence. But we can make a great many useful distinctions among the latter in terms of its chances of leading to the former.
How much of the path to strong and clear evidence winds through weak and complex evidence? Or is it more important to focus on incomplete and insufficient evidence? Isn't weak and complex evidence just the deficiency of the pursuit of incomplete and insufficient evidence to lead anywhere? Foxes and hedgehogs.
People strongly favor models with as many moving pieces as average free working memory size (ie 4). Untangling double counted evidence in a high factor model with various correlation between factors was prohibitive until computers.
Good post. Another reason to focus on strong evidence is that it probably correlates with *strong effects* in many cases. For instance, it is normally easier to find strong evidence that one intervention is more effective than another if the difference in terms of effects is large. But it also matters more then.
Was the em book based on weak clues? If so, does your reappraisal of weak clues speak to some misdirection? What evidence led you to reject an emphasis on weak clues? (Were those clues weak or strong?) There's so much that might be addressed!
About four years ago, I argued against a weak-clue orientation. http://disq.us/p/f9s2om
Weighing the first, abstract part of this post, I concluded that if early arrivals don't approve of later trends, then either the trends aren't caused by the evidence, or the early arrivals' approval isn't.
I'll take for what it's worth your inside view that the intellectual world doesn't respond to weak or complex evidence. But the first half of this post is an attempt to set up an outside view, and you seem to elide the fact that on that outside view it could just as easily be you who is wrong.
It's interesting that the question is framed in terms of convincing fellow intellectuals of an argument through evidence. Those people will have had, if not training in formal logic, training in evaluating information and understanding the strength of an argument. The majority of the population has not had an education that prepares them in this way, and so arguments that are popular and appeal to what makes people "feel good" tend to win out (examples: Brexit, Trump).In the context of a community of intellectuals, the net movement of opinion is towards the newest facts and findings. But what would this look like in the general population? We know that changes in the outlook of a society do happen (e.g. 1960s & 70s sexual revolution), but is the rate of change slower? I don't know if there's existing research on this (I'm an engineer by trade), and I would love to learn more.
Could you give a few examples? It's bit too abstract right now...
As a result, I have prioritized my search for strong and clear evidence on interesting questions.
Robin, you've recently complained about publication delay. Why not cite to it (as in publication) to provide examples? I wonder what "strong and clear evidence" you have in mind.
[On the subject of what near-mode evidence produces far-mode belief change: see "Cognitive Dissonance: The Glue of the Mind" ( http://juridicalcoherence.b... ) It is the beginning of a series that seeks to synthesize cognitive dissonance theory, construal level theory, and reactance theory.]
Or maybe chipping away at hard problems anti-correlates with searching for strong and clear evidence.
Surely capitalism plays a big role. A wise man once said:
"There cannot be science without an effective social mechanism for the elimination of failure, based on extra-rational criteria, inaccessible to cultural capture."
Yes of course most strong and clear evidence arose out of more weak and complex evidence. But we can make a great many useful distinctions among the latter in terms of its chances of leading to the former.
How much of the path to strong and clear evidence winds through weak and complex evidence? Or is it more important to focus on incomplete and insufficient evidence? Isn't weak and complex evidence just the deficiency of the pursuit of incomplete and insufficient evidence to lead anywhere? Foxes and hedgehogs.