tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post907647203018780700..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: The decline of science / the science of declineskholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-29759274845302682012011-02-03T07:46:04.913-08:002011-02-03T07:46:04.913-08:00Skholiast,
Sorry for the delay. You asked:
wh...Skholiast, <br /><br />Sorry for the delay. You asked:<br /><br /><i> what, pray tell, can the meaning of "constant" be if the constant proves, well, inconstant?</i><br /><br />You're right of course, if a measured quantity thought to be constant was, in fact, not constant, then that would bring about some change to physical theory. This change could range from a paradigm shift (e.g. constant Newtonian space-time to relativistic space-time) to merely a slight modification to existing theory (e.g. neutrino oscillations, though this phenomenon may still prove to be more radical than currently thought). In either of these scenarios, however, the ensuing change does not mean that the previous theory is useless. For the previous theory to have been accepted in the first place, it must have accurately described nature within appropriate limits. For example, in astrophysics, in the vast majority of cases, Newtonian gravity is still used over general relativity. <br /><br />Regarding your last comment, in which you state that the laws of physics changing is analogous to <i>everything in the universe simultaneously doubling in size</i>, I disagree. Many physicists have specifically looked at the possibility of dimensionless constants changing, and I can assure you that the consequences can be detectable. See, for example, the latter part of Sean Carroll's recent <a href="http://bit.ly/gccDcP" rel="nofollow">post</a>.Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11008471664597164389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-29213956360087035902011-01-23T15:42:43.772-08:002011-01-23T15:42:43.772-08:00Yes Psi is shy yet if something exists it ought to...Yes Psi is shy yet if something exists it ought to be manifest, experiments ought to be able to discover it. The problem is however that we are attempting to establish a paradox and a violation of the principle of non-contradiction. It cannot be the case that we are at one and the same time and place at another time and place unless our conception of time and space is inadequate to the universe in which such anomalies are legal. May I offer the vertiginous suggestion that there is what the existentialist Sartre would call the nausea factor or a fear of falling into the viscous absurd. This affect must get stronger as testing progresses and one would expect a decline in the unacceptable. There may be, and here I speculate, a falling off greater than chance before the happy medium is reached.ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-76894218107593286132011-01-23T13:17:07.122-08:002011-01-23T13:17:07.122-08:00Grad Student,
Apologies if your comment took long...Grad Student,<br /><br />Apologies if your comment took longer to appear than you expected; for some unaccountable reason, it was classified as spam by Blogger. (Whereas, as Ombhurbhuva noted, the post itself is more likely to draw comparisons with baloney). <br /><br />My instinct, being that of a good 21st-century westerner, is that the decline effect is almost always a sociological one. I raised the hyperchaos possibility as an interesting intersection between contemporary metaphysical debates and recent scientific disputes, because, well, I think it's interesting to raise the question. But I also am willing to be a little blurry about the exact place we draw the distinction between sociological and 'natural' effects. It's not that this distinction has no pertinence, but the interesting thing about the decline effect is that it forces us to rethink just where the distinction lies. We were very confident it lay well on the other side of a lot of pharmaceutical studies, for instance (and that's not even considering questions about profits to be made). But if noise turned out to be so universal as to be impossible to screen out, this might mean a practical limit on scientific certitude itself. <br /><br />On the hypothesis that the decline effect is a sociological phenomenon pure and simple, it seems reasonable to respond the cure for limping science is better, more robust, more stern-with-itself science. But there is another possibility, which is that given phenomena of sufficient complexity, it will always be impossible to establish "laboratory conditions." In this case, "better science" will mean simply chastened science.<br /><br />A question: I grant that the change in a physical constant is not the overturning of the effect associated with the constant. But what, pray tell, can the meaning of "constant" be if the constant proves, well, inconstant?<br /><br />Lastly: strictly speaking, it seems to me that any story applying Meillassoux's hyperchaos to events within the universe must border on the non-scientific. The idea of the laws of nature changing, be it ever so sophisticated, seems still to approximate the scenario of everything in the universe simultaneously doubling in size. (Coming from me, this isn't meant as a damning objection, obviously).skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-38599079300716585672011-01-22T19:27:07.186-08:002011-01-22T19:27:07.186-08:00Skholiast,
I appreciate your insightful compariso...Skholiast,<br /><br />I appreciate your insightful comparison between Lehrer's article on the decline effect (which somehow I had missed) and Bem's recent work on psi, even if you don't draw the same conclusions I would from said comparison (namely, that Bem's psi effect will decline because it probably isn't there). Specifically, I'd like to push back against the hyperchaos-like thesis that the decline effect is real. I should also state at the outset that I'm a physicist, thus my gut instinct is, put bluntly, to cheer on team Science and boo the Other Side. Nevertheless, I try as much as possible to keep an open mind about these things.<br /><br />A problem with the thesis that the decline effect is real (a la Meillassoux's hyperchaos), is that the strength of the decline effect differs depending on the complexity of the object of study. That is, studies on complex things like mice and humans which purport to show the X effect are often later overturned, whereas experiments on simple stuff like protons and electrons which prove the Y effect are usually not. It is true that, as Lehrer briefly mentions, physics experiments occur where the strength of gravity is anomalously different in Nevada or the value of the weak coupling ratio changes unexpectedly in time. However, this is the mere change in the numerical value of a constant over time (or space), not the overturning the "gravity effect" or the "neutron decaying effect."<br /><br />Simply put, one can envision two competing explanations for the decline effect's existence: (1) it is an inherent aspect of nature, or (2) it is an inherently sociological phenomenon among scientists. The advantage of (2) is that it naturally explains why the findings of social and medical science display more of a decline effect than the findings of physics. Mice are clearly more complex than particles, since the phenomena associated with the former are often "by-products of variables we don't understand" (Lehrer) and therefore it's that much more difficult to, as you put it, "construct an artificial circumstance in which the only variable is the mechanism of your hypothesis." Thus, on the one hand the inherent variability of mice and humans make such fields of study ripe for the operation of the sociological forces that give rise to the decline effect. On the other hand, the limited range of "behaviors" that electrons can exhibit constrains said sociological forces such that the decline effect is limited to, for example, the change in the value of the electron's charge, instead of the existence of the Coulomb force.<br /><br />Finally, buttressing (2) are the many different sociological effects Lehrer names in his New Yorker piece: The desire to avoid reporting null results (this literally happened to me yesterday), confirmation bias, an illogical reliance of Fisher's significance test (see, e.g., <a href="http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/57091/title/Odds_Are,_Its_Wrong" rel="nofollow">this</a> <em>Science</em> article), the worsening of scholarship in fashionable subjects, and the different results researchers in the East and the West get from studies on acupuncture.Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11008471664597164389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-51511590029782878892011-01-21T10:03:12.212-08:002011-01-21T10:03:12.212-08:00Gary, you make a very apt observation. And in fact...Gary, you make a very apt observation. And in fact, if we could see it in politics (& surely we can, in e.g. the way political "common sense" gets established), that would be all four of Badiou's occasions of the event. I think you are on to something.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-21348272489088103112011-01-21T10:00:34.593-08:002011-01-21T10:00:34.593-08:00ombhurbhuva~~
Yes, this post is of course rank wi...ombhurbhuva~~ <br />Yes, this post is of course rank with the smell of the deli.<br /><br />My attitude is the sort of thing that sets people at CSI loading their revolvers. People doing psychic research often are heard complaining that the skeptical attitude itself is somehow inimical to certain phenomena manifesting. This is of course seen as an invitation to every table-bumping fraudster to invade the lab. But there is something to it. Scientific skepticism is a very particular mode of inquiry, a sieving consciousness that selects objects of belief of a very particular kind. And the question I have is, is this the best way to be (or at the very least, to be all the time)? One can ask this without selling one's soul to sleight-of-hand con-artists.<br /><br />Thanks for reminding me of Flew's Psychical Research book.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-20146735532323515122011-01-21T09:44:41.315-08:002011-01-21T09:44:41.315-08:00Joseph, welcome to the comments.
I am pleased yo...Joseph, welcome to the comments. <br /><br />I am pleased you picked up on my mention of Meillassoux, which I sort of buried in there, because this is of course the metaphysical heart of the question. All the psi-stuff, and the case-of-the-leaking-statistics, is interesting, but the real issue is, what is reality?<br /><br />Now you are quite right to note that M's considerations have to do, as you put it, with the universe as a whole -- though I think this formulation is problematic, as M's invocation of Cantor (via Badiou) actually makes "whole" a very difficult concept to use. Leaving that aside (though it may be of the essence), the question you raise -- <i>"might the very problem with the scientific method itself be the inherent impossibility of accurately measuring the probable and improbable at all?"</i> -- is one of the issues I have in mind. It might in fact impact the very coherence of the idea of probability. <br /><br />This would really be the next step beyond quantum mechanics. Robert Laughlin has made some suggestions in this direction in his book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=I5kbyB-yfB4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow"><i>A Different Universe</i></a>skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-61671441821819266892011-01-21T07:54:57.596-08:002011-01-21T07:54:57.596-08:00The same thing might be happening in art and love....The same thing might be happening in art and love. We first encounter something that totally blows us away, then as time goes on, and we encounter it more and more, we become less and less enchanted and finally it seems so ordinary. It’s rather depressing.The Ontological Nexushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17950312080786100753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-61069368111145271442011-01-21T02:03:45.335-08:002011-01-21T02:03:45.335-08:00Interesting post. One awaits the immanent arrival...Interesting post. One awaits the immanent arrival of a purveyor of luncheon meat.<br /><br />Cher Maitre Bergson's ideas in <i>Matter and Memory</i> provide an ontological underpinning for fugitive psi phenomena. His influence on Meillassoux and Deleuze is well known. Essentially he is trying to steer between the Scylla and the Charybdis of Idealism and Realism as traditionally understood. If in fact our normal conceptual schema involves the concepts of time and space how are we to devise experiments or understand phenomena which flout that Kantian fact. My own slight personal experiences of pre-cognition have been associated with liminal states in which the power of the waking schema is abated. <br /><br />You may recall that Flew in an early book <i>A new approach to Psychical Research</i> was of the opinion that unless we accept that there is a world wide conspiracy to fool the public there is an x-factor. (cue tuneless whistle) He started on his investigation as a sceptic in the Humean tradition.ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-13415173626945844742011-01-20T23:09:35.980-08:002011-01-20T23:09:35.980-08:00skholiast:
This is a beautifully composed post, a...skholiast:<br /><br />This is a beautifully composed post, as all of the posts I have read of yours. Well done.<br /><br />Your invocation of Meillassoux makes me wonder, and, I'm just stumbling around in the dark here, bumping into statues, but I wonder if this decline effect might not have something vaguely to do with Cantor. At its heart, might the very problem with the scientific method itself be the inherent impossibility of accurately measuring the probable and improbable at all? This is the most disturbing aspect of Meillassoux's use of Cantor, for me, but it's also a kind of giddy thought to contemplate, akin to Kandinsky's experience after the decomposition of the atom. It would be a strange world where both the sciences and philosophy would relinquish, not reality, but predictability and probability of that reality in any really accurate way -- a scary, but thrilling, thought, all at once. Though, Meillassoux's thought applies to the universe as a whole, but I still think it might work, as we may not have any accurate idea just what *this* universe is capable of, itself.<br /><br />In any case, great food for thought (as well as all of your posts)!Joseph Charles https://www.blogger.com/profile/02849704279926794392noreply@blogger.com