pluralism in science
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REC -
> The scientist says my method is the correct method! Fund me! > > The popular science journalist writes it up as a horse race or prize > fight or political campaign. > Bravo! - SAS ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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In reply to this post by Russell Standish-2
Now *that* is a good answer.
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Russell Standish <[hidden email]> wrote:
Doug Roberts
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In reply to this post by Ron Newman
Ron/Merle -
When I went to the WHM, the three things that struck me were: 1) This is not a blind measure... it seems like you should have to state your level of happiness before you find out what the current "average" level is; 2) It looks a lot like the "Current Fire Danger" meter in our forests (Smoky Bear attending with his shovel, jeans and hat); 3) I suspect "happiness" to be culturally sensitive (both in meaning and in scaling?) Is there a model of sorts for "contagious happiness"? I also assume some of those here who use models of contagious disease might have some meta-models to offer (Doug, show your hand)? Are there reservoir populations? What are the non-human vectors (pets?). Is cynicism a prophylactic? Does happiness (and cynicism) act like quorum sensing/quenching (as with biology and/or hive populations?) Are there memetic equivalents to the modes of gene/protein expression? I would expect contemporary models of this might be registered on a network (scale-free, small world, power-law connected). The Maharishi effect has been offered to me many times without explanation for it's presumed mechanism. Back in the day, the Maharishi claimed that "world peace" (or some other unspecified collective good) would be achieved as soon as the square root of 1% of the population (that would be .0001 fraction?) achieved Sidhi status. Anecdotally, the number started out at a high mark of 10%, then dropped to a less onerous one of 1%, I don't know when or why the square root (.0001was added. I assumed it implied some kind of model for the phenomenon, but nobody seemed to know where that part came from or why the numbers kept getting downgraded. I recently watched the movie Kumare' (at the suggestion of our own Glen Ropella) and enjoyed it a great deal. A documentary film maker sets out to look into the world of Guru's and in the process becomes one... The best line of the movie was "My job is to be happy!", reducing his role as a (faux) Guru to a single, simple and effective concept. The documentary seemed to be completely authentic (as opposed to being some kind of mockumentary) and a conclusion (related to our earlier discussion about placebo/nocebo) might be that by embracing the role of a Guru(tm), Kumare' (the character) managed to have the effect of a genuine Guru(tm). 10 of his 14 acolytes remained true to him after he exposed himself as a documentary film maker studying the phenomena rather than a "real" guru. 4 have refused/avoided further contact with him. All 14 seemed to be enjoying huge benefits from their participation with him in his "practice". The 10, in followups seemed to have persistent positive effects, the other 4 we don't know but might have lost what they gained? - Steve Merle, ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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When you're simulating all 370 million residents of the US in a pandemic influenza model, all of the parameters listed below are, well, represented parametrically. The idea is to get a gross measure of trends, and relative assessments of the effectiveness of various intervention strategies. Not to get a "correct" answer, because as Josh Epstein would no doubt say, there is no correct answer.
I'll be eating ribs with Josh next month in Austin, I'll try to remember to ask him his opinion on this. --Doug Upon consideration: no I won't. We'll be eating ribs and drinking beer and having fun. Scientific philosophical discussion will not even emerge.
Get it? Emerge.
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Doug Roberts
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In reply to this post by Russell Standish-2
Ooh, ooh, a comment about birds, step aside, let me through please :-)
<segue> Actually, ornithologists provide a lot of value to birds, in that they help understand their behavior, life history, requirements, etc, thus helping with their conservation. </segue> ;; Gary On Apr 11, 2013, at 8:27 PM, Russell Standish <[hidden email]> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 01:30:44PM -0600, Douglas Roberts wrote: >> This phrase struck me, and this will sound like a dumb question, but humor >> me: What is a philosopher of science? And what value do they provide? >> Serious question. >> > > About as much value as ornithologists provide to birds, I expect. (Channeling > Dick Feynmann here...). > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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<splash_of _reality> Because everybody follows the recommendations of the ornithologists to the letter. </splash_of_reality> I'm fun at parties too. -Douug On Apr 11, 2013 7:49 PM, "Gary Schiltz" <[hidden email]> wrote:
Ooh, ooh, a comment about birds, step aside, let me through please :-) ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Jah, now that you mention it, it *does* look like the Smokey Bear sign. The intent on the front end is just to provide some bells and whistles to encourage participation, and the happiness level isn't controlled for influences, i.e. isn't blind. It probably will become a Facebook app, though the few times when I check FB I notice a propensity for an irritating artificial cheeriness, which could skew things.
But it still will be interesting to see if there are any broad trends, since reports are time-stamped and geolocated. What happens after a natural or economic disaster in a region? Does it go down as most people predict, or spike down then up as people discover community effects, rebuilding a neighbor's house, etc.?
Just yesterday I got access to terabytes of data to be mined when happiness reports are in order to flesh out the demographics of the area of each report. You mention happiness "contagion". Is that due to the link on WHM about the Christakis (Harvard) and Foster (UC San Diego) on contagion and effects of happiness (and unhappiness, as well as obesity), up to two degrees of separation? There's a TEDx talk by Foster and the paper is quite interesting.
Ron --
Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com The World Happiness Meter On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2
Doug, Right! And that is what is creepy about Peirce’s metaphysics. But anybody who does metaphysics ends up with a black eye. And if you remember where he got his faith in science it was watching chemists figure out the periodic table. Eventually they converged. And while we never can be sure that what they converged on won’t come completely apart next Thursday, that convergence is the best we got. Remember, the Village Pragmatist is a “fallibilist”. He knows that some of the things he believes, even some of those he believes with a lot of confidence, are bound to be wrong. It’s the only metaphysics worth having. N Nick From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Well, Nick, as long as you are talking along evolutionary time scales, eventually we will all be able to tell right from wrong as well. My recommendation is to not hold your breath on this, though. --Doug On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: The Village Pragmatist believes that in time, perhaps an extremely long time, that scientists will converge on the right method, just as they will converge on the final opinion and that, by definition, will be the Truth. (Glen – that would be a tautology) But I think, also, that the Village Pragmatist might question the notion of a single right method for a field as diverse as psychology. Method for doing what? The VP would ask. What is it that we are hoping to do with our method? On Peirce’s account, knowledge is about self control … really, about the control of the environment that is impinging on us. When we do this, what comes back at us? If I want that to happen, what do I do? So, scientists will converge on is a particular relation between how the environment will respond when we poke it in a particular way and any conception that stands for that relation ….. like the periodic table, for instance. Nick From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
The issue here is that we have a variety of ways of studying human behavior each of which claims to be good science done by good scientists. One philosopher of science (Kuhn) says the study of human behavior is immature, when it's really good science it will settle on the correct method. Another philosopher of science (Longino) says maybe there isn't a single correct method, maybe there are multiple correct methods. The scientist says my method is the correct method! Fund me! The popular science journalist writes it up as a horse race or prize fight or political campaign. -- rec -- On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote: Roger, I guess my hackles went up a bit at the notion that something gets to be scientific based on the judgment of a philosopher of science. Most of the philosci I have read has been based on trying to get at the essence of what scientists do when they are successful. Every scientist gets taught a lot of philosophy of science in their introductory courses … the particular scientific ideology that infuses their specialty. Much of this is harmless within the field, but turns out to be absolute junk when it is exported to other fields, as when psychologist have physics envy. There is a lot of this sort of ideology that floats around the table at FRIAM. There is something about having this sort of thing inflicted on one in graduate school that makes one want to inflict it on others. So one of the values of having a good philosopher of science around for is to undermine the assertions of specialists in one field or another, or of one school or another within a field, that there is one, and only one way, to do science. An example was Joshua Epstein’s assertion, some years back, that “Good theories don’t predict”, which apparently was gospel in the simulation crowd, and flaming nonsense elsewhere. The other peril in all of this is the scientist who asserts that he has no philosophy … he just does good science. Nick From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote: >> So not only do phenomena worth studying emerge at different levels of organization, >> but the emerging phenomena at a level of organization are amenable to different disciplines of study >> which may all be judged "scientific" by a philosopher of science.
The author of the book is a faculty member at Stanford University who identifies as a philosopher of science. She wrote a book. She presumably teaches classes, writes scholarly articles, and reviews the writings of other scholars. She identifies the different ways of studying human behavior as equally "scientific", while the popular science literature, the grant competition process, and the disciplines themselves tend to treat the alternatives as mutually exclusive possible truths, in a conflict from which one shall emerge triumphant. So which question is the serious one? Taken together, you are expressing skepticism of philosophy by asking a question about values. That is as close to the origins of western philosophy as you can get without directly quoting Socrates. -- rec --
-- Doug Roberts
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In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2
Doug -
> > I'll be eating ribs with Josh next month in Austin, I'll try to > remember to ask him his opinion on this. > Upon consideration: no I won't. We'll be eating ribs and drinking beer > and having fun. Scientific philosophical discussion will not even emerge. > > Get it? Emerge. In my experience philosophical discussions "erupt" rather than emerge... drinking beer, eating ribs, having fun, waxing philosophical all tend to follow a pattern of punctuated equilibrium... - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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"Equilibrium", and "Josh Epstein" are not two terms that normally correlate with each other. -Doug On Apr 11, 2013 8:39 PM, "Steve Smith" <[hidden email]> wrote:
Doug - ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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Doug, Steve, I am a little confused about which of you is beering with Epstein, but whichever one of you it is, please take along a copy of http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/1/9.html and ask him what the hell he was drinking when he wrote, "Explanation …does not imply prediction." If you do download the article, please disregard the abstract which is missing a key word in its last line. Nick From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts "Equilibrium", and "Josh Epstein" are not two terms that normally correlate with each other. -Doug On Apr 11, 2013 8:39 PM, "Steve Smith" <[hidden email]> wrote: Doug -
In my experience philosophical discussions "erupt" rather than emerge... drinking beer, eating ribs, having fun, waxing philosophical all tend to follow a pattern of punctuated equilibrium... ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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"Explanation …does not imply prediction."
Got it. In between beers I'm positive this will come up in the conversation. --Doug
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Doug Roberts
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
"Explanation …does not imply prediction."
Got it. In between beers I'm positive this will come up in the
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Doug Roberts
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Here be a more or less recent paper about measuring happiness, from
the famous Sabine Hossenfelder. Bears on the philosopher of
science conversation too.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1754423 (just open what gets downloaded as a .pdf, even if doesn't look like one....) Found at my favorite physics blog: http://www.backreaction.com, which I don't always agree with, anyhow this is interesting. Carl On 4/11/13 9:48 PM, Douglas Roberts
wrote:
"Explanation …does not imply prediction." ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Hi Steve, When our "Sustainable Happiness Week" is over (starts Saturday on Jefferson's birthday--OF COURSE!--ends on Earth day) I'd love to have a deeper conversation with you guys about all of this.
We're actually doing two surveys, the one presently on-line based on the Bhutanese domains of happiness, which doesn't encourage us to do a statistically significant random sample (but it's a great social organizing tool)---and a follow-up, which will incorporate the best social research design we can muster, with hopefully at least a few objective measures.
I remember in the old days sneaking into SFI to watch Josh Epstein do his early ppt. on the spread of epidemics and thinking: how can I apply this to the morphing of mass movements into revolution into civil war into complete chaos.
Carl, thanks for the link to the paper on measuring happiness. It's a big problem among happiness researchers. Ron, I will get back to you tomorrow after I look at your web site.
Merle
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA [hidden email] mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merlelefkoff ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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Here's the link to the Christakis/Fowler paper on happiness contagion I mentioned earlier...and a TEDx talk. Are they building off of Epstein's work? He's not mentioned in the citations.
Ron
-- Ron Newman, Founder MyIdeatree.com The World Happiness Meter On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:29 PM, Merle Lefkoff <[hidden email]> wrote:
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In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Nicholas Thompson wrote at 04/11/2013 05:57 PM:
> The Village Pragmatist believes that in time, perhaps an extremely long > time, that scientists will converge on the right method, just as they > will converge on the final opinion and that, by definition, will be the > Truth. (Glen – that would be a tautology) Hm. I think I disagree slightly. Since the scientists are free to wander outside the bounds set by the convergence, it is not tautological. Granted, even if, when a scientist crossed the boundary, they lose their credibility and are called "fringe" or whackos, they may be capable of wandering around for awhile outside the convergence boundary, then wander back in. They may even provide negative feedback for the convergence and widen it a bit. I'm thinking of people like Thomas Gold, Lima de Faria, Roger Penrose, David Deutsch ... hell, even people like Jack Parsons. When that happens, it's not pure deduction anymore. It's induction. > On Peirce’s account, knowledge is about self control … really, about the > control of the environment that is impinging on us. When we do > */this/*, what comes back at us? If I want */that/* to happen, what do > I do? So, scientists will converge on is a particular relation > between how the environment will respond when we poke it in a particular > way and any conception that stands for that relation ….. like the > periodic table, for instance. For universal models (like the periodic table), this works fine. And as long as the environment changes very slowly, this works fine. But in highly volatile contexts, where the environment changes slowly enough to entrench us (a few generations? hundreds of years?), does this still work? Or do we prematurely converge on a set of "laws" that, later, are no longer laws? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. -- Henry David Thoreau ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2
Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/11/2013 03:42 PM:
> The issue here is that we have a variety of ways of studying human > behavior each of which claims to be good science done by good scientists. > > One philosopher of science (Kuhn) says the study of human behavior is > immature, when it's really good science it will settle on the correct > method. > > Another philosopher of science (Longino) says maybe there isn't a single > correct method, maybe there are multiple correct methods. > > The scientist says my method is the correct method! Fund me! > > The popular science journalist writes it up as a horse race or prize > fight or political campaign. So, have we converged on the idea that a philosopher of science is at least analogous to an anthropologist, one who specializes in scientists? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. -- H. L. Mencken ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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In reply to this post by Ron Newman
Ron-
Here's the link to the Christakis/Fowler paper on happiness contagion I mentioned earlier...and a TEDx talk.Thanks... I was being a little flip when I suggested all this, but I'm glad to see that there *is* work tied in already underway. Are they building off of Epstein's work? He's not mentioned in the citations.I doubt it. I think we are talking somewhat separated paradigms. I suspect there *could* be a tie in with some work, but I can tell already that Doug is not going to be our Emissary over beer and ribs... <grin>. I have worked on two projects that tie in to Fowler's talk and his referencing of the Digital Village. One was an early days(public) internet project ( entitled "Digital Village", no kidding) to try to understand how the growing participation in the internet of the first and third world population might change the nature of these populations. I don't remember any amazing results, I seem to remember that the project was overcome by events such that we were running on pre-internet time trying to keep up with the actual progress of the internet. A related project I think was to try to help the USPS anticipate what the internet was going to mean to them... and what they could do to remain relevant as the digital age overwhelmed the atom-age. The other was a paper on "Collective Intelligence" Circa 2001 which involved some simple simulations to demonstrate that a connected group could have more problem-solving ability than any individual (or small subset?). A lot of my research and contribution overlaps a lot of what Fowler is saying in his TED talk... in particular our evolutionary roots as nomadic tribal groups of order 100... and the potential implications for our (future) social networks when they are no longer geographically, familial, or job constrained. I'm mildly disturbed by his verbage in the talk which seems to conflate correlation with causation (are obese friends on facebook actually influencing the others to become (more) obese or are they choosing eachother because they are obese, or do obese people share common interests (love food and sedentary pursuits while eschewing physical activities?). I realize it is a popular talk jammed into a short period of time... I'll get more out of the paper I'm sure. I'm also interested in whether "Happiness" is considered a scalar, a vector or even a tensor? And if there are iterated network models (roughly ABMs or Network Automata) trying to simulate this? So much for trying to be flip. Now I'm hooked (a little). Happily hooked? - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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Steve,
Obviously happiness is a tensor--an ABM simulating this would sure help us figure out how to get there. Merle On Apr 12, 2013, at 11:33 AM, Steve Smith wrote: > Ron- >> Here's the link to the Christakis/Fowler paper on happiness contagion I mentioned earlier...and a TEDx talk. > Thanks... I was being a little flip when I suggested all this, but I'm glad to see that there *is* work tied in already underway. >> Are they building off of Epstein's work? He's not mentioned in the citations. > I doubt it. I think we are talking somewhat separated paradigms. I suspect there *could* be a tie in with some work, but I can tell already that Doug is not going to be our Emissary over beer and ribs... <grin>. > > I have worked on two projects that tie in to Fowler's talk and his referencing of the Digital Village. > > One was an early days(public) internet project ( entitled "Digital Village", no kidding) to try to understand how the growing participation in the internet of the first and third world population might change the nature of these populations. I don't remember any amazing results, I seem to remember that the project was overcome by events such that we were running on pre-internet time trying to keep up with the actual progress of the internet. A related project I think was to try to help the USPS anticipate what the internet was going to mean to them... and what they could do to remain relevant as the digital age overwhelmed the atom-age. > > The other was a paper on "Collective Intelligence" Circa 2001 which involved some simple simulations to demonstrate that a connected group could have more problem-solving ability than any individual (or small subset?). > > A lot of my research and contribution overlaps a lot of what Fowler is saying in his TED talk... in particular our evolutionary roots as nomadic tribal groups of order 100... and the potential implications for our (future) social networks when they are no longer geographically, familial, or job constrained. > > I'm mildly disturbed by his verbage in the talk which seems to conflate correlation with causation (are obese friends on facebook actually influencing the others to become (more) obese or are they choosing eachother because they are obese, or do obese people share common interests (love food and sedentary pursuits while eschewing physical activities?). I realize it is a popular talk jammed into a short period of time... I'll get more out of the paper I'm sure. > > I'm also interested in whether "Happiness" is considered a scalar, a vector or even a tensor? And if there are iterated network models (roughly ABMs or Network Automata) trying to simulate this? > > So much for trying to be flip. Now I'm hooked (a little). > > Happily hooked? > - Steve > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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