Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

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> That's a laughable argument based on a claim of authority.

How exactly do you think that scientific grants are evaluated right now? I have some bad news for you...

Anyway, I'm just telling you that I actually do have enough experience to know the difference between a good question and a bad one, and I'm applying that experience here.

> Do not misrepresent my point. My point was: if people care, even marginal reduction of uncertainty is worthwhile.

No, your point was that there's no normative standard for evaluating science. You said it like, three times. Here, I'll quote you:

> There isn't a normative standard for good research beyond doing good research. Some fields have an easier time setting up and controlling experiments, but no research can predict how useful it'll turn out to be. You're conflating control convenience for utility.

You like the research, therefore I don't know what I'm talking about, and who am I for having an opinion anyway. And then I tell you that I actually do have some relevant knowledge, and you dismiss the knowledge as "normative". Convenient!

Reducing uncertainty is great. I'm all for it. Sometimes it's even worth paying for. Doing the 150,000th derivative observational study finding that poor people are sicker than rich people is not an example. Poor people are sicker than rich people. Let's move on.

> How exactly do you think that scientific grants are evaluated right now? I have some bad news for you

A problem of authorization can be solved with delegated authority. I'm saying your use of it is as evidence for your reasoning is weak. Those are two different problems.

> your point was that there's no normative standard for evaluating science. You said it like, three times.

Yes, but you equated me saying "no normative standard" to "no standards at all." You setup a false dichotomy. My larger point was that what's normative is political. And you saying your standard should be the norm is also political.

> You like the research, therefore I don't know what I'm talking about, and who am I for having an opinion anyway. And then I tell you that I actually do have some relevant knowledge, and you dismiss the knowledge as "normative". Convenient!

You're placing words in my mouth. I didn't say I like the research, I'm saying I don't like your grounds for dismissing it. I don't dismiss your expertise but I reject it as sufficient evidence for your argument.

> Doing the 150,000th derivative observational study finding that poor people are sicker than rich people is not an example. Poor people are sicker than rich people. Let's move on.

If you cannot see the hubris here, if you cannot see how unscientific it is to conclude (reductively) the results of an experiment before the experiment, then we are at an end. Let's move on.

> Yes, but you equated me saying "no normative standard" to "no standards at all."

No, I concluded that from a process of deduction, but fair enough. You're arguing that nobody can be qualified to critique the thing you support.

> You setup a false dichotomy. My larger point was that what's normative is political. And you saying your standard should be the norm is also political.

Yes yes. What's "normative" is now "political" (for some reason), and my standard is also "political" and therefore is not relevant.

It's just another way to try to arrive at the same place through the back door: my standard is wrong, because it's "normative" (or "political", or whatever other word you use in the next post), but your standard is (again, for some reason) not those things.

You don't like what I'm saying, so you reject my ability to say it. And when I catch you in this fallacy, you'll slip back to arguing that all research might be relevant to someone somewhere, and who are we to judge anyway, man, and blah blah blah. You're obviously just being big-brained and magnanimous.

Well, your deduction was unsound. And continues to be unsound. You can critique anything as long as you know you can be wrong too.

> Yes yes. What's "normative" is now "political" (for some reason), and my standard is also "political" and therefore is not relevant.

You're hand-waving. Your stance is political but not irrelevant. Your stance is philosophical (resting on chosen assumptions) and not empirically irrefutable.

Not acknowledging that is why you fail to convince.

You've made this argument about you and your ability to "catch" people. You have no argument that stands on its own construction.

Having read through this whole discussion, and as an outsider: they're approaching this from a much stronger and consistent position than you. This is most obvious given how far you've moved the goalposts along the way.

Maybe they've been more consistent but the strength of their position is not measured by my inconsistency.

Look at how much "trust me, I've got training, I know what's good, I know what's already right" is in their argument.

What is their actual point? That we can say across the board that good research must have easy-to-control experimentation and guarantee novelty?

Good research is field dependent; some fields are younger than others, some fields have an easier time controlling experiments than others.

I'm saying what matters is what people care about. My point about stances being political is because what gets funded is what people care about, not what can guarantee the highest confidence using research design.

My point is that their stance is political too, because it says 'I don't care about this like how they care about this, so I think it should get cut'.

Their position is not some innocent defense of empiricism, it's a political stance that says "these questions don't matter, I already know how the world works."

> That we can say across the board that good research must have easy-to-control experimentation and guarantee novelty?

That is not my point, but it is a true statement, yes [1]. Science without controls is not science. Science without novelty is called an undergraduate lab exercise.

> Good research is field dependent

Controls and novelty and rigor are not field-dependent. If you want that, go do English Literature or Philosophy or something. They love to entertain unresolvable debates about post-modernism.

[1] Modulo the "easy" part. I feel like you put this in as some kind of emergency exit slide from the debate, so I'll just say up front that good science doesn't have to have "easy" controls. It must have controls.

I may have moved some of the goal posts but you refuse to engage with your own bias. I think we can move on.

> Look at how much "trust me, I've got training, I know what's good, I know what's already right" is in their argument.

I mean, isn't that what we're supposed to do in science? Listen to the folks who have the expertise? Like sure, don't believe that they have the expertise or whatever, but ask for proof of the expertise, don't just handwave it away because you don't agree with the expert. Nothing that they've said has appeared to be inconsistent with their claim of expertise, however.

So... maybe trust the person with the experience? Or, if you have a contrasting experience, present that instead. But this is not what you're doing.

> What is their actual point? That we can say across the board that good research must have easy-to-control experimentation and guarantee novelty?

My read is something like this: Their point is that the scientific method (aka "science") is fundamentally about rigor. If some science doesn't have rigor, it's fair to question its quality, because without rigor, you can't trust any of the results. There's too much possibility for error. The social sciences are notorious for lacking rigor. It's part of the reason there's a repeatability crisis in the field.

> My point is that their stance is political too, because it says 'I don't care about this like how they care about this, so I think it should get cut'.

That's really not what they're saying at all. You keep trying to spin it that way, but I haven't seen that indication of that particular intent.

> Their position is not some innocent defense of empiricism, it's a political stance that says "these questions don't matter, I already know how the world works."

No! They're not saying "these questions don't matter", they're saying "the people doing the science to 'answer these questions' are doing it badly, because they know what good science looks like, and that ain't it."

> isn't that what we're supposed to do in science? Listen to the folks who have the expertise?

No. We look at the best model that explains and predicts the most observations.

> Nothing that they've said has appeared to be inconsistent with their claim of expertise, however.

What expertise have they shown? How did you determine they're an expert? This is what they said in their original post: "if it leads to a more focused funding of actual, legitimate science, I'm largely in favor"

That has no expertise required. That's a political stance of what "actual, legitimate science" is.

> If some science doesn't have rigor, it's fair to question its quality

Yes, and I'm saying rigor should be pragmatically determined by operating conditions. All fields cannot instantly achieve the same level of rigor; instrumentation and methodologies need to develop over time. It's fine to say there's a problem with repeatability, it's not fine to say the researchers are illegitimate. Mine is a political stance as well.

> You keep trying to spin it that way, but I haven't seen that indication of that particular intent.

Our interpretation is at odds. You have not argued against it either. What makes their stance apolitical?

> the people doing the science to 'answer these questions' are doing it badly

And I'm saying that's in the nature of tough problems. Do you want to study tribal behavior? Culture? How nation states interact? How slavery has ripple effects across centuries? Tough shit, experimentation is hard. That doesn't make it bad science. That framing is thoughtless.

What is your point man? Can you state simply? Is it that cutting funding for "science" is bad, without exception?

Beyond doing the best research you can do, given the conditions, there is no apolitical norm for what makes a researcher legitimate or illegitimate.

There is no bad cutting or good cutting, there's only politics. Meaning, an argument for what make some problems more important or worthwhile is not an apolitical argument, it's an argument of how other people should live.

As in, you don't get to conclude that you're obviously right and they're obviously wrong.

So you elect leaders to make those "political" decisions. I don't see the problem here. I think no politician or leader would say that they are "obviously" right, but they don't have to be. That is what a leader is supposed to do. If they only did the absolute "right" think, they will do nothing.

And about the "good/bad cutting", I think it only mean in relative terms, because funds are not infinite...

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