wedrifid comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Less Wrong
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Piling up shoddy evidence does not make good evidence. (And it still doesn't if you -- that's the impersonal "you", not you in particular -- call it "Bayesian evidence".)
There are considerable ideological incentives on both sides.
The Sesardic book you recommended is in my university library, but when I went to look at it, I found at least a shelf-foot of books on the subject, some (I could tell just from the authors' names) on one side, some on the other. So I didn't bother looking any further and left all the books there. I could read Sesardic saying what you say he says, but then I could read Kamin arguing the opposite, and in that situation, to form a view of my own with any real basis I'd have to research the subject enough to write a book of my own. I have other things to do. Such is the nature of controversies: they cannot be settled by saying "read this book".
One observation though, that I haven't seen made on either side. Failing to find strong genetic causes for something does not imply that it's the environment; failing to find strong environmental causes does not imply that it's the genes; failing to find either does not imply that it's the interaction of genes and environment. I believe I've seen (but no cites) all three wrong arguments being made from time to time. All that failing to find the causes implies is that we have failed to find the causes.
Um... yes, often it does.
For example, 100 people saying "Um... yes, often it does" would not sway me a jot.
Do you have an example?
1 study with too small a sample size to even make the findings significantly significant is shoddy evidence. 100 such studies is (probably) good evidence.
Second example:
It should (unless all 100 people are known to be fools.)
That isn't an actual example, and there are many more ways of being shoddy than merely a limited sample size.
This presumes explicitly that they are not, and tacitly that they are all independent, have not all come to the same conclusion for the same bad reasons. These are very substantial presumptions and need substantial justification to make such a meta-analysis worth anything at all. The presumption that one would have to be a "fool" to be wrong about something is just rhetorical spin.
100 pieces of crap is still just a pile of crap, however you spin it.
"Give me an example! ... Ha! Your example isn't a fully general enumeration of the entire class... Fooled you!!"
Your example wasn't an example at all, just a made-up scenario of many small pieces of evidence adding up to large evidence. You originally said
(emphasis mine.) When asked to back that up, you just made stuff up.