[Link] The real end of science

From Gene Expression by Razib Khan who some of you may also know from the old gnxp site or perhaps from his BHTV debate with Eliezer.

Fifteen years ago John Horgan wrote The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. I remain skeptical as to the specific details of this book, but Carl’s write-up in The New York Times of a new paper in PNAS on the relative commonness of scientific misconduct in cases of retraction makes me mull over the genuine possibility of the end of science as we know it. This sounds ridiculous on the face of it, but you have to understand my model of and framework for what science is. In short: science is people. I accept the reality that science existed in some form among strands of pre-Socratic thought, or among late antique and medieval Muslims and Christians (not to mention among some Chinese as well). Additionally, I can accept the cognitive model whereby science and scientific curiosity is rooted in our psychology in a very deep sense, so that even small children engage in theory-building.

That is all well and good. The basic building blocks for many inventions and institutions existed long before their instantiation. But nevertheless the creation of institutions and inventions at a given moment is deeply contingent. Between 1600 and 1800 the culture of science as we know it emerged in the West. In the 19th and 20th centuries this culture became professionalized, but despite the explicit institutions and formal titles it is bound together by a common set of norms, an ethos if you will. Scientists work long hours for modest remuneration for the vain hope that they will grasp onto one fragment of reality, and pull it out of the darkness and declare to all, “behold!” That’s a rather flowery way of putting the reality that the game is about fun & fame. Most will not gain fame, but hopefully the fun will continue. Even if others may find one’s interests abstruse or esoteric, it is a special thing to be paid to reflect upon and explore what one is interested in.

Obviously this is an idealization. Science is a highly social and political enterprise, and injustice does occur. Merit and effort are not always rewarded, and on occasion machination truly pays. But overall the culture and enterprise muddle along, and are better in terms of yielding a better sense of reality as it is than its competitors. And yet all great things can end, and free-riders can destroy a system. If your rivals and competitors and cheat and getting ahead, what’s to stop you but your own conscience? People will flinch from violating norms initially, even if those actions are in their own self-interest, but eventually they will break. And once they break the norms have shifted, and once a few break, the rest will follow. This is the logic which drives a vicious positive feedback loop, and individuals in their rational self-interest begin to cannibalize the components of the institutions which ideally would allow all to flourish. No one wants to be the last one in a collapsing building, the sucker who asserts that the structure will hold despite all evidence to the contrary.

Deluded as most graduate students are, they by and large are driven by an ideal. Once the ideal, the illusion, is ripped apart, and eaten away from within, one can’t rebuild it in a day. Trust evolves and accumulates it organically. One can not will it into existence. Centuries of capital are at stake, and it would be best to learn the lessons of history. We may declare that history has ended, but we can’t unilaterally abolish eternal laws.

Update:

Link to original post.

From Gene Expression by Razib Khan who some of you may also know from the old gnxp site or perhaps from his BHTV debate with Eliezer.

Fifteen years ago John Horgan wrote The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. I remain skeptical as to the specific details of this book, but Carl’s write-up in The New York Times of a new paper in PNAS on the relative commonness of scientific misconduct in cases of retraction makes me mull over the genuine possibility of the end of science as we know it. This sounds ridiculous on the face of it, but you have to understand my model of and framework for what science is. In short: science is people. I accept the reality that science existed in some form among strands of pre-Socratic thought, or among late antique and medieval Muslims and Christians (not to mention among some Chinese as well). Additionally, I can accept the cognitive model whereby science and scientific curiosity is rooted in our psychology in a very deep sense, so that even small children engage in theory-building.

That is all well and good. The basic building blocks for many inventions and institutions existed long before their instantiation. But nevertheless the creation of institutions and inventions at a given moment is deeply contingent. Between 1600 and 1800 the culture of science as we know it emerged in the West. In the 19th and 20th centuries this culture became professionalized, but despite the explicit institutions and formal titles it is bound together by a common set of norms, an ethos if you will. Scientists work long hours for modest remuneration for the vain hope that they will grasp onto one fragment of reality, and pull it out of the darkness and declare to all, “behold!” That’s a rather flowery way of putting the reality that the game is about fun & fame. Most will not gain fame, but hopefully the fun will continue. Even if others may find one’s interests abstruse or esoteric, it is a special thing to be paid to reflect upon and explore what one is interested in.

Obviously this is an idealization. Science is a highly social and political enterprise, and injustice does occur. Merit and effort are not always rewarded, and on occasion machination truly pays. But overall the culture and enterprise muddle along, and are better in terms of yielding a better sense of reality as it is than its competitors. And yet all great things can end, and free-riders can destroy a system. If your rivals and competitors and cheat and getting ahead, what’s to stop you but your own conscience? People will flinch from violating norms initially, even if those actions are in their own self-interest, but eventually they will break. And once they break the norms have shifted, and once a few break, the rest will follow. This is the logic which drives a vicious positive feedback loop, and individuals in their rational self-interest begin to cannibalize the components of the institutions which ideally would allow all to flourish. No one wants to be the last one in a collapsing building, the sucker who asserts that the structure will hold despite all evidence to the contrary.

Deluded as most graduate students are, they by and large are driven by an ideal. Once the ideal, the illusion, is ripped apart, and eaten away from within, one can’t rebuild it in a day. Trust evolves and accumulates it organically. One can not will it into existence. Centuries of capital are at stake, and it would be best to learn the lessons of history. We may declare that history has ended, but we can’t unilaterally abolish eternal laws.

Update:

Link to original post.

Moving on to the US: his use of averages is interesting, but this doesn't tell me too much - 2006 was a while ago, and mightn't there be falls or plateaus?

It's always possible, but I'm unware of subsequent standardization samples showing that.

And on what base is this increase coming, and how is it distributed?

Not sure, I haven't seen US data for that in Flynn's book. I've only seen details about the low vs. high ends of the distribution for Britain.

The British example really confuses me, because I was under the distinct impression that one of Flynn's researches has been on how the British Flynn effect has stopped and reversed (specifically, "Requiem for nutrition as the cause of IQ gains: Raven's gains in Britain 1938–2008" Flynn 2009).

(That paper's the "Flynn, 2009a" cited in the snippet I quoted, incidentally.) Looking more closely into Flynn's full discussion of the British data in the book clarifies things. The data come from two Raven's Matrices tests, the CPM and the SPM. The CPM covered ages 5-11 and the SPM ages 7-15 (pages 45 & 46). On the CPM the Flynn effect was faster from the 1980s onwards but on the SPM it was slower; Flynn detected that this was an age effect, and so compared the CPM & SPM over their common age range of 7-11. Over that range both tests had an accelerating Flynn effect (p. 47), and I assume this is where Flynn's conclusion that the UK has a stronger recent Flynn effect comes from.

However, considering the SPM alone over its entire age range, there was a net slowing down of the Flynn effect (0.15 points per year for 1979-2008 vs. 0.23 points per year for 1938-1979), because at the highest ages tested the Flynn effect went into reverse (a 1.9 point IQ drop from 1979 to 2008 for 14- & 15-year-olds). Presumably it's this data that suggested a reversal of the UK Flynn effect to you, and your inference differed from Flynn's because the two of you looked at different slices of the data. Flynn focused on younger children, who have rising IQs, and you remembered the data from older children, who have falling IQs. (It's a shame there are no recent adult data to resolve which trend the grown-ups are following.)

China is an interesting example and a potential counter-example, but my basic question is this: the age frontier

So if Japan's own development & Flynn effect did not - apparently - reverse the age frontier, why do you expect China to reverse it?

I don't disagree with you about the age frontier. The part of your comment that brought me up short was "Have you been following the Flynn effect research? It's dead, Jim.", because it didn't jibe with what I remembered from Flynn's book. The rest of your comment looked good to me.

As for plagiarism in Chinese science, I suspect it probably is just a teething problem that'll work itself out in a few decades. My intent wasn't to roll out a stock stereotype about Chinese culture being unoriginal but simply to note a sideline the paper might touch upon.

However, considering the SPM alone over its entire age range, there was a net slowing down of the Flynn effect (0.15 points per year for 1979-2008 vs. 0.23 points per year for 1938-1979), because at the highest ages tested the Flynn effect went into reverse (a 1.9 point IQ drop from 1979 to 2008 for 14- & 15-year-olds). Presumably it's this data that suggested a reversal of the UK Flynn effect to you, and your inference differed from Flynn's because the two of you looked at different slices of the data. Flynn focused on younger children, who have risi

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[Link] The real end of science

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[Link] The real end of science

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