roystgnr comments on Rationality Quotes May 2014 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: elharo 01 May 2014 09:45AM

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Comment author: roystgnr 02 May 2014 03:35:24PM 27 points [-]

PLAYBOY: So the experiment didn’t work?

[Craig] FERGUSON: No, the experiment always works. There’s no such thing as an experiment that doesn’t work. There are only results, but results may vary. Here’s what I learned:

Comment author: anandjeyahar 03 May 2014 05:39:47AM 9 points [-]

I tend to disagree.. I have done some things which I thought was experimenting with but did not come up with any clear conclusion after the experiment and analysis. On rewriting the thesis it turned out there were a lot more implicit assumptions inside the hypothesis that I was not aware of. I think it was a badly designed experiment and it was rather unproductive in retrospective analysis. I suppose one could argue that it brought to light the implicit assumptions and that was a useful result. Somehow(not sure how or why) I find that a low standard to consider something an experiment.

Comment author: satt 03 May 2014 09:37:04PM 8 points [-]

Systems built without requirements cannot fail; they merely offer surprises — usually unpleasant!

— Robert Morris, quoted in Brian Snow's "We Need Assurance!"

Comment author: AndHisHorse 03 May 2014 07:57:36AM 7 points [-]

Experiments can fail if they are executed or planned improperly. If both the control and the experimental group are given sugar pills, for example, or the equipment fails in a shower of sparks, the experiment has provided no evidence by which one can update. It is a small quibble, and probably not what the quote meant to illustrate (I'm guessing that the experiment provided evidence which downgraded the probability of the hypothesis), but something to note nonetheless: experiments are not magic knowledge-providers.

Comment author: Vaniver 03 May 2014 08:49:18PM 7 points [-]

Experiments can fail if they are executed or planned improperly. If both the control and the experimental group are given sugar pills, for example, or the equipment fails in a shower of sparks, the experiment has provided no evidence by which one can update.

I think Ferguson would call those "results," and from those you would have learned about performing experiments, not about the original hypothesis you were interested in.

Comment author: Desrtopa 07 May 2014 05:43:02AM 6 points [-]

If anything, I think a really failed experiment is one that makes you think you've learned something that is in fact wrong, which is the result of flaws in the experiment that you never become aware of.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 May 2014 07:25:57AM 1 point [-]

I think Ferguson would call those "results," and from those you would have learned about performing experiments, not about the original hypothesis you were interested in.

Ferguson's proposed new language is a downgrade. Being unable to identify something as a failure when the outcome sucks is fatalism and not particularly useful.

Comment author: DanielLC 15 May 2014 09:53:21PM 3 points [-]

An experiment is supposed to teach you the truth. If you run the experiment badly and, say, get a false positive, then the experiment failed.