poke comments on Rational vs. Scientific Ev-Psych - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 January 2008 07:01AM

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Comment author: poke 04 January 2008 09:57:25PM 1 point [-]

There's two interesting things going on here:

(1) You rescued your just-so story about the evolution of your behavior with a just-so story about how it could be scientifically established. But the same argument that knocks down your evolutionary just-so story knocks down your sociology of science just-so story; neither contains any established truth, both are products of your imagination.

(2) Science is exemplary human knowledge. If our account of how science proceeds tells us science should have proceeded differently, we cannot blame the scientists, we must blame our account of science. If Empiricism states that scientists are doing something wrong; so much the worse for Empiricism. If falsificationism states that scientists are doing something wrong; so much the worse for falsificationism. If Bayesian theory states that scientists are doing something wrong; so much the worse for Bayesian theory. Since no example of successful scientific practice in the history of science has ever relied on anything with even the slightest bit of resemblance to Empiricism, falsificationism or Bayesianism; so much the worse for them all.