You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Nov. 23 - Nov. 29, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: MrMind 23 November 2015 07:59AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (257)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ChristianKl 25 November 2015 11:48:05PM 1 point [-]

A study that relies only on self-reported claims of 'being in love' might be interesting to read, but such a study would be of higher quality if there was an objective way to take a group of people and sort them into one of two groups: "in love" or "not in love."

No, not automatically. An objective measurement can be both worse and be better than a self-reported measurement. There no reason to believe that one is inherently better.

Comment author: LessRightToo 28 November 2015 02:01:33PM 0 points [-]

New material added to this thread uses the phrase being in a relationship rather than being in love. I found the latter phrase problematic because it involves a poorly defined mental state that has changed meaning over time. The former phrase is objectively verifiable by external observers.

I have read a book or two on the Design of Experiments over the years purely for intellectual curiosity; I've never actually defined and run a scientific experiment. So I don't have anything worthwhile to say on the general topic of the relative value of objective vs. subjective measurements in scientific studies.