[Link] Why Science Is Not Necessarily Self-Correcting
Why Science Is Not Necessarily Self-Correcting John P. A. Ioannidis
The ability to self-correct is considered a hallmark of science. However, self-correction does not always happen to scientific evidence by default. The trajectory of scientific credibility can fluctuate over time, both for defined scientific fields and for science at-large. History suggests that major catastrophes in scientific credibility are unfortunately possible and the argument that “it is obvious that progress is made” is weak. Careful evaluation of the current status of credibility of various scientific fields is important in order to understand any credibility deficits and how one could obtain and establish more trustworthy results. Efficient and unbiased replication mechanisms are essential for maintaining high levels of scientific credibility. Depending on the types of results obtained in the discovery and replication phases, there are different paradigms of research: optimal, self-correcting, false nonreplication, and perpetuated fallacy. In the absence of replication efforts, one is left with unconfirmed (genuine) discoveries and unchallenged fallacies. In several fields of investigation, including many areas of psychological science, perpetuated and unchallenged fallacies may comprise the majority of the circulating evidence. I catalogue a number of impediments to self-correction that have been empirically studied in psychological science. Finally, I discuss some proposed solutions to promote sound replication practices enhancing the credibility of scientific results as well as some potential disadvantages of each of them. Any deviation from the principle that seeking the truth has priority over any other goals may be seriously damaging to the self-correcting functions of science.
How do you take notes?
We all deal with a lot of information. What are your strategies of taking notes for new information?
Do you take any notes on paper? If so do you scan them or otherwise digilatize them?
Do you have specific strategies for deciding which information to write down?
How do you write notes to capture all important information?
Do you tag your notes?
If you use Evernote, or a similar system how private are your notes? Would you allow friends to read in them? Your spouse?
Against Open Threads
There are various people who feel that Lesswrong degraded in the last year. In the same timeframe more and more discussions moved into the open thread model and open threads became weekly instead of monthly.
I suggest to counteract that trend by opening all discussions per default on Discussion instead of opening them in weekly open threads. Having the topics in discussion makes it easy to browse the list of topics and choose the headline that are of interest, even if the thread got opened two weeks ago.
Rationality Quotes from people associated with LessWrong
The other rationality quotes thread operates under the rule:
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.
Lately it seems that every MIRI or CFAR employee is excempt from being quoted.
As there are still interesting quotes that happen on LessWrong, Overcoming Bias, HPMoR and MIRI/CFAR employee in general, I think it makes sense to open this thread to provide a place for those quotes.
[Link] Researchers devise technique to allow X-ray crystallography of un-crystallized molecule groups
If this process works reliably it's probably the biggest scientific breakthrough of the year. Nanotechonlogy will get a boost from the ability to inexpensively determine the structure of a lot of molecule that we couldn't visualize beforehand.
Should a judge do it's job or maximize overall happiness
John Smith is a head judge. He's living in a state with has a three strikes law. He personally doesn't believe in the three strikes law. He resides in the highest appellate court in his state. He's operating in a state without juries.
As part of John's job he writes down his confidence on whether a witness tell the truth whenever he's hearing an witness make a statement. He has an assistant that checks his results. John quite frequently is 99,99% sure that a witness lies. He was never wrong when he made the prediction because of his skills at reading bodylanguage.
In his private time he also trains his ability to tell whether people tell the truth in training cases where it's easy to determine the truth afterwards. He's perfectly caliberated.
He gets a court case where Bob is accused of bribing a lot of politicians in an African state. He's supposed to have given them bribes to drop a law that forbids vaccination. Bob himself claims that he only talked with the African politicians and they afterwards saw Bob's wisdom and changed the law. In any case Bob got the law changed and produced massive utility in the process. Bob also pledges to do other lobbying in African countries to get rid of very harmful laws in the future.
After Bob attempts of getting the law Bribing officials of other countries is a felony is Bob's state. Bob already has two court judgements against him so being judged for bribing would put him for the rest of his life behind bars.
Carol is a billionaire. She is supposed to have give Bob $100,000 for his lobbying efforts to change the law in the African state. Carol however claims that she only payed Bob $3,000 for his traveling costs in the process and she never gave him an amount of money that would be enough to bribe the African policitians.
Through his bodylanguage reading skills John knows that Bob and Carol are lying to him. One previous court thought that Bob did the crime, the second court thought that Bob didn't.
John gets asked by his fellow judges on the court whether he thinks the two are lying. His fellow judges know of his impressive bodylanguage reading ability and fully trust him.
John swore an oath to fulfill the law. Should John break his oath and tell his collegues that Bob and Carol are telling the truth? Or should he tell them that they lie. John knows that telling his collegues that they lie would mean that Bob would spent the rest of his life behind bars and couldn't do any lobbying in Africa in the future.
How should John decide?
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