Romer goes on to write:

Persistent disagreement is a sign that some of the participants in a discussion are not committed to the norms of science.

He should reread Kuhn. Kuhn says that the cause of persistent disagreement is usually the lack of a relevant and workable scientific paradigm which can identify important problems, resolve disputes, and thereby mandate researchers to come to consensus. Romer's use of the phrase "the norms of science" indicates that he believes in a singular, universal, monolithic set of principles which is valid for all types of scientific inquiry. But economists obviously cannot use the same principles as physicists, simply because they cannot run experiments. What Romer is really complaining about is that there is no good paradigm for economics, but that's not anyone's fault - the discovery and articulation of a paradigm is as difficult as doing the science that the paradigm supports. A more valid criticism of the field would be "We are trying to do science without a strong enough paradigm, and the weakness of the paradigm is preventing us from resolving our disagreements definitively. Instead of trying to do more research along the same old lines, we should go back to the philosophical foundations and re-examine what it means to do economics."

Double-blind trials aren't the gold standard, they're the best available standard. They still don't replicate far too often, because they don't remove bias (and I'm not just referring to publication bias). Which is why, when considering how to interpret a study, you look at the history of what scientific positions the experimenter has supported in the past, and then update away from that to compensate for bias which you have good reason to think will show up in their data.

In the example, past results suggest that, even if the trial was double-blind, someone who is committed to achieving a good result for the treatment will get more favorable data than some other experimenter with no involvement.

And that's on top of the trivial fact that someone with an interest in getting a successful trial is more likely to use a directionally-slanted stopping rule if they have doubts about the efficacy than if they are confident it will work, which is not explicitly relevant in Eliezer's example.

Hold on- aren't you saying the choice of experimental rule is VERY important (i.e. double blind vs. not double blind,etc)?

If so you are agreeing with VAuroch. You have to include the details of the experiment somewhere. The data does not speak for itself.

You can claim that it should have the same likelihood either way, but you have to put the discrepancy somewhere. Knowing the choice of stopping rule is evidence about the experimenter's state of knowledge about the efficacy. You can say that it should be treated as a separate piece of evidence, or that knowing about the stopping rule should change your prior, but if you don't bring it in somewhere, you're ignoring critical information.

http://moscow.sci-hub.bz/bd92d5ea3f64a416c7833533324fafbc/hedges2007.pdf

http://sci-hub.org/ is sometimes useful for finding papers

I was struggling to word the doctor parapgraph in a manner which was succinct but still got the idea across. I think query worded it better.

On math curriculum, that advanced classes build off of calculus is a function of current design. They could recenter courses around statistics and have calculus be an extension of it. Some of the calculus course would need to be reincorporated into the stats courses, but a lot of it wouldn't. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that trigonometry a̶n̶d̶ ̶v̶e̶c̶t̶o̶r̶s̶ are a necessary precursor for regression analysis or Bayes' theorem. The minority of students in physics and engineering that need both calculus and statistics should not dictate how other majors are taught. Fixing the curriculum isn't an easy problem, but they've had more than a century to solve it and there seems to be little movement in this direction.

Consciousness is the most recent module, and that does mean that. I'm sorry, I thought this was one point that wasn't even in dispute. It was laid out pretty clearly in the Evolution Sequence:

Complex adaptations take a very long time to evolve. First comes allele A, which is advantageous of itself, and requires a thousand generations to fixate in the gene pool. Only then can another allele B, which depends on A, begin rising to fixation. A fur coat is not a strong advantage unless the environment has a statistically reliable tendency to throw cold weather at you. Well, genes form part of the environment of other genes, and if B depends on A, B will not have a strong advantage unless A is reliably present in the genetic environment

Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway)

I think the "The Twelve Virtues of Rationality" actually makes an argument that those things are virtues.

It's start is also quite fitting: "The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth."

It argues against the frame of vows.

Withdrawing into mysticism where everything goes is bad. Obfuscating is bad. It's quite easy to say something that gives rationalist applause lights. Critical thinking and actually thinking through the implications of using the frame of a vow is harder. Getting less wrong about what it happens to think rational is hard.

Mystic writing that's too vague to be questioned doesn't really have a place here.

I believe that's why So8res referred to it as a vow to yourself, not anyone else.

Before I also haven't heard anybody speak about taking those kinds of vows to oneself.

This seems like a willful misreading of the essay's point. It seems obvious from context that So8res is referring here to motivated cognition, which does indeed have something wrong with it.

I consider basics to be important. If we allow vague statements about basic principles of rationality to stand we don't improve our understanding of rationality.

Willing is not the problem of motivated cognition. Having desires for reality to be different is not the problem. You don't need to be a straw vulcan without any desire or will to be rational.

Furthermore "Shut up and do the impossible" from the sequences is about "trying to will reality into being a certain way".

Look at his latest post: "hey wait a second, there is bias by censoring!" The "hard/conceptual part" is structuring the problem in the right way to notice something is wrong, the "bookkeeping" part is e.g. Kaplan-Meier / censoring-adjustment-via-truncation.