scientifically, just don't go all post modern on us.

you speak of from my dad. I am definitely not a scientist. But Dad taught me that even facts can be confining as far as free thought goes. He also taught me to keep an open mind about everything. There is no hope if we start from a place of contempt prior to investigation.
I have to keep it simple.

Is this sort of what you mean?

are not necessarily "objective," nor do they provide an accurate representation of the situation. Meaning necessarily derives from the process of interpretation, and multiple people can have very different views that have been drawn from the exact same set of facts.

Just look at historical artifacts like photos, for example. We tend to think of them as factual representations of what really happened, but very often they distort and obfuscate reality. We use captions to interpret them, require a narrative context, and never see beyond the frame or what happened before/after. They capture a very selective moment in time, but even then it's something that's literally constructed by the photographer to convey a very particular meaning to the viewer.

That's not to say that everything is relative, but it's important to consider that being accurate consists of more than just an examination of the facts and available evidence. Granted this is more of a humanistic perspective than a scientific one, but I tend to think that the two areas could learn a lot from one another if they weren't so divided by disciplinary lines and methods.

to be well-educated and well-grounded in reality, don't have more than a slight clue about:
A. The nature of measurement
Once, I was in a semi-polite argument with a friend who was homeopathic. (heh, i just decided to use that as an adjective for the delusion that homeopathy works.) I said, "well sure, in principle it works, vaccines are homeopathic," and she said, "yes, but with homeopathic remedies, the amount of the agent is too small to measure."
Here's the thing: If it's "too small to measure", then it has no physiological effect, because if it had any physiological effects, those effects would constitute a measurement. This is a tautology. Only somebody who doesn't grasp what measurement is, as an abstract epistemological exercise, could simultaneously argue that homeopathy works, but that the homeopathic agent cannot be measured.

B. The principles, strengths, and weaknesses of even the simplest statistical methods.
The use, abuse, and misuse of the "margin of error" in the endless debates at GOS about poll results, demonstrate that most of the people talking about polls, including people on "my side" of any given issue at hand, and even including people who are paid a hell of a lot of money to talk about polls, don't understand fuck-all about statistics.
The stalwarts of the GOS Defenders of Science Brigade (Lenny Flank et al) were often starkly, infuriatingly wrong in the conclusions they drew from published results -- especially when they were asserting that "X has been proved not to cause Y".

C. The culture of science -- and most scientists themselves have at best a passing familiarity with the kind of thinking required for reflective introspection about what it is they do, how they do it, why they do it, and what, if anything, it means.
Scientists for the most part defy the stereotypes society has constructed for them. As with any other population of middle-class, well-educated, very intelligent individuals, many of them:
1. are physically attractive -- sometimes, excruciatingly so
2. are witty and articulate
3. are athletic themselves and/or are obsessed with pro-level competitive sports
4. are party animals and enthusiastic users of alcohol and other drugs
5. are very sexually active
6. are sentimental kooks who like cute things
7. are artistically accomplished
8. are more likely to listen to rock and roll or hip hop than classical or jazz.
etc.
What scientists mostly are not is slaves to formalisms. They bumble through their days just the same as everybody else, trying to keep their act together while searching half-randomly for the Big Insight hidden somewhere down in the data. Data, and the methods that produced the data, get lost or forgotten or corrupted (inadvertently or otherwise). Reasons and ideas and purposes come and go. Hard-won knowledge slips away into the noisy chaos of a billion-trillion points of data, of millions of charts and tables published in hundreds of thousands of papers in thousands of journals.

Science: It ain't all that it's cracked up to be.

can lead to several conclusions. Some contradictory. However I think it is essential to use observational data to lead you to (a perhaps mistaken) conclusion. It's better than just inventing ideas with no basis in reality.

My training is as an agricultural scientist, and sucktistics is the game...developed to deal with replicated ag studies. You get far enough along and you learn how to make the data say what you want. The chemical companies appreciate that. In fact the corporate support (ie funding) of science has lead to a false narrative on many levels. I know many of the physicists I know are dependent on the MIC for their funding.

My approach has always been to come from the angle of what do we want? In my case sustainable agriculture. How do we get there? That's the research goal! And the answer is very complicated because it is different for different places. That's why you need experimentation.

I no longer work in a research capacity, but I keep experimenting on my little farm in a non-replicated anecdotal way. I think it is fun.

…don't we really mean, "community-based evidence?"

When did that change happen?

It is my observation that things large and small flip into their opposite state with annoying frequency in this cosmos. Only a tiny few may notice these abrupt changes of state. But almost everyone instantly adapts without noticing consciously. The brain notices, however, and revises the individual's "background Reality Map." Over time, one's reality becomes a very twisted affair. The Map's mental landmarks and guideposts can be associated with ideologies — which can lead to biased reality-narratives and pretzel logic. There is no better example of this "secret law of physics" than TOPapalooza.

(Only with a top-shelf, finely-calibrated, Moral Compass can you anticipate and navigate reality accurately and avoid making society dumber. Instead, you will likely piss everyone off. Party invitations will drop off precipitously.)

I'll throw out this reality-mapping "proof," as well:

If you click on the first lowercase link in the main text of any Wikipedia article, and then repeat the process for subsequent articles, you may travel far but will eventually arrive at Philosophy (via Physics). (There are only a scant number of exceptions that dead end or end in loopiness.) The median link jumps to reach philosophy is 23.

Up Next: Proof that household wires live in a separate reality.

_______

Oh, great essay, Price. Thanks for opening that door.

yr friend,

Pluto

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rjbtsX7twc]

On Bill Maher the other night,' the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you'. Or some thing close to that, anyway.
I've always liked that guy.
To your post, my thought is that what reality we experience is purely a construct of our senses. Does it exist outside our senses? I have no idea, but I would hazard a guess that it does. Am I confused by a lot of these concepts? Hell yeah! I just pound nails for a living and don't have to understand Why things work so much as How they work together to build a safe and strong structure. KISS really does apply to me. I didn't invent the wheel, I just have to know how to use it. Does this make any sense to anyone?
Or should I just do another binger and try again later?
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