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5Kerry_Vaughan12h Is there a "scientific method"?
If you learned about science in school, or read the Wikipedia page on the
scientific method, you might have encountered the idea that there is a single
thing called “The Scientific Method.” Different formulations of the scientific
method are described differently, but it involves generating hypotheses, making
predictions, running experiments, evaluating the results and then submitting
them for peer review.
The idea is that all scientists follow something like this method.
The idea of there being a “scientific method” exists for some reason, but it’s
probably not because this corresponds to the reality of actual science. This
description from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the
scientific methodology is helpful:
”[t]he issue which has shaped debates over scientific method the most in the
last half century is the question of how pluralist do we need to be about
method? Unificationists continue to hold out for one method essential to
science; nihilism is a form of radical pluralism ... Some middle degree of
pluralism regarding the methods embodied in scientific practice seems
appropriate.”
Similarly, the physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg said:
”The fact that the standards of scientific success shift with time does not only
make the philosophy of science difficult; it also raises problems for the public
understanding of science. We do not have a fixed scientific method to rally
around and defend.”
This suggests that the mainstream view amongst those who seriously study the
scientific method is that there isn’t a single method that comprises science,
but that there are a variety of methods and the question is how many different
methods to include.
This is weird.
Why is the public discussion about the scientific method so out-of-touch with
the reality of science? My best guess is that public discussions of the
scientific method are doing three different things:
1. Governance
Scientific knowledge is
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252d cross-posted from Facebook
[https://www.facebook.com/linchuan.zhang/posts/2407342496023187].
Sometimes I hear people who caution humility say something like "this question
has stumped the best philosophers for centuries/millennia. How could you
possibly hope to make any progress on it?". While I concur that humility is
frequently warranted and that in many specific cases that injunction is
reasonable [1], I think the framing is broadly wrong.
In particular, using geologic time rather than anthropological time hides the
fact that there probably weren't that many people actively thinking about these
issues, especially carefully, in a sustained way, and making sure to build on
the work of the past. For background, 7% of all humans who have ever lived are
alive today, and living people compose 15% of total human experience [2] so
far!!!
It will not surprise me if there are about as many living philosophers today as
there were dead philosophers in all of written history.
For some specific questions that particularly interest me (eg. population
ethics, moral uncertainty), the total research work done on these questions is
generously less than five philosopher-lifetimes. Even for classical age-old
philosophical dilemmas/"grand projects" (like the hard problem of
consciousness), total work spent on them is probably less than 500
philosopher-lifetimes, and quite possibly less than 100.
There are also solid outside-view reasons to believe that the best philosophers
today are just much more competent [3] than the best philosophers in history,
and have access to much more resources[4].
Finally, philosophy can build on progress in natural and social sciences (eg,
computers, game theory).
Speculating further, it would not surprise me, if, say, a particularly thorny
and deeply important philosophical problem can effectively be solved in 100 more
philosopher-lifetimes. Assuming 40 years of work and $200,000/year per
philosopher, including overhead, this is ~800 millio
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96d If we run any more anonymous surveys, we should encourage people to pause and
consider whether they are contributing productively or just venting. I'd still
be in favour of sharing all the responses, but I have enough faith in my fellow
EAs to believe that some would take this to heart.
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57d I want to write a post saying why Aaron
[https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/aarongertler] and I* think the Forum
is valuable, which technical features currently enable it to produce that value,
and what other features I’m planning on building to achieve that value. However,
I've wanted to write that post for a long time and the muse of public
transparency and openness (you remember that one, right?) hasn't visited.
Here's a more mundane but still informative post, about how we relate to the
codebase we forked off of. I promise the space metaphor is necessary. I don't
know whether to apologize for it or hype it.
———
You can think of the LessWrong [https://www.lesswrong.com/] codebase
[https://github.com/LessWrong2/Lesswrong2] as a planet-sized spaceship. They're
traveling through the galaxy of forum-space, and we're a smaller spacecraft
following along. We spend some energy following them, but benefit from their
gravitational pull.
(The real-world correlate of their gravity pulling us along is that they make
features which we benefit from.)
We have less developer-power than they do (1 dev vs 2.5-3.5, depending on how
you count.) So they can move faster than we can, and generally go in directions
we want to go. We can go further away from the LW planet-ship (by writing our
own features), but this causes their gravitational pull to be weaker and we have
to spend more fuel to keep up with them (more time adapting their changes for
our codebase).
I view the best strategy as making features that LW also wants (moving both
ships in directions I want), and then, when necessary, making changes that only
I want.
———
One implication of this is that feature requests are more likely to be
implemented, and implemented quickly, if they are compelling to both the EA
Forum and LessWrong. These features keep the spaceships close together, helping
them burn less fuel in the process.**
*(and Max [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/maxdalton] and Ben
[https://for
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