[extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Samantha Atkins wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 November 2003 03:17, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>> 
>> What is the ordinary-world explanation?  Well, for all I know, you
>> are posting this story as a test to see if anyone tries to explain it
>> away, give it a pseudo-rational explanation when in fact you just
>> made it up and there *is* no explanation for why that sort of thing
>> would happen under the laws of physics, because it didn't.  I do not
>> need to try and give your story an ordinary-world explanation; even
>> if I can't think of any ordinary-world explanation at all, I am
>> nonetheless confident enough in my understanding of the universe to
>> not feel discomfited.
> 
> That is a huge cop-out.  It doesn't fit your worldview so the first
> choice is to believe it never happened, heh?    Convenient but not very
> relevant.

Yes, that's right.  It doesn't fit my worldview, and therefore I assert 
that it never happened.  On the hypothesis that the universe is genuinely 
non-eerie but people are not reliable reporters, it will sometimes be 
necessary to do that.  The important thing is to do it flat out, honestly, 
and without excuses.  It doesn't fit my preconceived notions and 
therefore, without apology, I reject it.  Anyone is welcome to catalog 
reports like these; doing so is not an assault on Reason, for Reason can 
take the heat.  It is suppressed fear that the universe really *is* eerie 
that leads to people trying to "suppress memories", "not think about it", 
deny grant funding to people trying to investigate it, and other harmful 
strategies.  I will not live in fear of Chris Phoenix's report.  I accept 
that he made the report, and deny that it happened as reported.

>> This world is my home, and I know it now, and I know the world
>> doesn't work that way.
>
> You *know* no such thing.  You believe it doesn't work that way.

"You are not me," replied Chuangtse. "How can you know that I do not know 
that the fish are enjoying themselves?"

>> There are a few things left that I don't know yet, but the remaining 
>> uncertainty does not have enough slack in it to permit ESP.  This
>> world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so it is a
>> simulation of a world without ESP.
> 
> I see no way you could have complete enough knowledge or sufficiently
> vetted theory of knowledge to make such a statement meaningfully.

On the hypothesis that the universe really is non-eerie, there is no 
reason why an inhabitant of that universe should not eventually become 
confident of the fact.  Of course, as I noted, it takes some work.

>> Supposing that I try to think of an "ordinary" explanation for your
>> story, what springs to mind?  Several things.  I don't know if the
>> name "Elizabeth Loftus" rings any bells; but human memory is far, far
>> more pliable than people like to think.  It is possible for a
>> researcher, by asking leading questions, to create a memory
>> completely out of fabric - for example, of being lost in the mall as
>> a child - and later the person will not remember that it is a false
>> memory.  Did your wife really have a pain in her lower ribs, or her
>> back?  Did you learn about her brother's death a few hours later, or
>> a day?  "How come the more you touch me there, the more I want to
>> cry?" sounds to me like not at all the sort of thing that is said
>> spontaneously, but very easily the sort of thing that might be
>> "recalled" afterward.
> 
> The story has to be assumed accurate for the questions raised to be
> even seriously addressed.  What you have done looks like more disowning
> of inconvenient data.  We all know most of the things you are bringing
> up here and yet this nagging residue that doesn't fit remains.

Right.  I am disowning inconvenient data.  The important thing is not to 
make the action look any more respectable than it is, or try to make the 
incovenient data look less improbable by coming up with pseudo-rational 
explanations for it.  Scientists are nervous around disowned inconvenient 
data, even though it is, sometimes necessary.  That is as it should be, 
and the reason why, when disowning inconvenient data is necessary, it 
should be done plainly and without apology.

>> What permanently zaps the paranormal explanation is not studying
>> physics, or studying the history of science, or reading the accounts
>> of debunked psychics - it's studying the cognitive science of human
>> error.  The literature on this has to be seen to be believed.  The
>> human mind is so wildly fragile, so wildly wrong on so many simple
>> problems, that our physics is simply more reliable than any anecdote
>> that can be cited against it.  *Any* anecdote.  Yes, even anecdotes
>> that really, really seem like they can't be explained away.  The
>> human mind is genuinely that weak; physics is genuinely that strong.
> 
> What if there is some non-paranormal explanation for such ESPish events
> that doesn't start by denying they actually happened?

I have no need of that hypothesis.  I have seen, lots of times, 
non-paranormal explanations attempted when the actual explanation was the 
event as reported simply didn't happen.  I've even done it myself.  Isn't 
that embarassing?  After a while I learned not to try and stretch my 
explanations.  On occasions I have missed an opportunity to appear 
downright prescient, because I heard a report of something that didn't 
sound quite right, and tried to explain it, rather than asking "Are you 
sure that's really what happened?"

>> It doesn't matter whether the explanation I gave is correct.  There's
>> no ESP in the universe, no paranormal phenomena, no gods, no demons.
>> It's just us within the laws of physics.  That's the upshot, whatever
>> the explanation is - whether you made up the anecdote as a test, or
>> whether human memory is horrifyingly (and replicably) pliable, or
>> whether some other ordinary event happened.
> 
> You are frothing at the mouth in support of your pre-existing belief 
> structures.   The book is far from closed on what is and is not
> possible in reality.  Our physics today is not known to be utterly
> comprehensive of all phenomenon possible in reality.   It is simply
> what we have found to date with reasonable rigor.

I now realize that ordinary physics is comprehensive of mental phenomena, 
which is something that I did not know previously, and which one would not 
expect physicists to know.

>> If you haven't reached that point of confidence, then by no means
>> should you attempt to convince yourself of it artificially.  It took
>> me a long time to reach the point where I was ready to say that, and
>> it is not at all what I was thinking when I started out.  But you
>> know... it really is normal.  It's all normal.  And if you look at it
>> long enough, there's enough evidence to see that it's normal.  I hope
>> that helps.
> 
> No, it does not help.  It looks like one more closed mind in the world
> to me.

Okay.  Just so long as everything is done plainly and in the open.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence