[ExI] Augmentations to Science /was Re: Drugs and creativity

[Flexman, Connor]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 7:16 PM, Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>
wrote:

> It's tough too because substances like these, particularly psychedelics,
> are anathema to the typical research setting such as a lab or hospital.
> Staying in one place or answering "normal" questions on LSD becomes
> anxiety- or terror-producing.  But it's hardly scientific to say "take
> these drops and go do whatever, and let me know how it went."
>
> I think this raises an important question that I believe arises in the
> minds of many scientists on psychedelics when they inevitably think about
> the scientific study of psychedelics: is there a different route of
> analysis than science that can collect information on this stuff better?
>
> I think it's very possible that science isn't always, or even isn't
> usually, the best way to study psychedelics.  So what's a better option?
> Spiritualists and theologers throughout history have performed their own
> "studies" parallel to science.
>
> I don't really believe that science needs to be replaced or given an
> alternate method of inquiry.  However, I think it's definitely true that
> current science needs augmentation.  This is becoming and will become more
> apparent as we study cosmology, relativity, and quantum physics more
> deeply.  It's already happening--we're more and more quickly approaching a
> time where science doesn't have the grammar to study the new questions it
> has unearthed.
>
> So what needs adding?  More fuzzy logic?  I have no clue.
>

I agree we should aim to think about it more as an expansion of science
than a replacement. I am always somewhat wary of framing things as a
"shortcoming" of science, because this usually promotes a no-holds-barred
dogpile of speculation and unsubstantiated claims.

I'm interested in what specific cases you find need augmentation though. At
first glance, I felt like I agreed, but upon closer inspection I'm less
sure. It's not scientific to take drops and do whatever, but such a setup
is pretty close to a case study, already within the realm of science. A
slight modification to your procedure by doing repeated trials, monitoring
them via camera (though perhaps not good for the paranoia aspect of some
hallucinogens), or randomizing a placebo puts you in position to understand
things much better. Add EEGs or whatever brain scan you can make mobile and
you could collect even more firm data. If you define science as RCTs,
you're pretty much there with a few modifications; but if you define
science as forming hypotheses and then testing and refining them through
whatever measures are most realistic, then it's science from the beginning,
and is just low on the 1d quality line until you put things on a more
rigorous footing.

Similarly, cosmology and quantum physics seem to be slowly producing the
necessary grammars for study as they clear new ground. (I don't know of any
parts of relativity that are outside science.) The anthropic principle has
been around for decades in cosmology, and quantum physics has been having
issues with what is meant by an "observer" for almost a century.
Despite substantial
griping
<https://drive.google.com/a/brown.edu/file/d/0BzQW60Ti0VX0Y2Q2OXZfWkdKS2M/view>
about how (some versions of) these things are scientifically ill-defined
and how reflectivity issues may put them out of the realm of science, we
seem to be slowly enveloping them in the fold and growing our grammar to
accommodate them. Anthropic considerations are being added to decision
theory
<https://drive.google.com/a/brown.edu/file/d/0BzQW60Ti0VX0XzcxV1o1YVFORzQ/view>,
while the need for defined observers is even potentially absolved
completely by this use of anthropics
<https://drive.google.com/a/brown.edu/file/d/0BzQW60Ti0VX0eVJvVmd3MWFTRWM/view>
.

I do realize that sometimes people think too narrowly about what should be
contained under the umbrella of science, envisioning gold standards of
pristine white lab conditions and deterministic equations. However, the
broader, dirty version of science, more along the lines of
1. collecting data from the world while adjusting for confounders and
extracting relevant signal as best one can;
2. determining what that data implies about how the world works using the
best heuristical versions of Bayesian reasoning;
seems like it primarily covers all of the cases you mention.

Are there other cases that request augmentations to science more
forcefully, which I am not thinking of?

Connor
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20151216/a3317677/attachment.html>