Science is wrong about everything, but you can trust it more than anything

Science is wrong about everything, but you can trust it more than anything

Psychology is working on the hardest problems in all of science. Physics, astronomy, geology — those are easy, by comparison. Understanding consciousness, willpower, ideology, social change – there’s a larger-than-Large-Hadron-Collider level of difficulty to each one of these, but since these are more relatable ideas than quarks and bosons and mass coronal ejections — this a science about our minds and selves — it’s easier to create eye-catching headlines and, well, to make podcasts about them.

As you will hear in this episode, one of the most famous and most talked-about phenomena in recent psychological history, ego depletion, hasn’t been doing so well in replication attempts.

In the show, journalist Daniel Engber who wrote an article for Slate about the failure to replicate many of the famous ego depletion experiments will detail what this means for the science and the scientists involved.

Also, you’ll hear from psychologist Brain Nosek, who says, “Science is wrong about everything, but you can trust it more than anything.”

Nosek is director of the Center for Open Science, an organization working to correct what they see as the temporarily wayward path of psychology.

Nosek recently lead a project in which 270 scientists sought to replicate 100 different studies in psychology, all published in 2008 — 97 of which claimed to have found significant results — and in the end, two-thirds failed to replicate.
Clearly, some sort of course correction is in order. There is now a massive effort underway sort out what is being called the replication crisis. Much of the most headline-producing research in the last 20 years isn’t standing up to attempts to reproduce its findings. Nosek wants to clean up the processes that have lead to this situation, and in this episode, you’ll learn how he and others plan to do so.

If physics can't explain subjective experience, it can't produce a complete theory of everything ...

https://www.consc.net/papers/puzzle.html

The Puzzle of Conscious Experience
David J. Chalmers
...
The hard problem, in contrast, is the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience. This puzzle involves the inner aspect of thought and perception: the way things feel for the subject. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations, such as that of vivid blue. Or think of the ineffable sound of a distant oboe, the agony of an intense pain, the sparkle of happiness or the meditative quality of a moment lost in thought. All are part of what I am calling consciousness.
...

Despite the power of physical theory, the existence of consciousness does not seem to be derivable from physical laws. He defends physics by arguing that it might eventually explain what he calls the objective correlates of consciousness (that is, the neural correlates), but of course to do this is not to explain consciousness itself. If the existence of consciousness cannot be derived from physical laws, a theory of physics is not a true theory of everything. So a final theory must contain an additional fundamental component.

Also, you’ll hear from psychologist Brain Nosek, who says, “Science is wrong about everything, but you can trust it more than anything.”

Science used to be the pursuit of independently rich people. Curiously enough, this seems to have produced the best lasting results. Newton and Faraday produced laws that are still useful today. Implicitly there was the ethic that science had a duty to explore as impartially as possible, to do otherwise was shameful.

Once science was funded in other ways - often by the state or NGO's - it decayed. Nowadays scientific organisations rarely publish results that are inconvenient for their big donors.

My belief is that large areas of science are simply wrong. In one sense this is exciting, but as someone who worked in science as a young man, I do feel sorry for what has happened. I left because I found the field of computer software more exciting, and looking back I'm glad I made that decision.

I could be more specific, but I don't want to tangle with the moderators here.

David

BTW, Jim has published a tremendous amount of material on his website(s), I'd encourage everyone here to explore this resource:

https://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/

Just for a starter, read the side panel on the front page of the above site entitled "Eminent Researchers".

David

[Ninshub]

Glad to have you back here contributing, Jim.

When people try to assess the validity of paranormal phenomena, it is important for them to understand that prescientific cultures were able to accumulate knowledge through empirical observations without the existence of a "scientific priesthood" of credentialed scientists. (If ancient people could, modern people can also.)

Examples of ancient but advanced technologies show this. And it is particularly emphasized when for many years the best science could do to explain the ancient technology was wrong.

The article linked below explains that the Romans knew how to make self-healing concrete that would resist cracking. Up until the last year or so, scientists misunderstood the method of producing the concrete and underestimated the Romans by attributing unexplained characteristics as irrelevant when they were actually the source of the extraordinary characteristics of the concrete.

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-finally-...s-of-years

If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimized over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product? There has to be more to this story. ...

https://www.sciencealert.com/we-finally-...s-of-years

If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimized over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product? There has to be more to this story. ...

Ah, the arrogance of modern scientists... so self-assured that they know better until other scientists show them indisputably that they were wrong.

The science is only as strong as the weakest link... just like anything else.