6 ms·

Keep Science Irrational

30 points by MurizS 6y ago

a-nikolaev 6y ago
Look, elegance and beauty can be used at the search stage, when looking for a better model describing reality: - Can I make this equation simpler? - Can I make this model more general? - Can I make the formulas easier to deal with (and so the theory more useful)? These are all valid search paths when developing the theory. But the ultimate test is how well the theory matches the experiment. In fact, programmers know this very well. We avoid spaghetti or giant-ball-of-mud code, we try to express our ideas clearly so we can be more certain that the program works as expected, and it does what it's supposed to do. We use elegance and beauty as a guide when writing and improving out code. However, the ultimate test is whether the program works as expected or not. No matter how elegant a wrong program is, it is still wrong. Wrong but elegant code can be an intermediate step to the final correct code, but it's not the final goal. The same with the scientific method. You can guide your research with elegance in mind. (At the end of the day, simpler more elegant models are nicer to work with when developing your theory and when applying it in practice!) But the ultimate test is the experiment. And also, if your theory is elegant but untestable (unfalsifiable), the theory is not scientific. It might be completely wrong. As useful as it is, even as a search heuristic elegance might be misleading. Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder ( https://backreaction.blogspot.com/ https://backreaction.blogspot.com/ ) wrote a book on how the search for beauty and mathematical elegance led modern fundamental Physics to its currently rather unfruitful state.
- derbOac 6y ago
  I found the article a little strange as well, and I'm not really sure exactly what it's point is -- it seems to argue one thing but then another. As for the underlying issue, I do think it points to something important, but only at certain stages, as you say. A model inconsistent with empirical data is not likely to gain traction in the absence of further data. However, there are times when a set of models are equally consistent with the data, and it's not even entirely clear how to empirically distinguish between them. I think in those cases, aesthetic considerations do often come into play. Also, when the evidence slightly favors one model over others, and is also more aesthetically appealing, it tends to amplify perceptions of that evidence even further, in a way that's not logically warranted. The deeper question is what does it mean for a theory to be aesthetically beautiful? Lots of times, as you're pointing to, it means the theory is simpler or more parsimonious, or something along those lines. I don't actually think that's negligible as a consideration, as it probably means the theory is more powerful, in an information-theoretic sense. If you have two theories, and both match the data well, but one is very baroque and convoluted, and the other is extremely simple, it could be that the convoluted one is correct, but the simpler one is doing so with fewer contortions, it has more degrees of freedom. I also agree there's a deeper issue about meta-science, along the lines of Feyerabend, that was missed as well in the article. Scientists tend to be blind to their own role in things, as if they're neutral perfectly objective entities. Although this is a good ideal, it never works out in practice (or almost never so), and ignoring it often causes more problems than it solves. I think what Feyerabend was pointing to in part is a lack of meta-scientific evidence for anything in particular, and an awareness that "all models are wrong" applies at the meta-scientific level as well.
fuoqi 6y ago
It's a weird article. It's a matter of priorities, a theory can be as beautiful as anything you have seen, but if it does not have any predictive power, then for "hard" science (i.e. physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) its value is almost zero. "Almost" because interesting ideas sometimes can be developed in unexpected directions and even in different fields. And "beauty" and "elegance" are certainly important, they just come after an ability to predict. Even if this ability is yet unclear, scientific community is open to investigation of promising "elegant" ideas (e.g. see history of the string theory). In the worst case scenario we get an interesting branch of mathematics. I prefer to look at it at from the following angle: at extreme we have simply collection of experimental records. By accumulating those records we describe reality in the most straightforward way. "Laws" are the way to compress those observations. As an input of this algorithm we have experimental conditions, and as output experimental results. As a byproduct of this compression we get an ability to predict with a certain confidence what will happen in future experiments. "Beauty", "elegance", "compactness", "unity" are subjective ways to measure quality of this compression. Quality can be measured using different metrics: size of the algorithm (i.e. number of laws and constants in them), information loss (i.e. its precision), computational efficiency (i.e. an ability to compute prediction). This way we can view Newton laws as an efficient lossy algorithm, while quantum mechanics are near lossless, but more complex and computationally difficult.
ohduran 6y ago
The author managed to write an article on the problems of scientific method without even mentioning Paul Feyerabend's "anything goes". He didn't mention either the fantastic "Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder, in which this precise problem is fully addressed in a manner that uninformed people can grasp. No mention of Karl Popper and the philosophy behind why on Earth do we use data to begin with. This article is, to say the least, incomplete.
- a-nikolaev 6y ago
  The author confuses the value of elegance in scientific research and scientific correctness. Many scientists like to drink coffee when doing their research, and it helps. But we don't judge their theories on the basis of whose coffee was the tastiest..
- atemerev 6y ago
  But Sabine is the direct antagonist here. The point of this article is exactly opposite of what Dr. Hossenfelder usually says. Which is a good thing; science benefits from the conflict of opposing points.
  - ohduran 6y ago
    Agreed! That's precisely why it's important that she (or someone supporting the "against" argument) is mentioned: it keeps us honest. Which is the whole point about the scientific method, by the way; "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
    - atemerev 6y ago
      I agree; she at least needed to be reviewed, as the principal source of the opposing point of view.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  > No mention of Karl Popper and the philosophy behind why on Earth do we use data to begin with. My favourite author's favourite author.
op03 6y ago
Rationality has an upper bound that gets hit when dealing with certain types of problems, while irrationality causes progress with those same types of problems. That won Herbert Simon his Nobel Prize - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon Worth reading about his work (esp as more and more people wrangle with issues way past the bounds of a 6 inch chimp brain) As we better understand the spectrum of personality types in the population and the problem types, we better understand who needs to be propped up for their irrationality and who does for their rationality. Misunderstanding this is the reason for a whole lot of resource and energy wastage.
cycomanic 6y ago
The article is really weird. First it alleges that we scientists only use "beauty" when talking about theory, but not in scientific publications. That claim by itself is dubious at best, even his examples about the standard model or LIGO contradict it, all the theory that was done before the experiments (and the following experiments) where in a way motivated by "beauty" and they could be published, i.e. it was not like nothing was published until we had experimental evidence. String theory is another counter example (although somewhat more controversial). He then makes the claim that using experimental facts be the only judge of a usefulness of a theory is somehow detrimental (without actually making an argument). Finally at the end of the article he directly contradicts this claim using his LIGO example. So I'm a bit lost what the author wants to tell us. Yes theoretical beauty is a motivator for pursuing experimental evidence. Unlike in previous centuries where theory was often trying to explain known experimental phenomena, it is often theory now that directs experimental science. In the end however, if a scientific theory is useful for science, is based on if it can accurately predict reality (as measured in experiments), otherwise it might be very elegant math, but not science. To make an counterpoint, nobody would argue we should accept a scientific theory that directly contradicts experiments, even if it was extremely elegant.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  > The article is really weird. I noticed that too. A straw man battling an Oedipus complex that wants to have its cake and eat it too.
- T-A 6y ago
  > I'm a bit lost what the author wants to tell us He wants to tell you this: "I conjecture, modern science arose in the 17th century, in the course of the so-called Scientiﬁc Revolution, precisely because it stumbled upon the extraordinary motivating power of ‘only empirical evidence counts’ – a story I tell in my book The Knowledge Machine (2020)." It's a book ad.
Barrin92 6y ago
I consider Feyerabend's Against Method to be one of the most important books I've ever read. The article primarily addresses beauty as an important feature of science (and it probably is, as Tupolev said, "an ugly plane won't fly") but one can go much farther. Not only is beauty valid in science, anything that advances science is. Epistemological anarchy is what we should strive for, because everything else inhibits science. In a sense the irony is directly visible in the modern scientific attitude. Empirical data and experimentation are supposed to reign supreme, the only thing that is verboten is experimentation with the scientific doctrine itself, which is supposed to be taken almost on faith, full of complex rituals that everyone needs to abide by. The mainstream story about Galileo often implies that it was the sinister church at odds with the enlightened scientist. But the reality is much different. It wasn't just the church, but actually also establishment science at the time that was very unconvinced. Galileo's heliocentric worldview could not account for his own empirical observations. (Diffraction was not yet known, so he estimated that observed stars were closer by a factor that was off by a thousand, prompting everyone else to ask why, if his theories are true, observed stars don't change drastically in size if the earth indeed moves around the sun. He didn't really help his case by essentially writing what you could today call trollish treatises in which he was just mocking everyone for their criticism. But as it turns out in the end he was right, despite what (even relatively sound) science had to say. It shows that science is fundamentally uneven, that ignoring existing 'truths' for the purpose of radical shifts, even for dumb reasons, might advance science.
- osullivj 6y ago
  Agree: Against Method is a great work, and the argument for "anything goes" is compelling. IMHO the core argument can be used to dismiss software dev methodologies too. I recommend Feyerabend's Farewell to Reason as well.
- dawg- 6y ago
  I am reading this right now. A lot of awesome insight in the book. I just can't help but get the feeling that 90% of it is going over my head without having read Kuhn, Popper, etc.
  - 6y ago
bondarchuk 6y ago
I feel like a bit of a dick pointing this out, but I think everyone should realize this magazine (as well as Nautil.us by the way) is funded by the Templeton Foundation, which has quite a strong focus on religion (eh, sorry, "the intersection of religion and science"). On the one hand I feel it shouldn't really matter and we can all judge an article by its contents, but on the other hand some of the articles that show up here are really just a religious wolf in a scientific sheep's clothing, and I don't think many here would give them more than 2 seconds of their day if they knew this upfront.
- acqq 6y ago
  Yes, and with that attitude they and the people that write for them to match the agenda aren't different from the producer of "Ancient Aliens" who has a very specific agenda: to train the viewers to not believe the science (1) and "look for God", in his own words: "It’s really a show about looking for God. Science would have you believe we are the result of nothing more than a chance assemblage of matter. The real truth is we don’t know." It's one thing to positively promote your beliefs, what's from a humanistic point very wrong is intentionally sowing confusion and spreading doubt in what is already known (and demotivating people to even attempt to learn something right). Time and again we see how the people eventually suffer from such actions. Also, "If Life Were Only Like This" (2) I wish I could pull Thomas Kuhn to every writer who mentions him around just to promote his own agenda: "I heard what you're saying, you know nothing of my work, how you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing." 1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/style/ancient-aliens.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/style/ancient-aliens.html 2) https://www.openculture.com/2017/05/woody-allen-gets-marshall-mcluhan-to-put-a-pontificating-professor-in-his-place.html https://www.openculture.com/2017/05/woody-allen-gets-marshal...
  - paganel 6y ago
    > The real truth is we don’t know I'm an agnostic person but isn't that the present (scientific) consensus right now? That doesn't necessarily mean that there was a "God" that was behind of it all, but I was left with the impression that the whole "everything happened by chance and chance only" discussion was more common 15-20 years ago compared to now, when we have other agnostic people seriously proposing the "we live in a simulation" theory or the "multiverse/multi-world" theories, both options which are not necessarily random (especially the "simulation" one). Just to make clear, I'm no scientist and I didn't follow this conversation ("what are the origins of the world/universe?") that closely because I don't find it to be that interesting, so if I'm talking non-sense maybe some other more knowledgeable people can correct me.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
I read a handful of paragraphs, but this article is doing the annoying thing where it's deliberately concealing the meat of its argument from you. The argument has something to do with science 'rejecting beauty', or something? It's not super clear what the point is, or what reasoning supports the point. I find that most of the time, authors that do this are doing so knowing that their argument isn't actually very strong, so confusing the reader is a better strategy than straightforwardly convincing them.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
Like most aeon articles, it looks like it's trying to slightly push his readers to believe idiotic things without flat out saying it. I'll keep trusting science backed by data.
- dawg- 6y ago
  I was pretty frustrated with Aeon until I realized I was trying to read it like a peer-reviewed journal instead of what it is. It's a forum for scientists and philosophers to speculate freely without any rigor whatsoever. They are developing ideas and theories in a more free-form way than would be accepted in a more rigorous journal. That kind of thing has tremendous value - but only if you don't get it confused for "real science".

30 points by MurizS 6y ago

Look, elegance and beauty can be used at the search stage, when looking for a better model describing reality: - Can I make this equation simpler? - Can I make this model more general? - Can I make the formulas easier to deal with (and so the theory more useful)? These are all valid search paths when developing the theory. But the ultimate test is how well the theory matches the experiment. In fact, programmers know this very well. We avoid spaghetti or giant-ball-of-mud code, we try to express our ideas clearly so we can be more certain that the program works as expected, and it does what it's supposed to do. We use elegance and beauty as a guide when writing and improving out code. However, the ultimate test is whether the program works as expected or not. No matter how elegant a wrong program is, it is still wrong. Wrong but elegant code can be an intermediate step to the final correct code, but it's not the final goal. The same with the scientific method. You can guide your research with elegance in mind. (At the end of the day, simpler more elegant models are nicer to work with when developing your theory and when applying it in practice!) But the ultimate test is the experiment. And also, if your theory is elegant but untestable (unfalsifiable), the theory is not scientific. It might be completely wrong. As useful as it is, even as a search heuristic elegance might be misleading. Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder ( https://backreaction.blogspot.com/ https://backreaction.blogspot.com/ ) wrote a book on how the search for beauty and mathematical elegance led modern fundamental Physics to its currently rather unfruitful state.

derbOac 6y ago
I found the article a little strange as well, and I'm not really sure exactly what it's point is -- it seems to argue one thing but then another. As for the underlying issue, I do think it points to something important, but only at certain stages, as you say. A model inconsistent with empirical data is not likely to gain traction in the absence of further data. However, there are times when a set of models are equally consistent with the data, and it's not even entirely clear how to empirically distinguish between them. I think in those cases, aesthetic considerations do often come into play. Also, when the evidence slightly favors one model over others, and is also more aesthetically appealing, it tends to amplify perceptions of that evidence even further, in a way that's not logically warranted. The deeper question is what does it mean for a theory to be aesthetically beautiful? Lots of times, as you're pointing to, it means the theory is simpler or more parsimonious, or something along those lines. I don't actually think that's negligible as a consideration, as it probably means the theory is more powerful, in an information-theoretic sense. If you have two theories, and both match the data well, but one is very baroque and convoluted, and the other is extremely simple, it could be that the convoluted one is correct, but the simpler one is doing so with fewer contortions, it has more degrees of freedom. I also agree there's a deeper issue about meta-science, along the lines of Feyerabend, that was missed as well in the article. Scientists tend to be blind to their own role in things, as if they're neutral perfectly objective entities. Although this is a good ideal, it never works out in practice (or almost never so), and ignoring it often causes more problems than it solves. I think what Feyerabend was pointing to in part is a lack of meta-scientific evidence for anything in particular, and an awareness that "all models are wrong" applies at the meta-scientific level as well.

fuoqi 6y ago

It's a weird article. It's a matter of priorities, a theory can be as beautiful as anything you have seen, but if it does not have any predictive power, then for "hard" science (i.e. physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) its value is almost zero. "Almost" because interesting ideas sometimes can be developed in unexpected directions and even in different fields. And "beauty" and "elegance" are certainly important, they just come after an ability to predict. Even if this ability is yet unclear, scientific community is open to investigation of promising "elegant" ideas (e.g. see history of the string theory). In the worst case scenario we get an interesting branch of mathematics. I prefer to look at it at from the following angle: at extreme we have simply collection of experimental records. By accumulating those records we describe reality in the most straightforward way. "Laws" are the way to compress those observations. As an input of this algorithm we have experimental conditions, and as output experimental results. As a byproduct of this compression we get an ability to predict with a certain confidence what will happen in future experiments. "Beauty", "elegance", "compactness", "unity" are subjective ways to measure quality of this compression. Quality can be measured using different metrics: size of the algorithm (i.e. number of laws and constants in them), information loss (i.e. its precision), computational efficiency (i.e. an ability to compute prediction). This way we can view Newton laws as an efficient lossy algorithm, while quantum mechanics are near lossless, but more complex and computationally difficult.

ohduran 6y ago

The author managed to write an article on the problems of scientific method without even mentioning Paul Feyerabend's "anything goes". He didn't mention either the fantastic "Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder, in which this precise problem is fully addressed in a manner that uninformed people can grasp. No mention of Karl Popper and the philosophy behind why on Earth do we use data to begin with. This article is, to say the least, incomplete.

a-nikolaev 6y ago
The author confuses the value of elegance in scientific research and scientific correctness. Many scientists like to drink coffee when doing their research, and it helps. But we don't judge their theories on the basis of whose coffee was the tastiest..
atemerev 6y ago
But Sabine is the direct antagonist here. The point of this article is exactly opposite of what Dr. Hossenfelder usually says. Which is a good thing; science benefits from the conflict of opposing points.
- ohduran 6y ago
  Agreed! That's precisely why it's important that she (or someone supporting the "against" argument) is mentioned: it keeps us honest. Which is the whole point about the scientific method, by the way; "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
  - atemerev 6y ago
    I agree; she at least needed to be reviewed, as the principal source of the opposing point of view.
vagrantJin 6y ago
> No mention of Karl Popper and the philosophy behind why on Earth do we use data to begin with. My favourite author's favourite author.

op03 6y ago

Rationality has an upper bound that gets hit when dealing with certain types of problems, while irrationality causes progress with those same types of problems. That won Herbert Simon his Nobel Prize - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon Worth reading about his work (esp as more and more people wrangle with issues way past the bounds of a 6 inch chimp brain) As we better understand the spectrum of personality types in the population and the problem types, we better understand who needs to be propped up for their irrationality and who does for their rationality. Misunderstanding this is the reason for a whole lot of resource and energy wastage.

cycomanic 6y ago

The article is really weird. First it alleges that we scientists only use "beauty" when talking about theory, but not in scientific publications. That claim by itself is dubious at best, even his examples about the standard model or LIGO contradict it, all the theory that was done before the experiments (and the following experiments) where in a way motivated by "beauty" and they could be published, i.e. it was not like nothing was published until we had experimental evidence. String theory is another counter example (although somewhat more controversial). He then makes the claim that using experimental facts be the only judge of a usefulness of a theory is somehow detrimental (without actually making an argument). Finally at the end of the article he directly contradicts this claim using his LIGO example. So I'm a bit lost what the author wants to tell us. Yes theoretical beauty is a motivator for pursuing experimental evidence. Unlike in previous centuries where theory was often trying to explain known experimental phenomena, it is often theory now that directs experimental science. In the end however, if a scientific theory is useful for science, is based on if it can accurately predict reality (as measured in experiments), otherwise it might be very elegant math, but not science. To make an counterpoint, nobody would argue we should accept a scientific theory that directly contradicts experiments, even if it was extremely elegant.

wombatmobile 6y ago
> The article is really weird. I noticed that too. A straw man battling an Oedipus complex that wants to have its cake and eat it too.
T-A 6y ago
> I'm a bit lost what the author wants to tell us He wants to tell you this: "I conjecture, modern science arose in the 17th century, in the course of the so-called Scientiﬁc Revolution, precisely because it stumbled upon the extraordinary motivating power of ‘only empirical evidence counts’ – a story I tell in my book The Knowledge Machine (2020)." It's a book ad.

Barrin92 6y ago

I consider Feyerabend's Against Method to be one of the most important books I've ever read. The article primarily addresses beauty as an important feature of science (and it probably is, as Tupolev said, "an ugly plane won't fly") but one can go much farther. Not only is beauty valid in science, anything that advances science is. Epistemological anarchy is what we should strive for, because everything else inhibits science. In a sense the irony is directly visible in the modern scientific attitude. Empirical data and experimentation are supposed to reign supreme, the only thing that is verboten is experimentation with the scientific doctrine itself, which is supposed to be taken almost on faith, full of complex rituals that everyone needs to abide by. The mainstream story about Galileo often implies that it was the sinister church at odds with the enlightened scientist. But the reality is much different. It wasn't just the church, but actually also establishment science at the time that was very unconvinced. Galileo's heliocentric worldview could not account for his own empirical observations. (Diffraction was not yet known, so he estimated that observed stars were closer by a factor that was off by a thousand, prompting everyone else to ask why, if his theories are true, observed stars don't change drastically in size if the earth indeed moves around the sun. He didn't really help his case by essentially writing what you could today call trollish treatises in which he was just mocking everyone for their criticism. But as it turns out in the end he was right, despite what (even relatively sound) science had to say. It shows that science is fundamentally uneven, that ignoring existing 'truths' for the purpose of radical shifts, even for dumb reasons, might advance science.

osullivj 6y ago
Agree: Against Method is a great work, and the argument for "anything goes" is compelling. IMHO the core argument can be used to dismiss software dev methodologies too. I recommend Feyerabend's Farewell to Reason as well.
dawg- 6y ago
I am reading this right now. A lot of awesome insight in the book. I just can't help but get the feeling that 90% of it is going over my head without having read Kuhn, Popper, etc.
- 6y ago

bondarchuk 6y ago

I feel like a bit of a dick pointing this out, but I think everyone should realize this magazine (as well as Nautil.us by the way) is funded by the Templeton Foundation, which has quite a strong focus on religion (eh, sorry, "the intersection of religion and science"). On the one hand I feel it shouldn't really matter and we can all judge an article by its contents, but on the other hand some of the articles that show up here are really just a religious wolf in a scientific sheep's clothing, and I don't think many here would give them more than 2 seconds of their day if they knew this upfront.

acqq 6y ago
Yes, and with that attitude they and the people that write for them to match the agenda aren't different from the producer of "Ancient Aliens" who has a very specific agenda: to train the viewers to not believe the science (1) and "look for God", in his own words: "It’s really a show about looking for God. Science would have you believe we are the result of nothing more than a chance assemblage of matter. The real truth is we don’t know." It's one thing to positively promote your beliefs, what's from a humanistic point very wrong is intentionally sowing confusion and spreading doubt in what is already known (and demotivating people to even attempt to learn something right). Time and again we see how the people eventually suffer from such actions. Also, "If Life Were Only Like This" (2) I wish I could pull Thomas Kuhn to every writer who mentions him around just to promote his own agenda: "I heard what you're saying, you know nothing of my work, how you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing." 1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/style/ancient-aliens.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/style/ancient-aliens.html 2) https://www.openculture.com/2017/05/woody-allen-gets-marshall-mcluhan-to-put-a-pontificating-professor-in-his-place.html https://www.openculture.com/2017/05/woody-allen-gets-marshal...
- paganel 6y ago
  > The real truth is we don’t know I'm an agnostic person but isn't that the present (scientific) consensus right now? That doesn't necessarily mean that there was a "God" that was behind of it all, but I was left with the impression that the whole "everything happened by chance and chance only" discussion was more common 15-20 years ago compared to now, when we have other agnostic people seriously proposing the "we live in a simulation" theory or the "multiverse/multi-world" theories, both options which are not necessarily random (especially the "simulation" one). Just to make clear, I'm no scientist and I didn't follow this conversation ("what are the origins of the world/universe?") that closely because I don't find it to be that interesting, so if I'm talking non-sense maybe some other more knowledgeable people can correct me.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

I read a handful of paragraphs, but this article is doing the annoying thing where it's deliberately concealing the meat of its argument from you. The argument has something to do with science 'rejecting beauty', or something? It's not super clear what the point is, or what reasoning supports the point. I find that most of the time, authors that do this are doing so knowing that their argument isn't actually very strong, so confusing the reader is a better strategy than straightforwardly convincing them.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

Like most aeon articles, it looks like it's trying to slightly push his readers to believe idiotic things without flat out saying it. I'll keep trusting science backed by data.

dawg- 6y ago
I was pretty frustrated with Aeon until I realized I was trying to read it like a peer-reviewed journal instead of what it is. It's a forum for scientists and philosophers to speculate freely without any rigor whatsoever. They are developing ideas and theories in a more free-form way than would be accepted in a more rigorous journal. That kind of thing has tremendous value - but only if you don't get it confused for "real science".