What Science Ain't

I sparked a bit of an argument on social media with a little jab at Bill Nye the Scientism Guy.

Bill Nye the Science Guy is a science expert in the sense that Larry the Cable Guy is cable expert.

People don't really like it when you attack their cherished sciensh celebrities. The reaction of those who chose to defend the attack was what we've come to expect: a discussion of credentials. For instance, because Nye is a degreed mechanical engineer, that makes him a qualified scientist. More than just a fictional character with a children's show, I suppose. But is he a scientist? What is a scientist? To find out, let's name the things we know aren't scientists and see where things start to get uncomfortable.

A tech junkie is not a scientist

There's a tendency for people to lump all technology in with science. For instance, people say that because engineering is a subset of science, engineers are scientists. But does working in technology make one a scientist? By that understanding, gadget gurus would have to be scientists, as well as mathematicians, etc. If all STEM is science, then why even have the TEM at all? It should just be S.

A book reader is not a scientist

Merely possessing knowledge does not make one a scientist. An idiot savant whose only skill is voracious reading skills coupled with perfect retainment might learn the entirety of some scientific discipline in a number of months. But that would not make him a scientist. Learning science does not count. I've taken quantum mechanics but no one pretends I'm a physicist.

A figure skater is not a scientist

Further, employing knowledge found from science does not make one a scientist. A figure skater might be a top-notch scholar, with a deep understanding of the laws of centripetal motion.  She might employ that knowledge to create visually stunning performances of her art. But that does not make her a scientist. An engineer is not a scientist just because he builds bridges. If they were, they'd have to build a series of spans at each crossing to determine which design & materials had the best results. But they don't do that. They build bridges using best design practices and knowledge previously acquired.

A teacher is not a scientist

Teaching is not science. Teaching is teaching. Science might be applied to teaching, but that is not the norm. Science is about discovering new information. Teaching is about passing the information down to others. Both are very important roles, but they are not the same. Just because Nye goes in front of kids and recreates science experiments does not make him a scientist any more than performing Beethoven makes a pianist a composer.

A computer scientist is not a scientist

The term science has been so abused that it cannot be trusted on sight. People have a tendency to latch on to the word in the belief that it will convey an air of legitimacy. But not much of what happens in the field of computer science is really science. The same can be said of political science and probably any field that feels compelled to include the word science. Computer science graduates understand the distinction and call themselves programmers or software engineers instead. Even within academia, they are more likely to refer to themselves as researchers than scientists.

A taxonomer is not a scientist

Here things start to get uncomfortable, as taxonomy is defined as a field of science. Is it really science? It doesn't do much to expand the field of human knowledge. Then again, organizing things allows for humans to perceive relationships they might otherwise miss. I would suggest that taxonomy can be a science, as long as it organizes observations against a testable theory. For instance, I might organize my record albums by the middle name of the drummer, but there is nothing to test. There is no underlying theory. I might theorize that all the K albums will be terrible, but testing random hypotheses probably doesn't constitute science.

On the other hand, organisms tend to be organized according to the theory of evolution. It is tested every time a new organism is discovered (does it fit in nicely or does it mess up the order?) and with the advent of new technologies, such as genomics. So a taxonomer might actually be a scientist, but we have a pretty good idea of when they are not.

A theoretician is not a scientist

Are theory guys scientists? What about philosophers and logicians? Our theory of science probably shouldn't exclude theoretical physicists, but what if it does? The job of the theorist is to create hypotheses. We might make a similar argument as we did of the taxonomer. Their work must be testable. String theory has lost support in the scientific community; no one believes it is a testable theory.

Can we apply the same requirement to the logician or the philosopher? I reckon there is no other way. Arm-chair philosophers might analyze their world view and come up with unique insights, but the process can only be called science if those insights are testable. In Make Predictions or STFU I implored anyone making social commentary to make predictions if they expect to be taken seriously. To be credible, one must be regularly proven correct, or show that they have modified their world view in response to poor predictions. This prediction-making is a poor man's science. Yes, it's prone to some confirmation bias, but formal science suffers that as well. Perhaps even more so, as disagreeing with the academic orthodoxy is a good way to sink a promising research career.

Bill Nye is not a scientist

Perhaps science is not really that complicated to define after all. Actions that expand or sharpen the collection of testable human knowledge is science. Everything else is something else. Acquiring scientific knowledge isn't science. Applying scientific knowledge isn't science. Teaching scientific knowledge isn't science. It would seem that there isn't anything that Bill Nye does that could actually be called science. Making and testing predictions on a blog is closer to science that what Bill Nye does, which is to apply pseudo-scientific rationale to preferred political and social objectives. We all tend to do it, but we don't all have a large platform to broadcast from or the veneer of scientific credibility. Really Bill Nye is a model for us of what not to be doing.

Science is a process. You are a scientist if you engage in science. Having a degree doesn't make you a scientist. Advocating science doesn't make you a scientist. However, to go back to my initial point, the question was never whether Nye is a credentialed scientist, or even whether he is a scientist at all. The question was whether he is a science expert. Can one be an expert in a field of which they do not participate? Yes, I think they can. Historians of medieval warfare don't normally engage in jousting tournaments to prove their legitimacy, for example.

So how do we know if Bill Nye is a science expert? Well if we could definitively answer that question then we could also answer a great number of more substantive problems. Like who to elect. The normal human intuition must suffice. Does he have great command of the science he discusses? Does he communicate that knowledge without contradicting himself? Is he able to make solid arguments in favor of the positions he advocates? The answer to all those questions, as shown in Bill Nye the Scientism Guy, is no he does not. He does not have the facts of climate change at his disposal. He deeply contradicts himself. And not only are his arguments easily refuted, they betray a novice grasp of the concepts he using. If he goes on Tucker Carlson specifically to talk about cognitive dissonance and then shows that he doesn't really understand the term, then what else is he talking about that he does not understand? 

It's interesting that Bill Nye is arguing that climate skeptics are suffering cognitive dissonance because they question the results of the academy, and so many people defend Nye because he is (allegedly) credentialed. It all sounds like the sort of dynamic that science was supposed to avoid. In the days before science, the epistemological orthodoxy was strictly controlled by the academy, which was basically the church. While the anti-science role of the church is somewhat exaggerated in the modern zeitgeist, it can't be denied that they kept a strong grip on what could be believed and what would be punished as heresy. The whole point of science was that knowledge became a matter of provable fact rather than theological or authoritarian belief. And yet here we are, being told that consensus of the academy is all the proof we need, and academic credentials are all that convey credibility. By the same people, mind you, who typically condemn religion because of it's enforced monopoly on intellectual discourse. It seems that too many of those people are less interested in destroying religion as a matter of  principle as they are in replacing it with their preferred religious orthodoxy, Scientism.

Adams' Razor

In one of Scott Adams' more viral blog posts, he described how one could determine who was hallucinating when some people observe some phenomenon and others do not. His method is similar to an application of Occam's razor. It states: whichever observation requires an unlikely addition to reality is the hallucination. He provides an example.

If a friend said he could see a pink elephant in the room, standing right in front of you, but you don’t see it, which one of you is hallucinating?

Answer: The one who sees the pink elephant is hallucinating.

And he's correct, but is there any great insight here? It seems to be a simple exercise of conditional probability. Given the odds of an elephant in the room are vanishingly small, as are the odds of there being a pink elephant, the odds of a pink elephant in the room are vanishingly low. So Adams's principle might be stated as:

Whichever of the conflicting observations is least likely is the hallucination.

And that just opens us up to the normal can-of-worms that probabilistic analysis can bring. "Least likely" according to what? Let's look at some of the complexities of applying Adams' Razor in the real world.

Patterns

The case that Adams is working towards is the divergent opinion in the US during the election as to whether Trump was a racist. While I agree with his conclusion - that those who saw rampant racism were hallucinating - I question his logic in getting there. What was being judged was a pattern of behavior, as opposed to a single concrete observation like an elephant in the room. Even proponents of the racism hypothesis could not point to any clear examples of racism; it was always some subtle pattern of racism that he was communicating.

There is no disputing that some are better at discerning patterns than others. It is the basis of the standard IQ test. Training, intuition, and observation skills also help. What locals see as normal volcanic events the vulcanologist sees as signs of imminent eruption. The shrewd investor sees an emerging bear market that others miss. The ability to see crime patterns others miss is the driving force behind such fictional characters as Sherlock Holmes, Columbo, and Monk. Yet Adam's asserts that if anyone doesn't share the observation of the phenomenon, then it almost certainly is false.

The fact that expertise does play a role in determining whether an observed pattern is authentic is all the wriggle room the Trump haters need to claim superiority. In their view they have a more sophisticated comprehension of racism. They are Sherlock Holmes, and the Trump electorate is the clueless constable. But which is more likely: that college-educated city-dwelling liberals possess powers of discrimination discernment to levels country bumpkins just can't comprehend, or that they are narcissists?

The question becomes: is half of America too inept to see racism that exists, or is the other half so deluded that they see racism that doesn't exist? It's not apparent that we can call one case more probable than the other. Perhaps I am in error by focusing too heavily on the observers rather than the observation. Which is more probable, that Trump is a racist, or that he is not? If the question is if Trump is an open racist, then the answer is obvious. As I mentioned in Religion of the Secular West, racism is the cardinal sin of our modern liberal society. That anyone would be openly racist while running for the presidency would be like vying for the papacy while denouncing Christianity. (Although to be fair the current pope is pretty close to that mark.)

The notion that he was openly racist fails Adams' Razor. Some people do claim that he's openly racist, but anytime I've pushed one of them on the issue they quickly fall back to the assertion that he is a covert racist. So what is more probable: that Trump is a covert racist or that he isn't? For starters we'd have to have some idea of how many people are actually racist and know they are but keep it hidden. How do you measure that? Who's going to confess to secretive racism in a survey? And what of the people who are racist and don't realize it, thinking they're not? White-bashing liberals would fall into this category. All this supposes we have some sort of agreed-upon definition for racism to begin with. Good luck with that. Many on the left purport that only whites can be racist. It uncertain how one might find common ground with blatant logical absurdity.

Determining whether someone is covertly racist is impossible to model because we have no way of knowing how many people are racist to begin with. We don't really know how surprising the addition to reality is. The response one might give is that it doesn't matter how improbable the addition is, just that it is there. But that ignores the implicit addition of the other case. In our example, the media incessantly portrayed Trump as having racial bias. If the addition of Trump racism is false, it implies the addition of massive media bias. Which is more unlikely, that a man is biased, or an entire industry?

The only thing here that is "almost certain not to be real" is our ability to quantify any of this. It all comes down to human intuition. And we are back to where we started. Some people will make an honest conclusion after weighing all the possible evidence, and others will start with the conclusion and concoct supporting evidence and discard all conflicting evidence. Adams' approach assumes the Razor wielder is of the first variety, but those people are hardly the problem.

Perspectives

Perspective can skew the relevant probabilities of the observer.

Adams' probability rule doesn't help here since a giant six lying on the ground is no more likely than a giant nine. Let's look at a more complicated example. In the runup to the election those observing the mainstream media were barraged with propaganda and slander against one candidate. This had an effect on the perception of reality. Voters were less likely to admit they were Trump supporters for fear of social stigma, they were less likely to hold the opinion that Trump would win, and the media was more likely to err on the side of skewing the results to favor his opponent. The resulting disparity of their perspective with reality can be seen here.

How would we begin to apply the Adams formula if we were still in the delusion timeframe? Which is more likely, that there was mass co-ordinated propaganda from America's most trusted news sources, or that Trump was a hopeless candidate? From an Occam's razor viewpoint the latter would be the preferred choice. The model of propaganda and collusion is inherently much more complex than the model of Trump ineptitude. It requires a surprising addition to reality: mass collusion between the media outlets and the Democratic party. I don't know how to organize the situation in a way that Adams' Razor gives the proper outcome.

Predilections

A person's own biases can skew what they determine to be the addition to reality. For instance Adams asserts that Trump being racist would be an addition to the world. But it is really an addition to his generic view of the world. It reflects his own belief: that the default state of a human is not to be racist. He probably is not racist and projects his own qualities onto the world. However, many in this country believe that there is widespread institutional racism, that all economic inequality stems from oppression, and that whites are inherently privileged and racist. For those people, a white billionaire like Trump being racist would not at all be a surprising addition to their generic take on reality. Tolerance would be the "unlikely addition to their reality."

Principles

Advances of human understanding alter the probabilities afforded to different observations. In prehistoric times, a group observation of angry deities hurling thunderbolts during a storm would be considered entirely probable, even inevitable. Today's understanding of weather science would compel us to assign very low probability to such an observation, if any at all. Such understanding is not evenly distributed. There are many who remain superstitious enough to find the observation probable.

Similarly if a group of astronomers observed slight discrepancies in star positions based on the time of year, the assigned probability of the observation being considered accurate would depend on whether the Theory of Special Relativity had yet been discovered.

Thus we should see that Adams' Razor doesn't give us any promise of absolute truth. Probabilities are computed in reference to the observer.

Conclusion

Adam's asserts that if there are two conflicting observations, the one with the unlikely addition to reality is the hallucination. The term hallucination doesn't add much. It could be restated as given two conflicting observations, the one with the unlikely addition to reality is incorrect. We know the term unlikely throws probabilistic monkey wrenches into our attempts at objectivity, and we've shown here that the term addition is similarly prone to be subjective. Ultimately the Adams Razor boils down to something like this.

The more probable observation is almost certainly the correct one.

Not only does the principle not gain us anything, it does away with the benefits of probability to begin with. Adams' Razor was intended as sage wisdom from a self-styled expert of hypnosis and hallucination, but as an epistemological tool it really provides nothing of benefit. It is merely a crude rule of thumb for those with nothing else to go on, not a method for achieving objective truth.

Hypocrisy and the 4 Stages of Anti-Progressivism

The 3 Stage of Anti-Progressivism

One of the things I have been fueled by in the last year or so is in pointing out the hypocrisy of the left. I always had believed the left vs. right paradigm to be a battle of principles, but in a year that view has been shattered. The progression is something like this:

1. I disagree with the principles of the left.
2. The principles of the left are inconsistent.
3. The left has no principles.

Somone in Stage 1 will point out the flaws of liberal ideology. At Stage 2 all energy will be spent showing the contradictions of the left. That is, pointing out its hypocrisy. Stage 3 will proceed the same, although with increased exasperation. Before I proceed to Stage 4, let's look at what hypocrisy is, what it isn't, and how someone could erroneously come to the conclusion of hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy

Let's look at the two different logical predicates for hypocrisy. Let B be a belief, and a and b be actions or statements. At it's most basic description hypocrisy is this

B  ∧ (a → ¬B)

This would read like "you state a belief in B, yet action a indicates no belief in B." The predicate reduces to  B ∧ ¬B. But B  and ¬B cannot both be true. Thus the contradiction. In practice hypocrisy claims often look like this:

(a → B)  ∧ (b → ¬B)

This would read as "your action a implies a belief B for some principle, but your action b indicates a lack of belief B. This is used to suggest the subject only uses principles when convenient, which would make them not really principles at all, but just crude political weapons.

False hypocrisy is where a predicate of the hypocrisy formula is not actually true. This occurs because it is either false that a → B or it is false that b → ¬B. This is an informal logical fallacy because the predicates are logically consistent, it is the underlying assumptions that are false. The implication that the action implies some belief is at risk of hasty generalization.

Let's use an example of a false implication. I am opposed to the Roe v. Wade ruling. This is a. Almost anyone who hears that will make the assumption a → B₁ , where B₁  is the belief that women should not have legal access to abortions. This could be the basis to make all sorts of hypocrisy claims. But in reality a → B₂ , where B₂ is the belief that Supreme Court rulings have no right to contravene the 10^th Amendment. It's really a parliamentary argument rather than a moralistic one.

Group hypocrisy is a bit more complicated than individual hypocrisy. We'll use the notation G to denote a group, and G₁ to denote a subgroup of group G. We'll use G as a function, so that G(a) means "G does a" and G(B) means "G believes B". We'll also use the function P(G) to mean "the group G is principled."

The false group hypocrisy fallacy to watch out for then is this:

(G₁(a)→ B)  ∧ (G₂(b)→ ¬B) → ¬G(P)

The reason this is a fallacy is because it is entirely possible for different beliefs to exist within a larger group. For instance I am conservative but also an atheist who isn't opposed to legal abortion. At least 90% of claims of conservative hypocrisy I encounter don't even apply to me. We must be careful when making those claims too. Many people who call themselves liberals are really Classical Liberals. They fundamentally have more in common with mainstream modern conservatives than they do with modern liberals (Progressives), they just often don't realize it. There is a growing subgroup of conservatives that reject Classical Liberalism as a reaction against Progressivism. They believe Classical Liberalism naturally leads way to Progressivism, which ironically is the strongest force destroying Classical Liberalism in western civilization. (Or as Stefan Molyneux calls it, civilization.) This subgroup is generally termed the Alt-Right, or the Neoreaction. Modern mainstream conservatives are trying to figure out how to have Classical Liberalism without Progressivism. The Alt-Right is for those who have become cynical of liberalism altogether. Sorry for the tangent, but as you can see applying broad generalizations for the purpose of proving hypocrisy is prone to the error of overgeneralizing a subgroup to the larger group.

Stage 4 of anti-Progressivism

Stage 4 is the realization that modern liberals aren't entirely unprincipled, but that they have one overriding principle that supersedes all others. From this point on in my blog I will refer to it as Antidiscrimination, The Holy Principle, or just The Principle (because Antidiscrimination is a lot to type). 

I've finally stepped into Stage 4, largely thanks to this lecture filmed a decade ago. The lecture is only 30 minutes long and is highly recommended.

I won't get too much into the details of Antidiscrimination, as that video lays it out very well. But do keep in mind that each Stage of Anti-Progressivism does not invalidate the prior stages. Antidiscrimination may be the Holiest of Principles, but still they violate it whenever it is convenient. They still discriminate when it comes to gender rights movements. SJWs I argue with on facebook almost always discriminate when they make mention of the fact that I'm white, as if it invalidates the arguments I make. They discriminate when they call white student unions racist, while permitting them for every other ethnicity. In general they discriminate every time they choose victim and oppressor identities.

If they universally applied the principle it would be one thing. But Antidiscrimination translates to, "Everything I don't like is caused by discrimination, and nothing I like is discrimination." It's not really a principle because it is entirely subjective and itself subservient to Intersectionality philosophy (which is itself subservient to an identity-based culture war of which the good and evil sides have been determined beforehand).

Moving beyond Hypocrisy

My major reason for writing is to encourage others in the right and alt-right to move beyond hypocrisy. You can point out the hypocrisy of the left all day long. Frankly at this point it doesn't matter. People on the left are largely immune to these logical arguments. If pointing out their hypocrisy was effective it would have worked already. The battle is always for the middle, and I'm not sure how effective it is either. When people on forums such the r/the_donald announce they're changing sides, abandoning liberalism, it is almost never, "I read some compelling logic that changed my mind." It is more like "the left has started doing things that completely disgust me." It is always an emotional decision first, rationale comes after.

Thus pointing out leftist hypocrisy may serve no purpose other than its therapeutic value to those of us so disturbed by them. I'm not sure it gets us anywhere. If our goal is to convert those in the center, we will get more success from antagonizing the left, to make them even more extreme. Keep calm and fan the flames of their insanity.

False advocacy fallacy

The false advocacy fallacy occurs when an argument in support of a conclusion is taken to mean advocacy for that conclusion. I don't know if this fallacy is one that has been previously described, but I could not find a similar one.

At it's simplest it can be described as

P(c) → Q(c)

where P(c) means an argument in favor of c and Q(c) is an advocacy for c. However we can show it is really invalidated by usage of the intentionality fallacy, which is the conclusion that an argument can be invalidated based on the intentions of the speaker. It can be represented as a hasty generalization, which is

S(a) → A(a) 

Let's read this as some people do the action a, therefore all people do a. In this case the action is never allowing oneself to argue against their intended conclusion. If we reduce the some to just one, then it becomes a matter of psychological projection.

I(a) → A(a)

I do a, so everyone does a. "No one would make an argument that weakens the case for the conclusion they prefer, because I wouldn't do that." Putting that together, we get the entire propositional logic of the fallacy.

P(c) ^ ( I(a) → A(a) ) → Q(c)

Read this as "the person made an argument supporting a, and because I would never argue against a conclusion I was advocating for, thus no one does that, it means the person is advocating for c."

One thing you'll notice is that the false advocacy will often be used in conjunction with yet another intentionality fallacy in an attempt to invalidate the speaker. "If you argue in support of c, you advocate for c. If you advocate for c, then your arguments in favor of c can't be trusted, so your argument is invalid." This chain of logic I would dub something like the universal nullification fallacy, because if it was sound, it would mean that any argument for any conclusion would be inherently invalid.

Example 1

Although I am not anti-abortion, for reasons stated in previous posts, I tend to find myself arguing against pro-abortion people online because the arguments used to support abortion are usually error-riddled. Even more erroneous are their arguments used to discredit pro-lifers. Immediately I get labeled as a Bible-thumping zealot, even though I don't take an anti-abortion stance and don't practice as a Christian. 

The pro-choice crowd set up this lovely bubble around themselves. "Anyone who argues against me is a hateful religious nut, so their arguments can be easily dismissed."

Example 2

I was having a debate related to Trump on facebook with liberal friend A, who was challenging some post I had made. I stood firmly by my stance and argued in defense of it. At some point liberal friend B chimed in that while he doesn't like Trump in general, in this particular argument he believed I had the correct stance. B is one I frequency debate with on facebook and we are able to get into the weeds on things without getting upset. After he sided with me, I made a concession on the issue, with the intent of showing that I could understand why a person would take up the opposing issue.

A took that as an opportunity to leverage against me, and I went back to defending my original premise. A then got frustrated, said I was constantly changing my stance, and stopped participating.

This was the advocacy fallacy in action. To A it wasn't that I was providing nuanced argument (which I felt comfortable doing after B joined in). To A, I was actually switching my advocacy away from my original stance when I made the concession, and then when I again defended my original stance, it meant I had switched back again.

A probably never makes arguments against the preferred conclusion. In hindsight I probably should have seen it coming and could have prevented a friend from getting frustrated. A was doing what so many people do. When they make an argument that I successfully counter, they will never admit that the argument was lost, but shift the goalposts. So if they say Trump is a racist and you provide compelling evidence he isn't, they won't say, "maybe you're right." They'll say, "well he's unqualified." Basically changing the subject entirely. I encounter this over and over.

In my conversation, perhaps intuitively I knew not to make concessions with a person who was not making their own. It wasn't until B joined in that the dynamic was changed in a way that frustrated A. Something to keep in mind is that while everyone says the want people they debate with to be capable of nuanced discussion, those who fall pray to the advocacy fallacy (which is quite common) will actually become annoyed with those who can make any sort of concession without changing their conclusion.