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You do see the irony in criticizing a study for its imperfection when you yourself rely on nothing more than your personal guesstimate of what "most people" thi

You do see the irony in criticizing a study for its imperfection when you yourself rely on nothing more than your personal guesstimate of what "most people" think and a just-so story about the possible influence of an obscure biblical interpretation, right? I agree with your general point, many of these kinds of psychological studies lack all external validity (they don't measure what they think they measure). It just surprised me that instead of "you know, I have my doubts" your original post went straight for "this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right."

enraged_camel 11y ago
>>It just surprised me that instead of "you know, I have my doubts" your original post went straight for "this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right." It shouldn't. Most people make up their minds first, and then decide what facts and evidence to accept and reject afterwards. And when the facts and evidence are overwhelmingly against them, they rely on unsubstantiated theorizing to hand-wave them away.
- hodwik 11y ago
  >"And when the facts and evidence are overwhelmingly against them, they rely on unsubstantiated theorizing to hand-wave them away." Facts can't be 'against' something. That's silly, anthropomorphism. Facts must necessarily be interpreted, they are themselves meaningless until we choose to apply them toward some argument, which must, axiomatically, require some amount of unsubstantiated theorizing. Have you no sense of the history of the philosophy of science at all?
hodwik 11y ago
>"this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right." The empirical research isn't "wrong", that doesn't even make sense. Data is just data, it stands for nothing but itself, it must be interpreted for one to make a grander statement about reality. I'm saying your and enraged_camel's interpretation of the data is wrong -- which is no less scientific a position, and no more unsubstantiated. We're both examining the data, which itself has no opinion, and making predictions about what that data represents given a number of imperfect heuristics. That's how science works.
- stdbrouw 11y ago
  You're creating a false equivalence. Yes, different interpretations of the same data are possible, but that doesn't make all interpretations equally valid. Occam's razor would prefer the simple explanation that a question asks what it purports to ask, rather than that the question must necessarily have been internally translated into another question by the participants to the study.

enraged_camel 11y ago

>>It just surprised me that instead of "you know, I have my doubts" your original post went straight for "this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right." It shouldn't. Most people make up their minds first, and then decide what facts and evidence to accept and reject afterwards. And when the facts and evidence are overwhelmingly against them, they rely on unsubstantiated theorizing to hand-wave them away.

hodwik 11y ago
>"And when the facts and evidence are overwhelmingly against them, they rely on unsubstantiated theorizing to hand-wave them away." Facts can't be 'against' something. That's silly, anthropomorphism. Facts must necessarily be interpreted, they are themselves meaningless until we choose to apply them toward some argument, which must, axiomatically, require some amount of unsubstantiated theorizing. Have you no sense of the history of the philosophy of science at all?

hodwik 11y ago

>"this empirical research is wrong because my unsubstantiated theorizing is right." The empirical research isn't "wrong", that doesn't even make sense. Data is just data, it stands for nothing but itself, it must be interpreted for one to make a grander statement about reality. I'm saying your and enraged_camel's interpretation of the data is wrong -- which is no less scientific a position, and no more unsubstantiated. We're both examining the data, which itself has no opinion, and making predictions about what that data represents given a number of imperfect heuristics. That's how science works.

stdbrouw 11y ago
You're creating a false equivalence. Yes, different interpretations of the same data are possible, but that doesn't make all interpretations equally valid. Occam's razor would prefer the simple explanation that a question asks what it purports to ask, rather than that the question must necessarily have been internally translated into another question by the participants to the study.