6 ms·

> If you want me to read the vast literature, cite me two papers that are exemplars of that literature. I will read them. If these two papers are full of mistak

> If you want me to read the vast literature, cite me two papers that are exemplars of that literature. I will read them. If these two papers are full of mistakes and bad reasoning, I will feel free to skip the rest of the vast literature. Because if that’s the best you can do, I’ve seen enough. This is one of worst ideas I've ever read. Wouldn't you just be cheating yourself? How is tying your own learning to someone else's ability to find the best papers in any way a smart thing to do? It would be much better to doubt the person who gave you the papers (perhaps he miscalculated which two papers were the best), than to dismiss the entire field.

jldugger 8y ago
It's not about dismissing the field, as much as the claim that you must have read the literature to constructively participate in a debate.
- skywhopper 8y ago
  I think it’s reasonable to expect familiarity with “the literature” beyond “two exemplary papers” to be given any respect in an academic debate. If you aren’t reading the lit reviews and broadly in the topic how can you possibly contribute to the discussion productively? Almost certainly any points you want to make will have been examined and discussed already. This rule is about FOMO for wannabe rennaisssance-man know-it-alls who think their gut reactions are God’s own truth and demand a response from actual experts. If you don’t know the topic and don’t want to learn about it then please find something else to do.
  - xamuel 8y ago
    Here's an example. You stumble on a bunch of psychology papers in which psychologists noticed that whenever 6+ kids get together, there are either three mutual friends, or three mutual non-friends. The psychologists think this has something to do with child psychology and have written 10,000 pages on it. You immediately recognize it has nothing to do with psychology and is just basic Ramsey Theory [1]. Should you have to review thousands of pages before being allowed to chip in? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey%27s_theorem#Example:_R(3,_3)_=_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey%27s_theorem#Example:_R(... A less hypothetical example: You're Bertrand Russel and you discover Russel's paradox, a one-liner which negates thousands of pages of Frege's not-yet-published logic textbook. Do you have to wait for him to publish it, and then you read it, before raising your voice?
    - joe_the_user 8y ago
      Some scientific subfields are ridiculous on their face. But there's a crucial difference between that and the way original rule is phrased. The fields one has to dismiss are characterized by things one knows is false by physics or combinatorics or other common sense things. Theories of telepathy, the flat earth, creation science or whatever. The "you can't show me one good paper on the subject" is an appealing-seeming pronouncement but it's really dumb way to do it. Just say, "that doesn't make sense and you'd need huge evidence to prove it". Paper quality isn't really the question.
      - uncle_d 8y ago
        Regarding telepathy... https://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-seems-to-know-when-his-owner-is-coming-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations https://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-...
        Elrac 8y ago
        Sheldrake is my go-to example of bad science. In one of his experiments monitored by another scientist, when the dog didn't respond in a way that met Sheldrake's criteria, Sheldrake changed the criteria in mid-experiment. That one incident alone should be enough to dismiss any results coming from Sheldrake. He's not only dishonest but blithely unaware that he's being blatantly so.
    - mherdeg 8y ago
      What immediately comes to mind is the 1994 paper "A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves", which drew a lot of attention immediately after it was published, with such follow-up articles as "Tai's Formula Is the Trapezoidal Rule".
    - varjag 8y ago
      Not a psychologist, but I don't see the immediate connection to Ramsey Theory other than matching numbers. Is there a proof somewhere that human relationships are isomorphic to colored complete graphs? Why not for example hypergraphs, where Ramsey combinatoric figures should be different?
- mesozoic 8y ago
  I don't know of any actual person that believes this they are always happy to jump in a debate with little to know knowledge
- jonathanstrange 8y ago
  That's ostensibly silly, though. What if someone mentions paper X and you haven't read it? How would you know a priori that X is bad? You always need to read all relevant literature to be able to constructively participate in a debate.
  - mattmanser 8y ago
    The whole point is to clear what he calls "mud moats", a vast amount of literature that protects an idea from criticism. Non-adherents can't attack an idea because someone simply says "well have you read X paper? No? Well, then you need to read more.". And then when you can back and say "but this paper is wrong too", the process just repeats.
    - jonathanstrange 8y ago
      Maybe that's a problem in pub discussion with certain kinds of people, but those have nothing to do with science anyway. You can always criticize whatever you like by publishing a critical paper - preferably one in which you also lay out a better approach or present more solid data and statistics. However, if you show you haven't engaged with the relevant literature and don't address the arguments in sufficient detail, then your paper is likely not going to pass peer review, and rightly so.
Gatsky 8y ago
Yeah it’s silly. If you don’t want to do any research/generate new knowledge, then sure apply this rule. But then, who cares?
amelius 8y ago
What the author wants to read is probably a survey ...
- hessenwolf 8y ago
  Yes - most papers just present one idea, as part of a field. Although, the original paper of an idea, I often find, has the most human-readable explanation. Pearl's 1986 paper of Bayesian Networks, Gauss' 1800-whatever paper on the normal distribution, the original bitcoin/blockchain paper by that Japanese-sounding name, etc. They're still trying to sell the idea so they really need to talk to the idiots.
jonathanstrange 8y ago
It's an anti-intellectual stance. These become more and more popular today, even among scholars. The same attitude is often behind rejecting foreign lean words or technical jargon, it's often based on the idea that dumbing things down could somehow make you smarter. It won't. You are as smart as you are, getting gradually a bit dumber but also more experienced over the years, and the rest is education. If you reject education, the only result is that you'll be uneducated. In my opinion, a real intellectual is interested in the topic and assorted problems and will critically read whatever fuels their interest. Even papers that are not good can be interesting and worthwhile reading. Wise men know the principle "garbage in, garbage out", though, and that their time during life is limited, so they choose their readings carefully. However, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't include fairly bad literature, too. For example, it's necessary to read seminal papers that are part of a canon, no matter how stupid they seem to be. When I started studying philosophy a long time ago, some tutor whose name I've forgotten gave us two pieces of advice that would have been very valuable to me if I had taken them seriously earlier: 1. Never dismiss a book or paper quickly because you believe you've found a mistake. Read them until the end and take the authors seriously! 2. Aim for writing 1 DIN A4 page a day, no matter what you write (could be personal, could be professional, doesn't matter). You will write much less but as a goal about 1 page a day is good.
- mattmanser 8y ago
  I'm curious if you read the reasoning as you seem to be presenting an argument based purely on the title. Certainly the original proposal doesn't seem anti-intellectual. For example he says "full of mistakes", not one mistake.
  - jonathanstrange 8y ago
    To me it is. You read the paper and then make up your mind on it. You do not dismiss a whole bunch of literature on the basis of two papers someone has provided to you. There is nothing wrong with choosing your literature carefully, but that's far from the original suggestion. You can and should use your bullshit detector.
naasking 8y ago
> How is tying your own learning to someone else's ability to find the best papers in any way a smart thing to do? If they are supposed to be an expert in the field, that seems like a fair test.

jldugger 8y ago

It's not about dismissing the field, as much as the claim that you must have read the literature to constructively participate in a debate.

skywhopper 8y ago
I think it’s reasonable to expect familiarity with “the literature” beyond “two exemplary papers” to be given any respect in an academic debate. If you aren’t reading the lit reviews and broadly in the topic how can you possibly contribute to the discussion productively? Almost certainly any points you want to make will have been examined and discussed already. This rule is about FOMO for wannabe rennaisssance-man know-it-alls who think their gut reactions are God’s own truth and demand a response from actual experts. If you don’t know the topic and don’t want to learn about it then please find something else to do.
- xamuel 8y ago
  Here's an example. You stumble on a bunch of psychology papers in which psychologists noticed that whenever 6+ kids get together, there are either three mutual friends, or three mutual non-friends. The psychologists think this has something to do with child psychology and have written 10,000 pages on it. You immediately recognize it has nothing to do with psychology and is just basic Ramsey Theory [1]. Should you have to review thousands of pages before being allowed to chip in? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey%27s_theorem#Example:_R(3,_3)_=_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey%27s_theorem#Example:_R(... A less hypothetical example: You're Bertrand Russel and you discover Russel's paradox, a one-liner which negates thousands of pages of Frege's not-yet-published logic textbook. Do you have to wait for him to publish it, and then you read it, before raising your voice?
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Some scientific subfields are ridiculous on their face. But there's a crucial difference between that and the way original rule is phrased. The fields one has to dismiss are characterized by things one knows is false by physics or combinatorics or other common sense things. Theories of telepathy, the flat earth, creation science or whatever. The "you can't show me one good paper on the subject" is an appealing-seeming pronouncement but it's really dumb way to do it. Just say, "that doesn't make sense and you'd need huge evidence to prove it". Paper quality isn't really the question.
    - uncle_d 8y ago
      Regarding telepathy... https://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-seems-to-know-when-his-owner-is-coming-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations https://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-...
      - Elrac 8y ago
        Sheldrake is my go-to example of bad science. In one of his experiments monitored by another scientist, when the dog didn't respond in a way that met Sheldrake's criteria, Sheldrake changed the criteria in mid-experiment. That one incident alone should be enough to dismiss any results coming from Sheldrake. He's not only dishonest but blithely unaware that he's being blatantly so.
  - mherdeg 8y ago
    What immediately comes to mind is the 1994 paper "A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves", which drew a lot of attention immediately after it was published, with such follow-up articles as "Tai's Formula Is the Trapezoidal Rule".
  - varjag 8y ago
    Not a psychologist, but I don't see the immediate connection to Ramsey Theory other than matching numbers. Is there a proof somewhere that human relationships are isomorphic to colored complete graphs? Why not for example hypergraphs, where Ramsey combinatoric figures should be different?
mesozoic 8y ago
I don't know of any actual person that believes this they are always happy to jump in a debate with little to know knowledge
jonathanstrange 8y ago
That's ostensibly silly, though. What if someone mentions paper X and you haven't read it? How would you know a priori that X is bad? You always need to read all relevant literature to be able to constructively participate in a debate.
- mattmanser 8y ago
  The whole point is to clear what he calls "mud moats", a vast amount of literature that protects an idea from criticism. Non-adherents can't attack an idea because someone simply says "well have you read X paper? No? Well, then you need to read more.". And then when you can back and say "but this paper is wrong too", the process just repeats.
  - jonathanstrange 8y ago
    Maybe that's a problem in pub discussion with certain kinds of people, but those have nothing to do with science anyway. You can always criticize whatever you like by publishing a critical paper - preferably one in which you also lay out a better approach or present more solid data and statistics. However, if you show you haven't engaged with the relevant literature and don't address the arguments in sufficient detail, then your paper is likely not going to pass peer review, and rightly so.

Gatsky 8y ago

Yeah it’s silly. If you don’t want to do any research/generate new knowledge, then sure apply this rule. But then, who cares?

amelius 8y ago

What the author wants to read is probably a survey ...

hessenwolf 8y ago
Yes - most papers just present one idea, as part of a field. Although, the original paper of an idea, I often find, has the most human-readable explanation. Pearl's 1986 paper of Bayesian Networks, Gauss' 1800-whatever paper on the normal distribution, the original bitcoin/blockchain paper by that Japanese-sounding name, etc. They're still trying to sell the idea so they really need to talk to the idiots.

jonathanstrange 8y ago

It's an anti-intellectual stance. These become more and more popular today, even among scholars. The same attitude is often behind rejecting foreign lean words or technical jargon, it's often based on the idea that dumbing things down could somehow make you smarter. It won't. You are as smart as you are, getting gradually a bit dumber but also more experienced over the years, and the rest is education. If you reject education, the only result is that you'll be uneducated. In my opinion, a real intellectual is interested in the topic and assorted problems and will critically read whatever fuels their interest. Even papers that are not good can be interesting and worthwhile reading. Wise men know the principle "garbage in, garbage out", though, and that their time during life is limited, so they choose their readings carefully. However, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't include fairly bad literature, too. For example, it's necessary to read seminal papers that are part of a canon, no matter how stupid they seem to be. When I started studying philosophy a long time ago, some tutor whose name I've forgotten gave us two pieces of advice that would have been very valuable to me if I had taken them seriously earlier: 1. Never dismiss a book or paper quickly because you believe you've found a mistake. Read them until the end and take the authors seriously! 2. Aim for writing 1 DIN A4 page a day, no matter what you write (could be personal, could be professional, doesn't matter). You will write much less but as a goal about 1 page a day is good.

mattmanser 8y ago
I'm curious if you read the reasoning as you seem to be presenting an argument based purely on the title. Certainly the original proposal doesn't seem anti-intellectual. For example he says "full of mistakes", not one mistake.
- jonathanstrange 8y ago
  To me it is. You read the paper and then make up your mind on it. You do not dismiss a whole bunch of literature on the basis of two papers someone has provided to you. There is nothing wrong with choosing your literature carefully, but that's far from the original suggestion. You can and should use your bullshit detector.

naasking 8y ago

> How is tying your own learning to someone else's ability to find the best papers in any way a smart thing to do? If they are supposed to be an expert in the field, that seems like a fair test.