5 ms·

A little bit of a tangent to the main topic but... >I'm a little uncertain about how much of their hobby is built on communal agreement, anecdotes, and persona

A little bit of a tangent to the main topic but... >I'm a little uncertain about how much of their hobby is built on communal agreement, anecdotes, and personal experience as opposed to scientific data. Scientific data, which we interpret to mean a more thoughtful hypothesis and data gathering mechanism, is not always more correct than anecdote and personal experience. For example, it turns out we'd have been better off taking nutrition advice from our great-grandmas in the old country, rather than the mid 20th century scientific analysis (gathering data and running regressions) on the optimal way to eat macro-nutrients. In some cases when knowledge is generated by a complex non-linear system, the default human approach of building anecdotes and personal experience is stronger. Similarly, I'd sooner trust the sage wisdom on code readability from some 50 year old open source hackers, then a team of PhDs in their 20s or 30s, who studied a bunch of teams and summarized their results.

scarejunba 7y ago
Huh, interesting. Well, that's a flaw in the epistemological process, right? What is the problem?
- hammock 7y ago
  No, it's a flaw in the scientific process.
  - afiori 7y ago
    It is not really a flaw in the scientific progress, but in the distribution of trust. The scientific method essentially offer eventual correctness, that is that every mistake made now will be eventually corrected. How we decide when it is enough is a separate hard problem we still do not know how to handle. This is also the reason why science as arbiter of truth is at best sketchy (out of very specific instances e.g. black holes).
    - hammock 7y ago
      >eventual correctness, that is that every mistake made now will be eventually corrected. That is not a feature unique to the scientific method, though. The same could be said of narrative tradition, or the heat death of the universe for that matter.
      - afiori 7y ago
        > The same could be said of narrative tradition, I disagree, I hold in very high regard the truth of traditions, but they clearly lack an internal method to correct wrong assumptions. They have an external method, that is a society dies and a "better" one take its place. Science does not need to (either figuratively or literally) die to fix wrong information. With a stretch of the meaning then, ok. But it is like saying that evolution will create the perfect creature eventually without mentioning that everything resembling us will be long dead at that point.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Right. Our epistemological process is primarily scientific reasoning: hypothesis, attempt to falsify, fail/succeed and loop. But if we have better ways we should load that into the process. Perhaps we need a Web of Trust model for data, for instance. That's a thing oral traditions naturally build in.
    - hammock 7y ago
      >Our epistemological process is primarily scientific reasoning "Our" is a pretty loaded term there. Empiricism is "primary" in only a few limited bubbles of society. Religion, common knowledge, consensus, rationalism, etc are other epistemological processes familiar to many.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
superstition 7y ago
taking nutrition advice from our great-grandmas in the old country, rather than the mid 20th century scientific analysis Thing is, the two, taken together is even more powerful. Old world methodologies for eating are excellent, but knowing why they work, and founding those motivations toward certain tendencies on hard evidence, produces iron-clad strategies for guiding those classes of decision making. Understanding essential nutrients, and then taking those facts and aligning the anecdotes with them is a powerful reveal for both. Now, we know so much more about the solubility of chemicals in oils and water, and full molecular turnover due to nuclear medicine and radio tracers, the blood brain barrier and glandular interactions and signaling, and so, to look back and find that combining sea salt and volcanic water filtration and trace sources of iodine, plus dealing with fermentation and gut flora, all works together for real reasons, not just because of karma or curses or saints or sinners. The power of chicken soup and orange juice, and the neurological effect of cheese on cheese eaters all works together for fascinating reasons. It's sort of a more potent trust-but-verify feedback loop.
ThrustVectoring 7y ago
Nutritional science is a dumpster fire due to economic reasons. Schools and other institutions had to serve their charges something, and they'd get sued if it wasn't "healthy" according to what science knows, so there was immense economic pressure to get scientists to declare some kind of nutritional standard.
theoh 7y ago
OK, but beekeeping specifically— I've taken a class and had a look at the literature. Because it's such a compelling and charismatic topic (bees are a symbol of eternal life, hard work, etc.) there are A LOT of books out there. One bibliography is included in this PDF by the ScientificBeekeeping.com guy: http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/BEGINNERS-OUTLINE-PDF.pdf http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/BEGINNERS-OUTLI... Some books, like the recent "The Bees" by Laline Paul, take huge narrative liberties and don't really care about the scientific truth. Poetic licence. Beekeepers ostensibly don't have any time for that kind of thing, but... I do think that, at least in my part of the world, people who keep bees often tend to be a bit vague and scatterbrained when it comes to theory. They aren't scientific about their beekeeping—it's more like home cooking. There are superstitions, and rarely enough empirical data in one person's experience to disprove them. It was really off-putting on the course I attended, actually, to have the biological principles of bee colonies explained in such an inept and confused way. The variation, in terms of beekeeping practice, from one person to another is only going to be more arbitrary and quixotic.

scarejunba 7y ago

Huh, interesting. Well, that's a flaw in the epistemological process, right? What is the problem?

hammock 7y ago
No, it's a flaw in the scientific process.
- afiori 7y ago
  It is not really a flaw in the scientific progress, but in the distribution of trust. The scientific method essentially offer eventual correctness, that is that every mistake made now will be eventually corrected. How we decide when it is enough is a separate hard problem we still do not know how to handle. This is also the reason why science as arbiter of truth is at best sketchy (out of very specific instances e.g. black holes).
  - hammock 7y ago
    >eventual correctness, that is that every mistake made now will be eventually corrected. That is not a feature unique to the scientific method, though. The same could be said of narrative tradition, or the heat death of the universe for that matter.
    - afiori 7y ago
      > The same could be said of narrative tradition, I disagree, I hold in very high regard the truth of traditions, but they clearly lack an internal method to correct wrong assumptions. They have an external method, that is a society dies and a "better" one take its place. Science does not need to (either figuratively or literally) die to fix wrong information. With a stretch of the meaning then, ok. But it is like saying that evolution will create the perfect creature eventually without mentioning that everything resembling us will be long dead at that point.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Right. Our epistemological process is primarily scientific reasoning: hypothesis, attempt to falsify, fail/succeed and loop. But if we have better ways we should load that into the process. Perhaps we need a Web of Trust model for data, for instance. That's a thing oral traditions naturally build in.
  - hammock 7y ago
    >Our epistemological process is primarily scientific reasoning "Our" is a pretty loaded term there. Empiricism is "primary" in only a few limited bubbles of society. Religion, common knowledge, consensus, rationalism, etc are other epistemological processes familiar to many.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

superstition 7y ago

taking nutrition advice from our great-grandmas in the old country, rather than the mid 20th century scientific analysis Thing is, the two, taken together is even more powerful. Old world methodologies for eating are excellent, but knowing why they work, and founding those motivations toward certain tendencies on hard evidence, produces iron-clad strategies for guiding those classes of decision making. Understanding essential nutrients, and then taking those facts and aligning the anecdotes with them is a powerful reveal for both. Now, we know so much more about the solubility of chemicals in oils and water, and full molecular turnover due to nuclear medicine and radio tracers, the blood brain barrier and glandular interactions and signaling, and so, to look back and find that combining sea salt and volcanic water filtration and trace sources of iodine, plus dealing with fermentation and gut flora, all works together for real reasons, not just because of karma or curses or saints or sinners. The power of chicken soup and orange juice, and the neurological effect of cheese on cheese eaters all works together for fascinating reasons. It's sort of a more potent trust-but-verify feedback loop.

ThrustVectoring 7y ago

Nutritional science is a dumpster fire due to economic reasons. Schools and other institutions had to serve their charges something, and they'd get sued if it wasn't "healthy" according to what science knows, so there was immense economic pressure to get scientists to declare some kind of nutritional standard.

theoh 7y ago

OK, but beekeeping specifically— I've taken a class and had a look at the literature. Because it's such a compelling and charismatic topic (bees are a symbol of eternal life, hard work, etc.) there are A LOT of books out there. One bibliography is included in this PDF by the ScientificBeekeeping.com guy: http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/BEGINNERS-OUTLINE-PDF.pdf http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/BEGINNERS-OUTLI... Some books, like the recent "The Bees" by Laline Paul, take huge narrative liberties and don't really care about the scientific truth. Poetic licence. Beekeepers ostensibly don't have any time for that kind of thing, but... I do think that, at least in my part of the world, people who keep bees often tend to be a bit vague and scatterbrained when it comes to theory. They aren't scientific about their beekeeping—it's more like home cooking. There are superstitions, and rarely enough empirical data in one person's experience to disprove them. It was really off-putting on the course I attended, actually, to have the biological principles of bee colonies explained in such an inept and confused way. The variation, in terms of beekeeping practice, from one person to another is only going to be more arbitrary and quixotic.