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1. This is pretty trivial. Why do you think most scientists aren’t aware of their limitations? 2. This is studied in statistics classes. It is impossible to an

1. This is pretty trivial. Why do you think most scientists aren’t aware of their limitations? 2. This is studied in statistics classes. It is impossible to analyze data without a statistical model, so of course your conclusions rely on it. So this is also quite trivial. 3. Again, are scientists oblivious to this simple notion? I doubt it.

sprafa 5y ago
A lot of this stuff applies more to bad scientists, of which there are many.
dennis_jeeves 5y ago
LudwigNagasena, to you it may be obvious ( as it was to me). However I discovered ( much to my disappointment) that it is not obvious to career 'scientists'. A fool with a phd is still a fool. What used to the domain of primarily religions (rituals, superstitions etc.) is now the domain of several offshoots, one of which is mainstream science.
- austhrow743 5y ago
  Is this coming from judging peoples actions or discussion with acquaintances and colleagues, or in discussion with trusted friends who are career scientists? My understanding is that a lot of problems in science are incentive based, and that would look very similar to someone just not knowing things from the outside.
  - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
    Mostly based on the 'science' out there. I probably know about 3 career scientists, I think, which is probably not a good sample. >My understanding is that a lot of problems in science are incentive based, and that would look very similar to someone just not knowing things from the outside. I can agree that a lot of it may be probably incentive based vs 'scientists' just not being smart enough. But is is hard to glean what the proportions are. I still suspect ( based on a general assessment of people both known and on the internet) that it is the latter.
twhb 5y ago
Why is it that mirrors flip your image left to right, but not top to bottom? That’s a question that Richard Feynman supposedly asked his grad students. Once you answer it, I think you’ll realize that #1 is anything but trivial. Answer below, stop reading this comment if you want to figure it out on your own. It’s because you’re comparing the mirror image to what you’d look like if you walked around the mirror, instead of to what you’d look like if you floated over the top. This assumption of horizontal travel is incredibly deeply engrained in humans, to the point that the English language doesn’t even have up/down equivalents to the words “left” and “right”, i.e. a word that means the direction closer to your head than to your feet regardless of your orientation.
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location I guess technically correct, because they're mostly latin loan words.
  - twhb 5y ago
    I didn’t know that terminology, thank you. But reading the article, are those not applicable only to body parts? Would an astronaut ever say to another astronaut, while floating in different orientations, “Hit the button to your superior”? Either way, I think it’s at least correct to say that there are no layman words for it.
- Ao7bei3s 5y ago
  A mirror doesn't swap left and right, it swaps front and back. The realizations that people expect yaw rotation because that's what they are used to, or that normal day language isn't always precise (my left? your left?), seem extremely trivial to me and doesn't require any deep philosophical "insights". In the hard sciences, you often don't even need the handwavey "swap a and b" explanation when it is much more useful to just model its behavior (ingress ray/plane intersection, normalize ingress ray, subtract twice normal vector of plane from ray to get egress ray direction). I'm sure Feynman was a great physicist and teacher, but he's also great at just wowing people by using lots of words without saying much. Like in his famous why-is-ice-slippery video where he goes onto a completely unnecessary discourse on the nature of questions instead of just answering the dang question. I always felt that is the perfect way to showcase the difference between education and edutainment, and I assume his lectures were a bit more substantial.

sprafa 5y ago

A lot of this stuff applies more to bad scientists, of which there are many.

dennis_jeeves 5y ago

LudwigNagasena, to you it may be obvious ( as it was to me). However I discovered ( much to my disappointment) that it is not obvious to career 'scientists'. A fool with a phd is still a fool. What used to the domain of primarily religions (rituals, superstitions etc.) is now the domain of several offshoots, one of which is mainstream science.

austhrow743 5y ago
Is this coming from judging peoples actions or discussion with acquaintances and colleagues, or in discussion with trusted friends who are career scientists? My understanding is that a lot of problems in science are incentive based, and that would look very similar to someone just not knowing things from the outside.
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago
  Mostly based on the 'science' out there. I probably know about 3 career scientists, I think, which is probably not a good sample. >My understanding is that a lot of problems in science are incentive based, and that would look very similar to someone just not knowing things from the outside. I can agree that a lot of it may be probably incentive based vs 'scientists' just not being smart enough. But is is hard to glean what the proportions are. I still suspect ( based on a general assessment of people both known and on the internet) that it is the latter.

twhb 5y ago

Why is it that mirrors flip your image left to right, but not top to bottom? That’s a question that Richard Feynman supposedly asked his grad students. Once you answer it, I think you’ll realize that #1 is anything but trivial. Answer below, stop reading this comment if you want to figure it out on your own. It’s because you’re comparing the mirror image to what you’d look like if you walked around the mirror, instead of to what you’d look like if you floated over the top. This assumption of horizontal travel is incredibly deeply engrained in humans, to the point that the English language doesn’t even have up/down equivalents to the words “left” and “right”, i.e. a word that means the direction closer to your head than to your feet regardless of your orientation.

Kim_Bruning 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location I guess technically correct, because they're mostly latin loan words.
- twhb 5y ago
  I didn’t know that terminology, thank you. But reading the article, are those not applicable only to body parts? Would an astronaut ever say to another astronaut, while floating in different orientations, “Hit the button to your superior”? Either way, I think it’s at least correct to say that there are no layman words for it.
Ao7bei3s 5y ago
A mirror doesn't swap left and right, it swaps front and back. The realizations that people expect yaw rotation because that's what they are used to, or that normal day language isn't always precise (my left? your left?), seem extremely trivial to me and doesn't require any deep philosophical "insights". In the hard sciences, you often don't even need the handwavey "swap a and b" explanation when it is much more useful to just model its behavior (ingress ray/plane intersection, normalize ingress ray, subtract twice normal vector of plane from ray to get egress ray direction). I'm sure Feynman was a great physicist and teacher, but he's also great at just wowing people by using lots of words without saying much. Like in his famous why-is-ice-slippery video where he goes onto a completely unnecessary discourse on the nature of questions instead of just answering the dang question. I always felt that is the perfect way to showcase the difference between education and edutainment, and I assume his lectures were a bit more substantial.