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> p.s. The reason I moved on is because it was simply poor phrasing in a casual anon chat. It wasn't poor phrasing. Being unable to reject the null hypothesis

by mlyle 4y ago

> p.s. The reason I moved on is because it was simply poor phrasing in a casual anon chat. It wasn't poor phrasing. Being unable to reject the null hypothesis (on one subtest, even) doesn't mean there's no effect. If you test something 15 different ways, and you get a statistically significant effect with consistent slope on 12 of them, a non-statistically significant effect with a slope in the same direction on 2, and a non-statistically significant effect with a tiny slope in the opposite direction on 1... that looks pretty universal. It's an interesting question for followup research whether those 3 things are actually different in some way, or whether it was luck.

somenameforme 4y ago
You look at a billion and one swans. For the first billion you see nothing but white swans, yet for the final one you look at you see a black swan. You now cannot say swans are universally white. All it takes is a single exception to break a rule. This is one of the many issues I have with social science - lack of falsifiability. Social science effectively lacks any degree of falsifiability simply because everything is based on vague probabilistic distributions which vary dramatically based on subtle nuances like asking an identical question two different ways, or testing on different populations in cases where the hypothesis is suggested to generalize - as here. If there was any notion of falsification, it would all be false. In many ways it's quite analogous to astrology which, if you are unaware, was indeed considered a science, studied in universities for hundreds of years. It's end, somewhat ironically, came not from scientific objection to the fact it suffered the same issues as the social sciences today, but from the Church who deemed it heretical in claims of defacto divination.
- mlyle 4y ago
  > You look at a billion and one swans. For the first billion you see nothing but white swans, yet for the final one you look at you see a black swan. This analogy doesn't fit our circumstance. You take two photos each of 7 swans, a close-up and a wide-angle one. For all of the 7 wide-angle photos, the swan is obviously white. For the 7 close up-photos: you get 4 good close-up photos of white swan. Then there's 3 bad photos. 2 of them look probably white, and 1 looks like the swan is maybe dark grey. All the evidence you have is consistent with all the swans being white. Looking to see if you can find those 3 swans and take a better close look at them might be a nice bit of followup.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    So you have 7 photos, only 4 of them clearly confirm what you want to say, 1 likely contradicting it, and you're happy to take this as a universal? I also think your analogy doesn't hold for another reason. Look at the last study. This study is intentionally juking their numbers. They "learned" from their first study and removed every single sample that contradicted what they want to 'prove', magnified those that confirmed it, and even under this form of "science" - they still failed to show statistical significance for multiple categories. It'd be like noticing there were far "dark" swans in Eastland and so going out of your way to make sure in your next safari you limit yourself to Westland. If you genuinely believed all swans were white, and wanted to test that hypothesis, you'd have done the exact opposite. There is only one conclusion to make.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      > So you have 7 photos, only 4 of them clearly confirm what you want to say, 1 likely contradicting it, and you're happy to take this as a universal? I also think your analogy doesn't hold for another reason I'm sorry; I disagree and I don't think you understand the statistics. > Look at the last study. This is another new goalpost. I am not willing to discuss further.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        Imagine for a moment that this study was trying to demonstrate that e.g. climate change was primarily caused by solar variation a la Willie Wei-Hock Soon [1]. And he provided the exact same quality of evidence, and the exact same "issues." There is zero chance you would now be claiming this to be a "universal" in spite of the exact same quality, or lack thereof, of evidence. I was not shifting any goalposts, but simply referencing more evidence on the fundamental issue: that this study was intentionally biased and misleading with the goal of "proving", by any means necessary, a conclusion of which the authors had 0 interest in genuinely testing. As I suspect we'll be wrapping up, I simply want to thank you for the interesting and lively discussion on this issue. It's rare two people can disagree on the internet for more than a few posts without things devolving into 'You're a poopy face.' 'No, you!' [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon

by mlyle 4y ago

somenameforme 4y ago

You look at a billion and one swans. For the first billion you see nothing but white swans, yet for the final one you look at you see a black swan. You now cannot say swans are universally white. All it takes is a single exception to break a rule. This is one of the many issues I have with social science - lack of falsifiability. Social science effectively lacks any degree of falsifiability simply because everything is based on vague probabilistic distributions which vary dramatically based on subtle nuances like asking an identical question two different ways, or testing on different populations in cases where the hypothesis is suggested to generalize - as here. If there was any notion of falsification, it would all be false. In many ways it's quite analogous to astrology which, if you are unaware, was indeed considered a science, studied in universities for hundreds of years. It's end, somewhat ironically, came not from scientific objection to the fact it suffered the same issues as the social sciences today, but from the Church who deemed it heretical in claims of defacto divination.

mlyle 4y ago
> You look at a billion and one swans. For the first billion you see nothing but white swans, yet for the final one you look at you see a black swan. This analogy doesn't fit our circumstance. You take two photos each of 7 swans, a close-up and a wide-angle one. For all of the 7 wide-angle photos, the swan is obviously white. For the 7 close up-photos: you get 4 good close-up photos of white swan. Then there's 3 bad photos. 2 of them look probably white, and 1 looks like the swan is maybe dark grey. All the evidence you have is consistent with all the swans being white. Looking to see if you can find those 3 swans and take a better close look at them might be a nice bit of followup.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  So you have 7 photos, only 4 of them clearly confirm what you want to say, 1 likely contradicting it, and you're happy to take this as a universal? I also think your analogy doesn't hold for another reason. Look at the last study. This study is intentionally juking their numbers. They "learned" from their first study and removed every single sample that contradicted what they want to 'prove', magnified those that confirmed it, and even under this form of "science" - they still failed to show statistical significance for multiple categories. It'd be like noticing there were far "dark" swans in Eastland and so going out of your way to make sure in your next safari you limit yourself to Westland. If you genuinely believed all swans were white, and wanted to test that hypothesis, you'd have done the exact opposite. There is only one conclusion to make.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    > So you have 7 photos, only 4 of them clearly confirm what you want to say, 1 likely contradicting it, and you're happy to take this as a universal? I also think your analogy doesn't hold for another reason I'm sorry; I disagree and I don't think you understand the statistics. > Look at the last study. This is another new goalpost. I am not willing to discuss further.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      Imagine for a moment that this study was trying to demonstrate that e.g. climate change was primarily caused by solar variation a la Willie Wei-Hock Soon [1]. And he provided the exact same quality of evidence, and the exact same "issues." There is zero chance you would now be claiming this to be a "universal" in spite of the exact same quality, or lack thereof, of evidence. I was not shifting any goalposts, but simply referencing more evidence on the fundamental issue: that this study was intentionally biased and misleading with the goal of "proving", by any means necessary, a conclusion of which the authors had 0 interest in genuinely testing. As I suspect we'll be wrapping up, I simply want to thank you for the interesting and lively discussion on this issue. It's rare two people can disagree on the internet for more than a few posts without things devolving into 'You're a poopy face.' 'No, you!' [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon