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The older I get, the more prejudiced I get: STEM exists, everything else is just bullshit. Ethics is just made up. Even the less rigorous "sciences" like psy

The older I get, the more prejudiced I get: STEM exists, everything else is just bullshit. Ethics is just made up. Even the less rigorous "sciences" like psychology are mostly just nonsense (unreproducible "results", driven by fashion not results, more about getting donor/client money in than actually discovering or changing anything) as far as I can see.

GildedIgel 3y ago
That’s why STEM professions have ethical guidelines and standards - here’s AMSTAT -> https://www.amstat.org/your-career/ethical-guidelines-for-statistical-practice https://www.amstat.org/your-career/ethical-guidelines-for-st...
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  These always seem like nonsense to me. People who don't need guidelines gain nothing from them. People who need them won't sign up to them. Meanwhile I have to fill in a form and have a 2h meeting before I can shine a laser on an (already dead, commercially available) butterfly's wing?!
JHonaker 3y ago
I’ve had the opposite trajectory, and I think there’s a lot of danger in a wider adoption of your stance. The deeper I go on STEM things, the more I realize everything is, in your words, “bullshit.” I want to be clear that I would phrase that as “based on consensus,” and not as bullshit. I have seen so many doomed/failed projects/models that have come up because people say “well, it’s math, so it has to be right.”
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  I mean, if the maths was right it was right. If it was wrong and people decided to proceed anyway then that's "consensus based" (or bullshit as I ineloquently put it :) ) like non stem seems to be most of the time. Sorry if I'm missing your point?
  - treprinum 3y ago
    Stuff like computing precise results from imprecise inputs etc.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      An engineer or scientist will rapidly tell you you cannot do that. A ethicist will never be caught using real inputs at all, precise or not. A Psychologist will tell you 86% of people taking treatment X recovered. But miss out that 85.8% of people on placebo also recovered. Those numbers will be from a study of 10 people.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathiness Mathiness is a term coined by Nobel prize winner economist Paul Romer to label a specific misuse of mathematics in economic analyses. An author committed to the norms of science should use mathematical reasoning to clarify their analyses. By contrast, "mathiness" is not intended to clarify, but instead to mislead. According to Romer, some researchers use unrealistic assumptions and strained interpretations of their results in order to push an ideological agenda, and use a smokescreen of fancy mathematics to disguise their intentions.
  - JHonaker 3y ago
    The main problem is the extrapolation of the “small world” we construct with mathematics to the “large world” of an application. Your model can be completely internally consistent and allow you to study things in the context of your assumptions perfectly, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have critical flaws that disqualify any learning about the system you’ve modeled. The lack of understanding about what implications a representational choice have for the kinds of relationships a mathematical model can describe, and the lack of understanding concerning what are and aren’t critical domain components to model that’s difficult. People often forget that there are two translation steps that have to take place. Domain -> Math -> Domain. That second one is too often implicit or assumed to follow, especially in ML.
dreen 3y ago
You're wrong, concentrating on just STEM leads to media illiteracy. I would even say it's highly conductive in breeding bigotry. Studying the humanities is essential in understanding the human condition, as well as making sense of the mass of information and cultural heirtage everyone finds themselves in.
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  Careful: you have missed my point. I didn't say Humanities were worthless. I just said there are no provable results there. "Is X ethical?" - no one can prove it but we will discuss it as long as someone will pay us to. Since there are no firm truths, anyone can get a degree (or more) without actually gaining the skills you refer to. In fact actually gaining the skills you allude to makes someone LESS likely to get funded or famous. It is extremists filled with certainty who rule these subjects...
  - posterboy 3y ago
    > Since there are no firm truths that's bullshit. Classic liar's paradox and the solution is that sentence is ungrammatical in a strong sense of universal grammar ... which I can't prove, and I'm not philosopher enough to concern myself with lists of formal fallacies to make up for it
  - dreen 3y ago
    There absolutely are provable results, you make observations, conslusions, you must show how those are linked with logic. "Is X ethical" is just one of milions of possible questions in the class of sciences called humanities, of which ethics are just a small subset. However, when doing any research including interacting with live humans, you must understably prove ethical conduct.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      So is X ethical? Can you give me the cold hard proof that smoking is moral (or that it is not)? What about paying taxes that will be used to build hospitals but also to bomb people? Remember, not an opinion or an argument, a cold hard, proof no one can argue with.
nemo44x 3y ago
They (humanities) mainly exist to perpetuate and legitimize state power over the individual. It serves the interests of elites and their prestigious media (the ones that win the awards they made up to differentiate themselves) gets to propagate the (predetermined) outcomes from the "studies" their elite institutions publish. This in turn makes these institutions and adjacent power structures (NGOs, media, activist networks, etc) even more powerful as it turns into policy and it's a never ending loop of self legitimization and justification.
- yamazakiwi 3y ago
  In the spirit of this thread, prove this is true using scientific study.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    I don’t have the time or resources to conduct a scientific study on it. But empirically I think it’s clear and the incentive of power attraction makes complete sense. Also, science doesn’t really prove things true. It can prove things likely. And it’s really good at showing what is not true. I think in general humanities fail to address falsifiable things. This is why we have a reproducibility problem and why it’s mainly bullshit.
    - yamazakiwi 3y ago
      I thought it was obvious I was being sarcastic, sorry about that
dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
>STEM exists, everything else is just bullshit 'M' is also largely bullshit. Worse, it's got immediate consequences.

GildedIgel 3y ago

That’s why STEM professions have ethical guidelines and standards - here’s AMSTAT -> https://www.amstat.org/your-career/ethical-guidelines-for-statistical-practice https://www.amstat.org/your-career/ethical-guidelines-for-st...

LatteLazy 3y ago
These always seem like nonsense to me. People who don't need guidelines gain nothing from them. People who need them won't sign up to them. Meanwhile I have to fill in a form and have a 2h meeting before I can shine a laser on an (already dead, commercially available) butterfly's wing?!

JHonaker 3y ago

I’ve had the opposite trajectory, and I think there’s a lot of danger in a wider adoption of your stance. The deeper I go on STEM things, the more I realize everything is, in your words, “bullshit.” I want to be clear that I would phrase that as “based on consensus,” and not as bullshit. I have seen so many doomed/failed projects/models that have come up because people say “well, it’s math, so it has to be right.”

LatteLazy 3y ago
I mean, if the maths was right it was right. If it was wrong and people decided to proceed anyway then that's "consensus based" (or bullshit as I ineloquently put it :) ) like non stem seems to be most of the time. Sorry if I'm missing your point?
- treprinum 3y ago
  Stuff like computing precise results from imprecise inputs etc.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    An engineer or scientist will rapidly tell you you cannot do that. A ethicist will never be caught using real inputs at all, precise or not. A Psychologist will tell you 86% of people taking treatment X recovered. But miss out that 85.8% of people on placebo also recovered. Those numbers will be from a study of 10 people.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathiness Mathiness is a term coined by Nobel prize winner economist Paul Romer to label a specific misuse of mathematics in economic analyses. An author committed to the norms of science should use mathematical reasoning to clarify their analyses. By contrast, "mathiness" is not intended to clarify, but instead to mislead. According to Romer, some researchers use unrealistic assumptions and strained interpretations of their results in order to push an ideological agenda, and use a smokescreen of fancy mathematics to disguise their intentions.
- JHonaker 3y ago
  The main problem is the extrapolation of the “small world” we construct with mathematics to the “large world” of an application. Your model can be completely internally consistent and allow you to study things in the context of your assumptions perfectly, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have critical flaws that disqualify any learning about the system you’ve modeled. The lack of understanding about what implications a representational choice have for the kinds of relationships a mathematical model can describe, and the lack of understanding concerning what are and aren’t critical domain components to model that’s difficult. People often forget that there are two translation steps that have to take place. Domain -> Math -> Domain. That second one is too often implicit or assumed to follow, especially in ML.

dreen 3y ago

You're wrong, concentrating on just STEM leads to media illiteracy. I would even say it's highly conductive in breeding bigotry. Studying the humanities is essential in understanding the human condition, as well as making sense of the mass of information and cultural heirtage everyone finds themselves in.

LatteLazy 3y ago
Careful: you have missed my point. I didn't say Humanities were worthless. I just said there are no provable results there. "Is X ethical?" - no one can prove it but we will discuss it as long as someone will pay us to. Since there are no firm truths, anyone can get a degree (or more) without actually gaining the skills you refer to. In fact actually gaining the skills you allude to makes someone LESS likely to get funded or famous. It is extremists filled with certainty who rule these subjects...
- posterboy 3y ago
  > Since there are no firm truths that's bullshit. Classic liar's paradox and the solution is that sentence is ungrammatical in a strong sense of universal grammar ... which I can't prove, and I'm not philosopher enough to concern myself with lists of formal fallacies to make up for it
- dreen 3y ago
  There absolutely are provable results, you make observations, conslusions, you must show how those are linked with logic. "Is X ethical" is just one of milions of possible questions in the class of sciences called humanities, of which ethics are just a small subset. However, when doing any research including interacting with live humans, you must understably prove ethical conduct.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    So is X ethical? Can you give me the cold hard proof that smoking is moral (or that it is not)? What about paying taxes that will be used to build hospitals but also to bomb people? Remember, not an opinion or an argument, a cold hard, proof no one can argue with.

nemo44x 3y ago

They (humanities) mainly exist to perpetuate and legitimize state power over the individual. It serves the interests of elites and their prestigious media (the ones that win the awards they made up to differentiate themselves) gets to propagate the (predetermined) outcomes from the "studies" their elite institutions publish. This in turn makes these institutions and adjacent power structures (NGOs, media, activist networks, etc) even more powerful as it turns into policy and it's a never ending loop of self legitimization and justification.

yamazakiwi 3y ago
In the spirit of this thread, prove this is true using scientific study.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  I don’t have the time or resources to conduct a scientific study on it. But empirically I think it’s clear and the incentive of power attraction makes complete sense. Also, science doesn’t really prove things true. It can prove things likely. And it’s really good at showing what is not true. I think in general humanities fail to address falsifiable things. This is why we have a reproducibility problem and why it’s mainly bullshit.
  - yamazakiwi 3y ago
    I thought it was obvious I was being sarcastic, sorry about that

dennis_jeeves1 3y ago

>STEM exists, everything else is just bullshit 'M' is also largely bullshit. Worse, it's got immediate consequences.