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And yet, counterintuitively, it's in precisely these areas (relativity, quantum physics) that our theories are best (most predictive with the strongest mathemat

And yet, counterintuitively, it's in precisely these areas (relativity, quantum physics) that our theories are best (most predictive with the strongest mathematical foundations) and the areas where our human intuition ought to supply the most assistance (psychology, sociology) where we seem to be lost at sea. One explanation that I've come up with to explain this apparent paradox is that while humans may not have any special insight or intuition into microscopic or macroscopic phenomenon, at least we don't have any biases either. Thus, we are able to make progress in these areas by simply pouring in huge amounts of time and brainpower. On the other hand, for subjects that are more "human," we come pre-equipped with a large number of instinctive insights; or to put it another way, we're burdened with a huge number of innate biases. These are mostly shortcut heuristics that only vaguely approximate the truth, and are deeply and unavoidable biased in ways that we ourselves are blind to. Thus, no matter how much time and brainpower we pour into these subjects, progress remains slow and theories remain poor. It's a well-known theorem in machine learning that an ensemble of weak (only slightly better than random chance) but unbiased learners will eventually converge to a strong learner, but a collection of biased learners will never become unbiased unless their biases are all uncorrelated. In humans, of course, the biases are shared across all members of the species so do not cancel out in this way.

mensetmanusman 2y ago
That’s mostly because complexity can’t be wrapped up in simple rules. Physics is easier because it is dealing with a handful of particles. There isn’t enough energy in the universe to calculate the full Schrödinger equation of a human. That tells us something…
- xtreme 2y ago
  I agree with what you are saying, but I find it interesting that physics can also predict properties of planets, stars, and galaxies interacting over cosmic distances. At that scale, you can zoom out and reduce the complexity again back to a handful of rules.
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    Right, and a big enough crowd of people behaves like a fluid.
    - mensetmanusman 2y ago
      Depends on the crowd, assassination attempts induce stampedes, but not always.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    This depends on how many digits of accuracy you are looking for. With living things, we care more than with hot rocks, because the entropy gradients are so much higher.
NemoNobody 2y ago
The biases you have are different than mine or rather, I'm aware of most of my bias and can account for them - I have many, many predispositions, assumptions, inferences, unknown incorrect conclusions, etc. I love your example bc it highlights the bias of science of for me. We know that quantum equations can't be looked at - I'd say that's near trivia level "known" at this point. What it actually means functionality is obviously more complicated but simply stated - reality is aware of our observation of it and reacts, at least at a quantum level. Scientific bias is so great that they can literally work with a system that must account for that rather incredible fact, while ignoring it bc they can't explain it. The placebo effect, NYT crossword experiments, the Stanford University 60some% threshold for an idea to be adopted/accepted by all of a society as a known/true belief - those 3 facts reshape our understanding of the world if they are actually facts. All three are undeniable facts that have simply never been acknowledged or examined further. Further bias is displayed with the insistence that all things spontaneously came into existence from nothing, despite nothing coming from nothing for no reason - that's impossible, as no example within reality exists I can't just take that at face value, but it's the accepted "theory" - despite common sense stuff like, say a future corporation created this universe - or an inexplicable being even, BOTH trillions of times more likely to be the origin of the universe than nothing exploding for no reason. I could write a book about the incredible biases that allow some of the smartest people to actually talk about the multiverse is a serious sense - the universe is not infinite, so a new universe can't come into existence for every possibility, that would be an incredibly stupid waste of resources - with any thought at all the commonly understood definition of the multiverse fall completely apart. It may be the dumbest thing we believe rn frfr This is all without discussing the ACTUAL bias in science that comes from who funds stuff and etc... So much bias in science
NemoNobody 2y ago
I could write a book about your comment. I am incredibly impressed how well you articulated our "human subject biases" - that is an excellent starting point for understanding the human condition, the root of all of our bias. It isn't only instinct tho. Heritage and culture. Societal beliefs. Personal experience. Expectations. What we recall and forget, how and when we recall - all automatic functions of memory. Your brain is biased and actively attempts to deliver a reality that adheres to that bias - it can do so. An example is that we don't choose what we look at or when we do - to maintain a smooth image, without choppiness, our eyes dart to the next object of our attention before our eyes begin to move. Perception is reality. We see what we want to see... except that we rarely actively choose to look, see and observe - we outsource the whole thing. If buying a new car is in the back of your mind bc it's necessary, your subconscious will see your anxiety, and high light every car dealership to you in a hundred mile radius - that can also be a little stressful - it's trying to help. You don't actually think about the words that come out of your mouth in conversation - nobody does that at speed of talk. We just have a mental idea prompt and we talk. All that we don't decide outright is fundamentally biased - that's the root of it, what has been before, what we/the body liked and how to get more of that and nothing it doesn't want. The choice of tacos or burgers - the presentation of your "craving" as maybe one or the other is biased framing. Most of what the endless stream of thoughts says - the words that flow into our conscious mind, often for reasons not clearly defined, all of that is bias. The intellect and knowledge we accumulate is what we use with logic and reason to make sense of reality as we live it - knowledge once learned becomes a newspaper unless well tended - unchanging, unadaptable and less applicable over time. An old dog can learn new tricks but it might have to let go of the tricks it thinks it knows now - so an old dog just doesn't do that. Old tricks still be old tho - want isn't part of the adapt or die equation. All of this is bias, fundamental bias - as humans all experience aspects of these things but no two people have identical bias it cannot simply be ignored. This is the base of the "right view" that Buddha talked so much about. We think we are something we are not, that we do things we do not and the stuff we do we don't know we do or why we do anything at all. Where we sit amidst all this automation and optimization is critical. We are not what thinks. We are what is aware of the thoughts being thunk. The view from there is better, like 3rd person view vs 1st person in video games. Most of the body is like this, most of our habits and routines are just habit and routine, with nothing real behind them - more like randomness repeated into normalcy. Like, one day you decide to read a mystery series and you enjoy them. You begin to read them when you wake up. Then you finish the series. Ten years later you still read every morning but it doesn't matter what. The last movement that your body made... did you consciously decide to move? Did you decide to scratch your arm? Have you ever drank all the coffee without realizing it til the cup was at your lips? Ever drive for hours a very familiar route and realize you can't exactly remember doing most of it. Our brain fill in the corners of rooms for us - ceilings at familiar places can surprise us, bc we've never bothered to look up. When you walk, do you decide to take a step? Everything you are, all that you have not actively decided to be, is essentially just bias. That is what most people are but that doesn't make it correct, there is a right view that reveals what is. This is a rant. This is huge tho and deserving of one, especially on a dead comment thread. Scientists be dealing with all this bias too, they are no different from you.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

That’s mostly because complexity can’t be wrapped up in simple rules. Physics is easier because it is dealing with a handful of particles. There isn’t enough energy in the universe to calculate the full Schrödinger equation of a human. That tells us something…

xtreme 2y ago
I agree with what you are saying, but I find it interesting that physics can also predict properties of planets, stars, and galaxies interacting over cosmic distances. At that scale, you can zoom out and reduce the complexity again back to a handful of rules.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  Right, and a big enough crowd of people behaves like a fluid.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    Depends on the crowd, assassination attempts induce stampedes, but not always.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  This depends on how many digits of accuracy you are looking for. With living things, we care more than with hot rocks, because the entropy gradients are so much higher.

NemoNobody 2y ago

The biases you have are different than mine or rather, I'm aware of most of my bias and can account for them - I have many, many predispositions, assumptions, inferences, unknown incorrect conclusions, etc. I love your example bc it highlights the bias of science of for me. We know that quantum equations can't be looked at - I'd say that's near trivia level "known" at this point. What it actually means functionality is obviously more complicated but simply stated - reality is aware of our observation of it and reacts, at least at a quantum level. Scientific bias is so great that they can literally work with a system that must account for that rather incredible fact, while ignoring it bc they can't explain it. The placebo effect, NYT crossword experiments, the Stanford University 60some% threshold for an idea to be adopted/accepted by all of a society as a known/true belief - those 3 facts reshape our understanding of the world if they are actually facts. All three are undeniable facts that have simply never been acknowledged or examined further. Further bias is displayed with the insistence that all things spontaneously came into existence from nothing, despite nothing coming from nothing for no reason - that's impossible, as no example within reality exists I can't just take that at face value, but it's the accepted "theory" - despite common sense stuff like, say a future corporation created this universe - or an inexplicable being even, BOTH trillions of times more likely to be the origin of the universe than nothing exploding for no reason. I could write a book about the incredible biases that allow some of the smartest people to actually talk about the multiverse is a serious sense - the universe is not infinite, so a new universe can't come into existence for every possibility, that would be an incredibly stupid waste of resources - with any thought at all the commonly understood definition of the multiverse fall completely apart. It may be the dumbest thing we believe rn frfr This is all without discussing the ACTUAL bias in science that comes from who funds stuff and etc... So much bias in science

NemoNobody 2y ago

I could write a book about your comment. I am incredibly impressed how well you articulated our "human subject biases" - that is an excellent starting point for understanding the human condition, the root of all of our bias. It isn't only instinct tho. Heritage and culture. Societal beliefs. Personal experience. Expectations. What we recall and forget, how and when we recall - all automatic functions of memory. Your brain is biased and actively attempts to deliver a reality that adheres to that bias - it can do so. An example is that we don't choose what we look at or when we do - to maintain a smooth image, without choppiness, our eyes dart to the next object of our attention before our eyes begin to move. Perception is reality. We see what we want to see... except that we rarely actively choose to look, see and observe - we outsource the whole thing. If buying a new car is in the back of your mind bc it's necessary, your subconscious will see your anxiety, and high light every car dealership to you in a hundred mile radius - that can also be a little stressful - it's trying to help. You don't actually think about the words that come out of your mouth in conversation - nobody does that at speed of talk. We just have a mental idea prompt and we talk. All that we don't decide outright is fundamentally biased - that's the root of it, what has been before, what we/the body liked and how to get more of that and nothing it doesn't want. The choice of tacos or burgers - the presentation of your "craving" as maybe one or the other is biased framing. Most of what the endless stream of thoughts says - the words that flow into our conscious mind, often for reasons not clearly defined, all of that is bias. The intellect and knowledge we accumulate is what we use with logic and reason to make sense of reality as we live it - knowledge once learned becomes a newspaper unless well tended - unchanging, unadaptable and less applicable over time. An old dog can learn new tricks but it might have to let go of the tricks it thinks it knows now - so an old dog just doesn't do that. Old tricks still be old tho - want isn't part of the adapt or die equation. All of this is bias, fundamental bias - as humans all experience aspects of these things but no two people have identical bias it cannot simply be ignored. This is the base of the "right view" that Buddha talked so much about. We think we are something we are not, that we do things we do not and the stuff we do we don't know we do or why we do anything at all. Where we sit amidst all this automation and optimization is critical. We are not what thinks. We are what is aware of the thoughts being thunk. The view from there is better, like 3rd person view vs 1st person in video games. Most of the body is like this, most of our habits and routines are just habit and routine, with nothing real behind them - more like randomness repeated into normalcy. Like, one day you decide to read a mystery series and you enjoy them. You begin to read them when you wake up. Then you finish the series. Ten years later you still read every morning but it doesn't matter what. The last movement that your body made... did you consciously decide to move? Did you decide to scratch your arm? Have you ever drank all the coffee without realizing it til the cup was at your lips? Ever drive for hours a very familiar route and realize you can't exactly remember doing most of it. Our brain fill in the corners of rooms for us - ceilings at familiar places can surprise us, bc we've never bothered to look up. When you walk, do you decide to take a step? Everything you are, all that you have not actively decided to be, is essentially just bias. That is what most people are but that doesn't make it correct, there is a right view that reveals what is. This is a rant. This is huge tho and deserving of one, especially on a dead comment thread. Scientists be dealing with all this bias too, they are no different from you.