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> There have been numerous studies on crime perception and fear of crime in the last 50 years.
Nice, so there are relevant studies. Pity no one tried to troll
> There have been numerous studies on crime perception and fear of crime in the last 50 years.
Nice, so there are relevant studies. Pity no one tried to troll Scott with these, it would be interesting to watch.
> Not like that. You'll find that most questions for which there's good data (and even if there isn't) that more than one person is interested in already have experts thinking about. If there aren't, and you're qualified (i.e. have the requisite context) people will pay you to work on the problem through something called "research grants".
The existence of experts is not a guarantee they will answer your questions, or that they will publish their answers in an accessible way.
Grants are not the answer: you need to become an expert in a topic, to get a grant, but you can be an expert in all topics and get all the grants.
> Well, in Europe we have these things only we call them universities, not a "think tanks"
You can call them as you like, but if it is not you who pays money for researchers, they will probably won't answer your questions.
> to do it well, you need to start from the current state of knowledge
One can't do it in most of the cases. It is possible for a selected small range of topics, but not for all questions I can want answers for.
> at least survey what the experts have so far rather than start from scratch with some pieces of data you may not have the right context to analyse.
Yeah, I agree with that.
> That's why Scott Alexander isn't taken seriously. He's playing a game based on the plot of the film Memento: He makes sure he has just the right pieces to make something interesting for him yet simple enough to think through in days or weeks and maybe reach a conclusion (and a conclusion perhaps could not be reached without erasing enough information to paint a simple-enough picture). Some people find it entertaining, and I can see why; it evokes natural philosophy, which has certainly produced a lot of entertaning prose.
Yeah, hard to argue with that.
> But ultimately it's a game of fantasy science.
I can't resist and not to ask "and what?"
Universities are not really good in most cases. It is a rare occasion to read a take of a PhD on something like Iran war (Brett Devereaux just couldn't resist it), mostly all you have are opinions of self-proclaimed experts, and if you are lucky, if will be an opinion of Scott Alexander. Alternatively you can try to churn data yourself. Well, maybe if I had money to bring down paywalls all around the Internet I could read PhDs talking about the world around us all day long, but it needs too much money.
And when it comes to using far from perfect sources to understand what is going on, the only strategy I know is to stick to some number of those "experts". You'll learn their strengths and weaknesses with time, you'll learn how to form your own opinion based on their thoughts. You can't just stick to real experts, because you'll need really a lot of them to cover wide enough knowledge, so you'd better find some non-experts, who covers a wide range of topics, for most of them they will not have a qualification. Know your sources and watch them argue with others. You'll know when they are right and when they are mistaken.
> Pity no one tried to troll Scott with these, it would be interesting to watch.
I would assume that's because people who generally try to learn things from sources that communicate acquired knowledge aren't Scott Alexander's audience in the first place.
> You can call them as you like, but if it is not you who pays money for researchers, they will probably won't answer your questions.
Seems like you're not familiar with academia. One of the biggest problems with academia these days is a glut, not a dearth, of questions being explored. And beside, even if Scott Alexander were to try and answer your questions, there's no reason to trust his answers because he just doesn't have the necessary tools to answer them. What you're saying sounds like, well, if science won't answer your question, ask a medium. Sure, a medium might be happy to answer your question, but why would you think that the answer is correct?
If no one who is qualified to answer your question can answer it or wants to answer it, then it remains unanswered. There are lots of open questions. People who insist on getting answers to everything are asking to become gullible and accept wrong answers. Such a demand produces a supply of hacks who will be happy to answer anything.
Personally, I find it interesting that there are so many unanswered questions, but even if you're not, the belief they can be answered by some cursory assembling of some data and a few days of thinking is just wrong. I mean, you'll get an answer, but it probably won't be the right answer.
> Universities are not really good in most cases.
I don't know what "good" is judged against, but what the experts produce is typically superior to what Scott Alexander produces (which is why he's not taken seriously).
> You can't just stick to real experts, because you'll need really a lot of them to cover wide enough knowledge
If anything, there are too many, not too few. This means that in some niche areas you end up with bad experts. But that's no worse than the hacks.
> so you'd better find some non-experts, who covers a wide range of topics, for most of them they will not have a qualification.
Yes, but the good ones cover what the relevant experts say. The kind of stuff you may find in, say, the Economist or Paul Krugman's blog.
Scott Alexander's writing read to me like something written by a bright middle-schooler who has lots of thoughts and ideas, but little relevant knowledge. And because the people who are interested in actual knowledge know they won't find it in his writings, what you end up with is an entire community where you can find a very lively debate among a bunch of people, none of whom know what they're talking about.
It becomes interesting. You sounds as an advent of Church of Science from the very beginning, but now it becomes unmistakable. Science has no monopoly on truth. I'm not familiar with academy, you are right, I don't know how much Science share your ideas, but if it is, then Science has defeated itself. I hope that it is not so, and I believe it is not so.
Below there is a list of reasons why we cannot grant Science a monopoly on truth. I'm not claiming it is a comprehensive list, it is just reasons from top of my mind. But before that I'll say two more things.
Science doesn't have a monopoly on truth and Science is not a perfect instrument. Therefore I'll seek wisdom in all places, and I'll use my own brains to think, even if I'm not an expert in a topic. I will not ask medium, but it is not because I believe it is absolutely useless, it is because I have a limited time and I need to prioritize sources with high expected value of their answers. But still I will not bind myself to highest value sources either, because the path to the truth is not linear, you'd better remember about Monte Carlo methods and add some randomness to your moves.
I want also to say about "unanswered questions". It is really good, that you feel yourself comfortable despite uncertainty. Most of people are not, they can't sleep if they have unanswered questions and they could pick a random answer just to make the question answered. But it is possible to do better, than just stuff a question in a pile of unanswered questions. If you accept the idea of an answer as a probability distribution over all possible answers, then you can have an answer for any question and move all the uncertainty into the distribution of the answer. You can deal with the uncertainty in a more conscious way, and sometimes using more intricate methods. You can seek answer, find no definitive "yes" or "no", but still update your distribution. The unanswered questions stop being unanswered, they become questions with high entropy answers. Entropy is a continuous function, so question can become more unanswered or less unanswered.
And now the list of reasons to reject Science claim for a monopoly on truth.
1. There are phenomena Science can't deal with due to its methods. The most glaring class of such phenomena are single irreproducible events. Did Christ rise from death? Science can't answer this question and probably it never won't be able to answer it, because it can't do multiple observations. Scott Alexander recently wrote again on topic of a collective vision of Virgin Mary[1], and science can't tackle the question. I think you should read it through. Because you'll notice that it seems that now science can meaningfully join the discussion, because there are similar events, but before these events we found, all the science could do about the vision, is to keep its proud silence on the topic.
2. We cannot trust Scott Alexander, but we cannot trust Science either. Science can be mistaken, and sometimes it may be mistaken for no good reason at all. Did you read Judea Pearl "The Book of Why"? Pearl tells the history of statistics in his book, and particularly the roles of Pearson and Fisher, who doesn't look as people prioritizing truth over everything else, they where fighting the truth due to... well, I'd say because they were humans with all our failings. Science can be led astray in its search for truth behind Alzheimer disease because of a junk-paper published 30 years ago. Or Science could spend enormous efforts to build String Theory and then... just chuck it away.
We should hope that Science will correct itself eventually in all such cases, but should we just wait for it, or maybe we are allowed to stray from Science and use our brains instead? Maybe Science is close to truth than anything/anyone else, but still it is not the Truth. Which means than you need to use your own brains, and to accept any statement with a grain of salt. We have to part with boolean logic and embrace the probabilistic nature of truth even when we talk about scientific truths.
3. Science develops the scientific method and employs the state of art methods to seek truth, but it is a scientific propaganda. xD I mentioned The Book of Why of Judea Pearl, which shows examples of Science rejecting better methods, and the causality proposed by Judea Pearl and his students is not a method science really wield. Bayesianism is the previous idea of Judea Pearl, it is older than causality by 10 years, and Science still relies on debunked p-values[2]. There are better methods, but Science still clings to old ones, rejecting the prospect of learning new tricks.
4. Science is a part of a bigger system and it can't avoid pressure from it. SJW pressured Science to a point, when its answers on questions including words "black", "white", "male", "female" are just plainly unreliable. Scientists can't publish a paper stating that black people are somehow "worse" than white. It doesn't matter if the paper contains truth or not, scientist just not allowed to publish it. So now any study talking about correlation of skin color or sex or gender with anything is just don't worth time needed to read it. I don't know other examples of this, but you need to be careful when seeking scientific answers, and keep in mind that some answers cannot be uttered. Or science is not allowed to diagnose politicians based on observations of their behavior. Science is restricted by society, culture, moral and ethical considerations. We should keep it in mind when we are seeking scientific answers.
5. There is knowledge Science never bothered itself to incorporate, or it just can't incorporate it. If my granny shows me how to use a specific herb to treat a wound, should I reject her knowledge as unscientific? Lets suppose I can't find a scientific answers about the herb, so what should I do? But knowledge can be just beyond Science. Science works with knowledge that can be written on a paper. If it can't then Science is out of luck. There is intuition for example, it cannot be written down. I use it to write English, I don't know grammar rules, I rely on intuition. I can't formalize my intuition, I can just use it. Well... English maybe not the best example for me, because English is my second language, and I'm not enough proficient with it to compete with professional linguists, but I am proficient in Russian to use it in ways that no linguist could explain. No grammar would accept my ways, but other Russians will understand what I'm doing. You see? I'm more proficient in Russian than Science with all its linguistic studies and thousands of linguists.
6. There are questions that are beyond Science. Like what does it mean to be conscious? When scientists try to answer this question, they are not better than laymans. For example, Anil Seth says that "consciousness is biological"[3] and kinda stops there. What a shame. Or Steven Hawking proclaiming that philosophy is dead. You can't just ask Science what is conscious and get an answer, because Science doesn't understand the question: it is a philosophical question right now. It can become a scientific question, but for now it is not.
[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/a-buddhist-sun-miracle https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/a-buddhist-sun-miracle
[2] https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Against_Inferential_Statistics_How_and_why_current_statistics_teaching_gets_it_wrong_/10152614 https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Agai...
[3] https://www.noemamag.com/the-mythology-of-conscious-ai/ https://www.noemamag.com/the-mythology-of-conscious-ai/