5 ms·

I just mean that the claim can't be tested directly because the brain is more-or-less a black box.

tedsanders 13y ago
That may be true, but you can still make models and qualitative explanations. Something can still be valuable without being precise.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Yeah, I agree, I just don't like it when people aren't clear that something is only a model and we actually have no way of knowing. (At least presently.)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - oblique63 13y ago
    You mean like gravity? As far as I'm aware, that hasn't exactly been fully understood yet either... Modern psychology is very much a science today, and if anything, it's like the relativity to neurology's QM. Both are useful and ultimately related aspects, we're just still in the middle of working out the details right now. It's disingenuous to deem either more/less valuable than the other so prematurely.
    - richardjordan 13y ago
      That's a nonsensical analogy. We understand gravity to staggering levels of precision. Psychology may be a science but to suggest that we have anything like the detailed models and level of experimentally verifiable understanding of it, that we do for the laws of Physics, is what is disingenuous. This is partly because psychology is such a young science in comparison, and possibly partly because by the nature of complex systems we are less able to create such precise mathematical models which describe it. It is nothing like relativity and neurology has no analog in QM. I am not sure if it's psychology/neurology or relativity/QM you lack a firm grasp of but it appears to be at least one or the other.
      - oblique63 13y ago
        > We understand gravity to staggering levels of precision. If I understood the parent correctly, the argument was that the brain was still a 'black box' in that we don't understand how/why exactly it works, therefore it's sketchy to use it without the public knowing that it's 'just a model'. The point is not that gravity is anything like psychology, but that they both seem to share the same predicament with regards to their origins. It'd be naive to say that we don't know much about it, but if I'm behind on some findings that detail what gravity is, that would be helpful feedback. > This is partly because psychology is such a young science in comparison Exactly. This is why discrediting it as a legitimate science when it needs all the cross-disciplinary help it can get is so unnerving. We aren't gonna make inroads into understanding ourselves too quickly if we raise a generation of people to dismiss it like that. >I am not sure if it's psychology/neurology or relativity/QM you lack a firm grasp of but it appears to be at least one or the other. Both my good sir! (academically speaking anyway). The point I was emphasizing was the relationship, not either science -- thus, unless I'm wrong and we're convinced the effects of relativity are not emergent from QM, I'm not sure how it makes a difference? What seems to be disingenuous is dismissing the metaphor (read: literary analogy) for not being in complete 1:1 correspondence in practice -- it was a conceptual point. I was talking about forests, and you seem to be talking about trees. But if you feel I lack some critical knowledge about said trees, please do try to clarify your point, because I've received a fair number of upvotes for that comment so I think a good number of us 'laypeople' would benefit from such an analysis.
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        I think I understand where you're coming from: an apple hit Newton on the head because "gravity", students chose cake after memorizing a long number because "brain". The difference is that you can measure the force gravity exerts and quantify it directly, but with psychology (as opposed to behavioral biology) you have to ask the brain to tell you what is going on in English and then make guesses about the circuitry inside of this complex system that you have no way of verifying (e.g. "why did you choose the cake?"). Anyway, just to clarify, psychology is valuable without being science, and it has been for thousands of years. It's our society's insistence that science is the only valid way of understanding the world that is the problem.
bagosm 13y ago
The brain is far from a black box. There is technology to trace all signals and even all molecules traveling around. What is missing is understanding how it works, not seeing into it
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  We don't have a complete physical picture of what each individual macro feature (e.g. nerve ending, molecule of dopamine) of the brain is doing at any given instant. We are starting to understand neuronal topology. It's really like a program binary for which you don't have a disassembler, but maybe you have limited symbol information that you can look at in a debugger.
ronaldx 13y ago
The point of falsifiability is that it must be possible to prove that a hypothesis is false by some experimental method, otherwise the hypothesis is unscientific. Here, you can try and prove it to be false, by using your own ideas as the basis for an experiment. All sciences* have the same problem as you decribe - we can rarely, if ever, be sure that a hypothesis is true. * Mathematical sciences excepted
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  There was an experiment showing causation between one human phenomenon - memorizing a 7-digit number instead of a 2-digit number - and another human phenomenon - choosing to eat a piece of cake over a piece of fruit. Clearly I can design experiments to test this causality. How do I test the claim that the brain has a single pool of resources allocated to cognitive processing and willpower? I cannot think of a way to examine the brain and measure the levels of this resource pool, cognitive processing, and willpower. In the same fashion, you cannot measure the brain and tell me that it isn't an instance of "hard work merits a reward" at work. There is no way that you can falsify my alternative hypothesis.
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    To formally define a hypothesis, the claimant should be obliged to define cognitive processing and willpower in terms of what you call "human phenomena". Then we can design experiments to challenge the hypotheses, as in any other science. If you want to test "cognitive processing reduces willpower" vs "hard work merits reward", you would presumably define these four terms differently (or preferably rewrite them to be less ambiguous) and then you could design experiments which test each statement. I am not an expert in experimental psychology but the main wikipedia page even makes direct reference to this idea as operational definitions: "Operational definitions are definitions of theoretical constructs that are stated in terms of concrete, observable procedures". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_psychology#The_Four_Canons_of_Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_psychology#The_Fo...
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago

That may be true, but you can still make models and qualitative explanations. Something can still be valuable without being precise.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
Yeah, I agree, I just don't like it when people aren't clear that something is only a model and we actually have no way of knowing. (At least presently.)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- oblique63 13y ago
  You mean like gravity? As far as I'm aware, that hasn't exactly been fully understood yet either... Modern psychology is very much a science today, and if anything, it's like the relativity to neurology's QM. Both are useful and ultimately related aspects, we're just still in the middle of working out the details right now. It's disingenuous to deem either more/less valuable than the other so prematurely.
  - richardjordan 13y ago
    That's a nonsensical analogy. We understand gravity to staggering levels of precision. Psychology may be a science but to suggest that we have anything like the detailed models and level of experimentally verifiable understanding of it, that we do for the laws of Physics, is what is disingenuous. This is partly because psychology is such a young science in comparison, and possibly partly because by the nature of complex systems we are less able to create such precise mathematical models which describe it. It is nothing like relativity and neurology has no analog in QM. I am not sure if it's psychology/neurology or relativity/QM you lack a firm grasp of but it appears to be at least one or the other.
    - oblique63 13y ago
      > We understand gravity to staggering levels of precision. If I understood the parent correctly, the argument was that the brain was still a 'black box' in that we don't understand how/why exactly it works, therefore it's sketchy to use it without the public knowing that it's 'just a model'. The point is not that gravity is anything like psychology, but that they both seem to share the same predicament with regards to their origins. It'd be naive to say that we don't know much about it, but if I'm behind on some findings that detail what gravity is, that would be helpful feedback. > This is partly because psychology is such a young science in comparison Exactly. This is why discrediting it as a legitimate science when it needs all the cross-disciplinary help it can get is so unnerving. We aren't gonna make inroads into understanding ourselves too quickly if we raise a generation of people to dismiss it like that. >I am not sure if it's psychology/neurology or relativity/QM you lack a firm grasp of but it appears to be at least one or the other. Both my good sir! (academically speaking anyway). The point I was emphasizing was the relationship, not either science -- thus, unless I'm wrong and we're convinced the effects of relativity are not emergent from QM, I'm not sure how it makes a difference? What seems to be disingenuous is dismissing the metaphor (read: literary analogy) for not being in complete 1:1 correspondence in practice -- it was a conceptual point. I was talking about forests, and you seem to be talking about trees. But if you feel I lack some critical knowledge about said trees, please do try to clarify your point, because I've received a fair number of upvotes for that comment so I think a good number of us 'laypeople' would benefit from such an analysis.
      - foobarbazqux 13y ago
        I think I understand where you're coming from: an apple hit Newton on the head because "gravity", students chose cake after memorizing a long number because "brain". The difference is that you can measure the force gravity exerts and quantify it directly, but with psychology (as opposed to behavioral biology) you have to ask the brain to tell you what is going on in English and then make guesses about the circuitry inside of this complex system that you have no way of verifying (e.g. "why did you choose the cake?"). Anyway, just to clarify, psychology is valuable without being science, and it has been for thousands of years. It's our society's insistence that science is the only valid way of understanding the world that is the problem.

bagosm 13y ago

The brain is far from a black box. There is technology to trace all signals and even all molecules traveling around. What is missing is understanding how it works, not seeing into it

foobarbazqux 13y ago
We don't have a complete physical picture of what each individual macro feature (e.g. nerve ending, molecule of dopamine) of the brain is doing at any given instant. We are starting to understand neuronal topology. It's really like a program binary for which you don't have a disassembler, but maybe you have limited symbol information that you can look at in a debugger.

ronaldx 13y ago

The point of falsifiability is that it must be possible to prove that a hypothesis is false by some experimental method, otherwise the hypothesis is unscientific. Here, you can try and prove it to be false, by using your own ideas as the basis for an experiment. All sciences* have the same problem as you decribe - we can rarely, if ever, be sure that a hypothesis is true. * Mathematical sciences excepted

foobarbazqux 13y ago
There was an experiment showing causation between one human phenomenon - memorizing a 7-digit number instead of a 2-digit number - and another human phenomenon - choosing to eat a piece of cake over a piece of fruit. Clearly I can design experiments to test this causality. How do I test the claim that the brain has a single pool of resources allocated to cognitive processing and willpower? I cannot think of a way to examine the brain and measure the levels of this resource pool, cognitive processing, and willpower. In the same fashion, you cannot measure the brain and tell me that it isn't an instance of "hard work merits a reward" at work. There is no way that you can falsify my alternative hypothesis.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  To formally define a hypothesis, the claimant should be obliged to define cognitive processing and willpower in terms of what you call "human phenomena". Then we can design experiments to challenge the hypotheses, as in any other science. If you want to test "cognitive processing reduces willpower" vs "hard work merits reward", you would presumably define these four terms differently (or preferably rewrite them to be less ambiguous) and then you could design experiments which test each statement. I am not an expert in experimental psychology but the main wikipedia page even makes direct reference to this idea as operational definitions: "Operational definitions are definitions of theoretical constructs that are stated in terms of concrete, observable procedures". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_psychology#The_Four_Canons_of_Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_psychology#The_Fo...
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago