9 ms·

Empiricism Is Not a Matter of Faith (2008) [pdf]

40 points by doppenhe 13y ago

glomph 13y ago
Good article. Bad title for wider audiences though. I expected a faux philosophy essay from a narrow minded empiricist. Instead I got an interesting article about software publication within linguistics.
javajosh 13y ago
All empiricists have faith that physical laws do not vary in time.
- baddox 13y ago
  Also that sensory experience and human perception in general is a reliable source of truth.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Antiquarian 13y ago
  A belief is not faith if, given evidence, the advocate will discard the belief.
  - pfortuny 13y ago
    Yes, but do you have evidence of what will happen? I, on my part, tend to think that I have faith, not proof.
    - Antiquarian 13y ago
      I think that proof is inconsistent with empiricism. There are hypotheses; an observation either strengthens, weakens, or leaves unchanged the confidence in the hypotheses.
- syncerr 13y ago
  Huh? A physical law is defined as a "... [conclusion] based on repeated scientific experiments and observations over many years and which have become accepted universally within the scientific community."[1] In other words -- something that has been shown not to vary. Faith by definition a "belief that is not based on proof".[2] So you're arguing against the validity of formal logic or the scientific method or that a reached consensus cannot be trusted? EDIT: I think you're overestimating the certainty that an empiricist would have about future events. ___ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_law [2] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - pfortuny 13y ago
    Not that it cannot be trusted but that believing it is a matter of faith. This does not mean it is less human to believe, but that it is patently human to have to believe something. Do not confuse formal logic (which deals with sintax, not meaning, so it has no truth in itself) and the scientific method for which belief is utterly necessary. Trust is not a bad thing. But trust requires faith. Faith is not a bad thing. "Consensus" is not an absolute source of unerring knowledge of reality.
    - syncerr 13y ago
      I wasn't trying to imply that an empiricist would assert anything to be wholly true. Again from the same wiki article: Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, asserts that “knowledge is based on experience” and that “knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification.”
      - rz2k 13y ago
        I don't think that is what people are getting at. The precision and accuracy of an empiricist's observations can be off without violating ones faith in empiricism. However, the notion that something can happen, or that the past doesn't change, or that there are causes and effects are necessary assumptions of empiricism. Though assuming that causality is a thing seems to have worked out pretty well, you can also at least conceive a Looking Glass universe where the rules don't work the same and cause and effect are turned on their head.
- glomph 13y ago
  The article isn't really about that. (I made a similarly pithy comment but have deleted it having read the article.)
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
  No, they don't. Or at least they don't need to. If empiricism actually works and gives us (a good approximation of) the truth/reality, then it's probably a good idea to use it, as it allows us to influence our future (assuming free will or whatever, I don't want to get into that). If empiricism doesn't work, then all bets with regards to influencing our future are off, anything you do is essentially random, and what happens as a result is pure chance. Behaving as if empiricism worked does not change that outcome, though. That's why assuming that empricism works is the safe bet, no need to actually believe that it works - it's the one strategy that makes you better off if it works and doesn't change the expected outcome if it doesn't work.
  - crpatino 13y ago
    This seems awfully close to: sed 's/God/Science/g' PascalWager.template I think in both cases, the meta argument goes like this: "If the world is like I want it to be, then everything conforms to my preferred set of values, so it's worth to follow those values. Otherwise, the world is just too appalling to think about, so let's pretend I did not mention that and stick to following my preferred set of values, ok?"
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
      Yes, the superficial structure is similar, the content is not at all, plus your summary fits neither Pascal's wager nor my argument for empiricism, I think. Pascal's wager assumes that there either is no god or a god that has particular values, and then deduces from that that you should follow those particular values, because, if no god exists, it won't cost you anything to have done so, while you get a big payoff if that god actually does exist. There are two big flaws in that reasoning: First, it simply ignores the possibility that a god exists, but its values differ from what you assumed them to be, in which case you presumably would lose the game, and secondly, it's kinda obvious that following certain religious doctrine can have major costs. My argument, on the other hand, does not assume any values (except perhaps that it's advantageous to be able to influence your future - find me anyone who seriously disagrees with that and also thinks that it matters whether you believe in some god or not (if you can't influence it anyhow, why should it matter?) ...). It simply shows that as a matter of fact, almost by definition, your only chance of gaining control over you future is empiricism. Possibly, it's impossible, but if it is possible at all, then empiricism is the only way that could possibly work - just assuming some randomly made-up laws of nature instead of extrapolating from past observations can not be a more reliable way to predict the future, in the worst case your extrapolations are also completely unreliable, in which case they are no worse than randomly made-up laws.
- nyan_sandwich 13y ago
  This is true but the english expression of it is prone to misunderstanding. See the no free lunch theorem for the technical version of the problem of induction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Free_Lunch_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Free_Lunch_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_op...
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  Given there are experiments run to explicitly check for stuff like that (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10619127.2010.506119#.UvkfJF4fOWM http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10619127.2010.506...), I think you are possibly wrong. I'd put it as "All empiricists have faith that there is not much point in being an empiricist if there is a comedy god fiddling the numbers on purpose, purely to screw with the notion of empiricism, so therefore they cheerfully discount that notion as otherwise they wouldn't get much done."
simonster 13y ago
I've thought about this problem before. I'm a neuroscientist, and I would often like to try out other people's modeling techniques on my data, but since the vast majority of published papers do not have corresponding published implementations, I have to implement the algorithms myself, and hope I'm doing the same thing the paper did, and hope they did the same thing the paper says. There is some pedagogical value to this, since it ensures a good understanding of how the algorithms work, but often this pedagogical value is limited. In many cases the main innovation in the paper is a better optimization algorithm and not a different way of framing the problem. There is little incentive to publish your code. Refusing to give away your implementation does not in any way constrain your ability to publish, and giving away your code has only minimal benefits for your career. On the other hand, it's risky, since someone might find a bug in your implementation that changes your results. Additionally, a competing lab might show their algorithm is better than yours, or worse, improve your algorithm and publish a higher impact paper based on it, which might affect the profile of your publication. Finally, publishing your code means you have to package it in a way that is usable by others. Given these facts, it is not entirely surprising that most people would not publish their code. Since science is pretty decentralized, it's hard to achieve the kind of large-scale change in behavior you'd need to make code sharing standard. The only people who could simply decide that people should publish their code and make it happen as a consequence are the funding agencies (e.g. NSF), who have only recently begun thinking about data sharing and have yet to make code sharing a priority. One thing I'd like to see happen is a "viral" AGPL-like license for scientific code. Code would be freely redistributable, but if it is used in a commercial product or publication, the license should require that the modified work be freely redistributed. Given the choice between building on publicly available code or writing everything from scratch, I feel that most researchers would choose the former, even if it meant releasing their code as well.
- Fomite 13y ago
  I think the big one is the lack of incentives. Publishing your code costs time in terms of getting it polished for public use, money by way of time. And it has very little benefit - you've lost exclusive rights to a publication platform, and Github doesn't show up in tenure portfolios.
renox 13y ago
Bad tittle: a better one would be "Empiricism Should Not Be a Matter of Faith", because our current 'scientific method' is very, very broken. I don't exactly remember where (I think it was a project trying to reproduce results by pharmaceutical research) but I remember that this project could only reproduce results half the time on papers which included 'double blind' experiences, less than that when the paper didn't have 'double blind' experiences! Think about it when you'll hear about the new 'discovery' :-( :-(
dcuthbertson 13y ago
From a practical standpoint, the IPyton Notebook [1] seems to be a good starting place to enable sharing of software and reproducing results. [1] http://ipython.org/notebook.html http://ipython.org/notebook.html

40 points by doppenhe 13y ago

Good article. Bad title for wider audiences though. I expected a faux philosophy essay from a narrow minded empiricist. Instead I got an interesting article about software publication within linguistics.

javajosh 13y ago

All empiricists have faith that physical laws do not vary in time.

baddox 13y ago
Also that sensory experience and human perception in general is a reliable source of truth.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Antiquarian 13y ago
A belief is not faith if, given evidence, the advocate will discard the belief.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  Yes, but do you have evidence of what will happen? I, on my part, tend to think that I have faith, not proof.
  - Antiquarian 13y ago
    I think that proof is inconsistent with empiricism. There are hypotheses; an observation either strengthens, weakens, or leaves unchanged the confidence in the hypotheses.
syncerr 13y ago
Huh? A physical law is defined as a "... [conclusion] based on repeated scientific experiments and observations over many years and which have become accepted universally within the scientific community."[1] In other words -- something that has been shown not to vary. Faith by definition a "belief that is not based on proof".[2] So you're arguing against the validity of formal logic or the scientific method or that a reached consensus cannot be trusted? EDIT: I think you're overestimating the certainty that an empiricist would have about future events. ___ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_law [2] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- pfortuny 13y ago
  Not that it cannot be trusted but that believing it is a matter of faith. This does not mean it is less human to believe, but that it is patently human to have to believe something. Do not confuse formal logic (which deals with sintax, not meaning, so it has no truth in itself) and the scientific method for which belief is utterly necessary. Trust is not a bad thing. But trust requires faith. Faith is not a bad thing. "Consensus" is not an absolute source of unerring knowledge of reality.
  - syncerr 13y ago
    I wasn't trying to imply that an empiricist would assert anything to be wholly true. Again from the same wiki article: Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, asserts that “knowledge is based on experience” and that “knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification.”
    - rz2k 13y ago
      I don't think that is what people are getting at. The precision and accuracy of an empiricist's observations can be off without violating ones faith in empiricism. However, the notion that something can happen, or that the past doesn't change, or that there are causes and effects are necessary assumptions of empiricism. Though assuming that causality is a thing seems to have worked out pretty well, you can also at least conceive a Looking Glass universe where the rules don't work the same and cause and effect are turned on their head.
glomph 13y ago
The article isn't really about that. (I made a similarly pithy comment but have deleted it having read the article.)
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
No, they don't. Or at least they don't need to. If empiricism actually works and gives us (a good approximation of) the truth/reality, then it's probably a good idea to use it, as it allows us to influence our future (assuming free will or whatever, I don't want to get into that). If empiricism doesn't work, then all bets with regards to influencing our future are off, anything you do is essentially random, and what happens as a result is pure chance. Behaving as if empiricism worked does not change that outcome, though. That's why assuming that empricism works is the safe bet, no need to actually believe that it works - it's the one strategy that makes you better off if it works and doesn't change the expected outcome if it doesn't work.
- crpatino 13y ago
  This seems awfully close to: sed 's/God/Science/g' PascalWager.template I think in both cases, the meta argument goes like this: "If the world is like I want it to be, then everything conforms to my preferred set of values, so it's worth to follow those values. Otherwise, the world is just too appalling to think about, so let's pretend I did not mention that and stick to following my preferred set of values, ok?"
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
    Yes, the superficial structure is similar, the content is not at all, plus your summary fits neither Pascal's wager nor my argument for empiricism, I think. Pascal's wager assumes that there either is no god or a god that has particular values, and then deduces from that that you should follow those particular values, because, if no god exists, it won't cost you anything to have done so, while you get a big payoff if that god actually does exist. There are two big flaws in that reasoning: First, it simply ignores the possibility that a god exists, but its values differ from what you assumed them to be, in which case you presumably would lose the game, and secondly, it's kinda obvious that following certain religious doctrine can have major costs. My argument, on the other hand, does not assume any values (except perhaps that it's advantageous to be able to influence your future - find me anyone who seriously disagrees with that and also thinks that it matters whether you believe in some god or not (if you can't influence it anyhow, why should it matter?) ...). It simply shows that as a matter of fact, almost by definition, your only chance of gaining control over you future is empiricism. Possibly, it's impossible, but if it is possible at all, then empiricism is the only way that could possibly work - just assuming some randomly made-up laws of nature instead of extrapolating from past observations can not be a more reliable way to predict the future, in the worst case your extrapolations are also completely unreliable, in which case they are no worse than randomly made-up laws.
nyan_sandwich 13y ago
This is true but the english expression of it is prone to misunderstanding. See the no free lunch theorem for the technical version of the problem of induction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Free_Lunch_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Free_Lunch_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_op...
moocowduckquack 13y ago
Given there are experiments run to explicitly check for stuff like that (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10619127.2010.506119#.UvkfJF4fOWM http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10619127.2010.506...), I think you are possibly wrong. I'd put it as "All empiricists have faith that there is not much point in being an empiricist if there is a comedy god fiddling the numbers on purpose, purely to screw with the notion of empiricism, so therefore they cheerfully discount that notion as otherwise they wouldn't get much done."

simonster 13y ago

I've thought about this problem before. I'm a neuroscientist, and I would often like to try out other people's modeling techniques on my data, but since the vast majority of published papers do not have corresponding published implementations, I have to implement the algorithms myself, and hope I'm doing the same thing the paper did, and hope they did the same thing the paper says. There is some pedagogical value to this, since it ensures a good understanding of how the algorithms work, but often this pedagogical value is limited. In many cases the main innovation in the paper is a better optimization algorithm and not a different way of framing the problem. There is little incentive to publish your code. Refusing to give away your implementation does not in any way constrain your ability to publish, and giving away your code has only minimal benefits for your career. On the other hand, it's risky, since someone might find a bug in your implementation that changes your results. Additionally, a competing lab might show their algorithm is better than yours, or worse, improve your algorithm and publish a higher impact paper based on it, which might affect the profile of your publication. Finally, publishing your code means you have to package it in a way that is usable by others. Given these facts, it is not entirely surprising that most people would not publish their code. Since science is pretty decentralized, it's hard to achieve the kind of large-scale change in behavior you'd need to make code sharing standard. The only people who could simply decide that people should publish their code and make it happen as a consequence are the funding agencies (e.g. NSF), who have only recently begun thinking about data sharing and have yet to make code sharing a priority. One thing I'd like to see happen is a "viral" AGPL-like license for scientific code. Code would be freely redistributable, but if it is used in a commercial product or publication, the license should require that the modified work be freely redistributed. Given the choice between building on publicly available code or writing everything from scratch, I feel that most researchers would choose the former, even if it meant releasing their code as well.

Fomite 13y ago
I think the big one is the lack of incentives. Publishing your code costs time in terms of getting it polished for public use, money by way of time. And it has very little benefit - you've lost exclusive rights to a publication platform, and Github doesn't show up in tenure portfolios.

renox 13y ago

Bad tittle: a better one would be "Empiricism Should Not Be a Matter of Faith", because our current 'scientific method' is very, very broken. I don't exactly remember where (I think it was a project trying to reproduce results by pharmaceutical research) but I remember that this project could only reproduce results half the time on papers which included 'double blind' experiences, less than that when the paper didn't have 'double blind' experiences! Think about it when you'll hear about the new 'discovery' :-( :-(

dcuthbertson 13y ago

From a practical standpoint, the IPyton Notebook [1] seems to be a good starting place to enable sharing of software and reproducing results. [1] http://ipython.org/notebook.html http://ipython.org/notebook.html