For people struggling to find meaning and fulfillment, the human pursuit to find knowledge and objective truth in the world really works for me. We don’t have to be scientists ourselves, we can just be interested in the things we see around us and in improving our understanding (of everything or anything).
Usually when someone claims an question under active discussion has a simple and "obvious" answer then in reality THEY are making an appeal to authority. The fact that the question is under active discussion demonstrates that it's not obvious to everyone what the correct answer is, and the person claiming it is in essence saying that readers should trust them to be right -- and by extension the people to disagree to be wrong.
And the reader should do this in the complete absence of any actual evidence.
But in the absence of evidence, there's no rational way to evaluate which of two or more conflicting claims is right and which is wrong.
Interesting and thought provoking read, thanks Helen. From a day to day political perspective ie how we all navigate politics in a media based world, I found myself drawn back to your statement "We all observe patterns, though not always the same ones, and comparing our perceptions can be valuable." Is this the essence of it? We do all compare our perceptions - what we don't do very well is firstly, understand this is what we're doing - comparing perceptions. And secondly, we don't evaluate which perceptions are (or should be) more influential and why, very well either. And, unfortunately, as the "speaking my truth" mantra has taken hold in the mainstream, this inability has become even worse. The solution - high quality, self aware, reflective thinking and sharing of perceptions with humility, and skepticism being seen as positive?
I cannot help noticing that many of your detractors are simply not at your level. Neither am I, but when you write "the problem is not with empirical methods themselves but with replacing them with the same perceptual lens and ideological bias that makes reliance on lived experience unreliable" it is not a casual observation, it is backed up by your years of study and hard work that make you an authority on the subject. And this is why I enjoy and respect what you write. And there are always some simpler take-aways, like "One cannot demand that science change its mind when wrong and simultaneously fault it for new findings contradicting previous findings". Thank you for that one. And for your books, especially ‘Critical Theories’ which was a revelation for me.
Thank you for that very thought-provoking post. I agree with you completely. Too often people interpret questions on the sources of their information as implying that they’re liars rather than as a neutral request to separate fact from what might just be opinion.
Remember that famous Stanford marshmallow experiment supposedly testing children’s ability to defer immediate pleasure? The test subjects were each given a marshmallow. They were told if they waited until later to eat it, they would be given two marshmallows. Those are the facts. But the conclusion of the experiment - that the children who waited were smarter as they could defer gratification since they got two marshmallows instead of one - was then passed off as evident fact.
But that is not a fact. It is just an opinion - an opinion based on the assumption that children who ate the marshmallow right away did so because they were unable to delay gratification. Another equally valid assumption would have been that the child who ate the marshmallow right away was street smart. He was skeptical of a promise by someone he’s never seen before trying to talk him out of eating his treat by telling him (with no proof) that he would get an extra marshmallow if he waited. Having the ability to defer gratification is not the same as deciding to exercise that ability. In fact, my opinion is that the child who did not wait was the mature one able to tell the difference between a stranger’s promise and an actual marshmallow in hand. And the child who waited was arguably the immature impulsive one reacting to momentary greed.
Thank you Helen for another excellent and thought-provoking essay! I've also been observing a related, but slightly different phenomenon. Drop a link to a single study or chart, and present it as universal evidence for a more general claim. ("AI can't be trusted" for example.) Wondering the extent to which we need to embrace an "actuarial epistemology," especially in fields where data is emerging or limited. Actuaries get this. They can evaluate a data set and say "this is only partially credible to resolve the problem at hand so we will give it only give it a 30% weight toward generating our conclusion." I'm not sure how that works in practice (other then waiting for an authoritative meta-study), but I'm getting really tired of people over-concluding the universal truth from a single data point or study. I don't know how closely you follow the AI discourse, but this has been its dominant dysfunction.
Might it be that the problem is downstream of there being too many claims of evidence, and very few people equipped to judge between them? Child gender "medicine" is a good example...
Normie: Surgically transition my child?
Genderists: We have studies! The science is settled!
Normie: How is this different from lobotomies and hysterectomies?
Genderists: It's different this time! Pinkie promise.
Normie: But the Cass Report!
Genderists: But the Cass Report has been DEBUNKED due to Methodological Errors!
How does the normie decide? There are studies on both sides, and claims and counterclaims couched in academic language. What we believe has to be down to how much we trust the person doing the study, and whether the results seem to match common sense, mostly meaning falling back on confirmation bias.
In this context, the sin of science is not that it changed its mind so many times, but that in the past Serious Men in White Coats have been jolly certain about some pretty extreme things with very bad results.
I think you have interpreted the original piece as saying ‘we shouldn’t ask for robust empirical evidence when things are obvious from personal experience’.
A more charitable reading would be something like ‘we shouldn’t use the absence of robust empirical evidence as a means of shutting down discussion of novel hypotheses that have been suggested to us by our own experience, especially where these hypotheses have not yet been tested and/or where existing research that points in the opposite direction is poor quality’
I have to respond to what is actually said and I think I did that by citing it and then responding sentence by sentence. I would not have written a piece arguing against what you said.
Sometimes, but I think he was clear. And the best I can do is cite what people actually say and then respond to the words themselves. If you believe that McFillin's piece was an argument for not shutting down novel hypotheses rather than an argument that one should not be expected to cite evidence when something seems obvious even though he literally said "Just know that demanding citations for obvious observations is the intellectual equivalent of asking for a permit to think' and nothing at all about novel hypotheses (which are, by definition, not obvious), I think you have veered from charity into optimistic apologism. You may be addressing a much more defensible argument that you wish he had written rather than the one he actually did.
Also, no productive discussion can come from, "I think what he really meant was...". I'd just have to accept that the stance you gave is your stance and then we have no disagreement.
"You may be addressing a much more defensible argument that you wish he had written rather than the one he actually did."
This made me chuckle as I am definitely guilty of this a lot of the time! (I think it comes from marking undergraduate essays that I am not allowed to fail)
I understand your argument, but I suspect the idea of evidence is not as well-supported as you state.
It is a rare scientists who caveats their study with “The empirical evidence I am claiming is only a statement of repeatability under highly localized conditions.” Yet this is the case even with perfect repeatability.
The issue isn’t just the lack of conditional language on the part of those using intuition, it is also the unreasonable certainty of those conducting analytical/empirical science.
I can agree that lived experience is not an epistemology. But neither is science identical with truth. Science maybe a rigorous method for testing empirical claims. Truth is wider. We also reach it through logic and mathematics, by historical inquiry, and through moral reasoning. The practical rule is simple. When a claim is empirical, ask for evidence. When a claim is conceptual, historical, or moral, ask for clear arguments, sound methods, and converging sources. That avoids two errors at once, the elevation of anecdote into knowledge, and the slide into scientism. In Stoic terms, practise the discipline of assent. Test impressions, choose the right tool for the question, and keep the humility to revise. I explored this more in my article The Truth of Science and the Science of Truth https://therationalcosmos.substack.com/p/the-truth-of-science-and-the-science
I have to go read Anuradha's piece, now. I glom onto Anuradha, in large part, because she has been speaking to my 'lived experience' in my former work world (non-profit, education in San Francisco). I glom onto you because l, well, this piece and your work.
I just this weekend received another email from the SF Unified School District reaffirming lived experience. My former bosses were silent when I asked if I have a lived experience.
Both you and Anuradha keep me sane. The argument against authority and the argument against lived experience both speak to me, i believe in large part because I am a liberal and wish to remain one. Meaning, I value the observational, experiential reflection AND the evidence-based analysis because they help me see the whole better, not perfect. And, I value the ability to be willing and open to being incorrect, wrong, misguided, foolish, naive, etc.
I wonder if the stuff in Anuradha 's piece is more the observational, emerging science of pattern recognition BEFORE experimentation (early thesis) and what you are highlighting is the experiment, reflect, re-think thesis, etc. Anyway, I need to get reading!
Read it. Quick read. I would argue that the best part of the piece by McFillin is the part about badly reproduced "The Science TM".
For instance, everyone in my field was discussing White Fragility (as John McWhorter stated, 'the second worst book ever written.') and I seemed to be the only one that noticed her scientific truth claim, that all white children are racist by the time they are 8-12 was based on one very bad piece of non-replicated science studying roughly 230 white children in Lisbon, Portugal. Nevermind that her entire book is about the United States onf America and the study didn't even bother to test the black youth at the school in their analysis.
This is the issue, as I see it. It is the issue you clearly and effectively highlighted with Lindsay and Boghossian.
So, yes 100% with you that abadoning real science for feelings is just as bad as perpetuating bad science.
If studies and citations are needed, in a dinner conversation, then they are needed for everyone. Otherwise, get better friends.
Thank you, as always, for having the courage to ‘think honestly in public’. Please keep up such incredibly important work.
For people struggling to find meaning and fulfillment, the human pursuit to find knowledge and objective truth in the world really works for me. We don’t have to be scientists ourselves, we can just be interested in the things we see around us and in improving our understanding (of everything or anything).
Usually when someone claims an question under active discussion has a simple and "obvious" answer then in reality THEY are making an appeal to authority. The fact that the question is under active discussion demonstrates that it's not obvious to everyone what the correct answer is, and the person claiming it is in essence saying that readers should trust them to be right -- and by extension the people to disagree to be wrong.
And the reader should do this in the complete absence of any actual evidence.
But in the absence of evidence, there's no rational way to evaluate which of two or more conflicting claims is right and which is wrong.
Interesting and thought provoking read, thanks Helen. From a day to day political perspective ie how we all navigate politics in a media based world, I found myself drawn back to your statement "We all observe patterns, though not always the same ones, and comparing our perceptions can be valuable." Is this the essence of it? We do all compare our perceptions - what we don't do very well is firstly, understand this is what we're doing - comparing perceptions. And secondly, we don't evaluate which perceptions are (or should be) more influential and why, very well either. And, unfortunately, as the "speaking my truth" mantra has taken hold in the mainstream, this inability has become even worse. The solution - high quality, self aware, reflective thinking and sharing of perceptions with humility, and skepticism being seen as positive?
I really liked this. Followed.
I cannot help noticing that many of your detractors are simply not at your level. Neither am I, but when you write "the problem is not with empirical methods themselves but with replacing them with the same perceptual lens and ideological bias that makes reliance on lived experience unreliable" it is not a casual observation, it is backed up by your years of study and hard work that make you an authority on the subject. And this is why I enjoy and respect what you write. And there are always some simpler take-aways, like "One cannot demand that science change its mind when wrong and simultaneously fault it for new findings contradicting previous findings". Thank you for that one. And for your books, especially ‘Critical Theories’ which was a revelation for me.
Thank you for that very thought-provoking post. I agree with you completely. Too often people interpret questions on the sources of their information as implying that they’re liars rather than as a neutral request to separate fact from what might just be opinion.
Remember that famous Stanford marshmallow experiment supposedly testing children’s ability to defer immediate pleasure? The test subjects were each given a marshmallow. They were told if they waited until later to eat it, they would be given two marshmallows. Those are the facts. But the conclusion of the experiment - that the children who waited were smarter as they could defer gratification since they got two marshmallows instead of one - was then passed off as evident fact.
But that is not a fact. It is just an opinion - an opinion based on the assumption that children who ate the marshmallow right away did so because they were unable to delay gratification. Another equally valid assumption would have been that the child who ate the marshmallow right away was street smart. He was skeptical of a promise by someone he’s never seen before trying to talk him out of eating his treat by telling him (with no proof) that he would get an extra marshmallow if he waited. Having the ability to defer gratification is not the same as deciding to exercise that ability. In fact, my opinion is that the child who did not wait was the mature one able to tell the difference between a stranger’s promise and an actual marshmallow in hand. And the child who waited was arguably the immature impulsive one reacting to momentary greed.
Thank you Helen for another excellent and thought-provoking essay! I've also been observing a related, but slightly different phenomenon. Drop a link to a single study or chart, and present it as universal evidence for a more general claim. ("AI can't be trusted" for example.) Wondering the extent to which we need to embrace an "actuarial epistemology," especially in fields where data is emerging or limited. Actuaries get this. They can evaluate a data set and say "this is only partially credible to resolve the problem at hand so we will give it only give it a 30% weight toward generating our conclusion." I'm not sure how that works in practice (other then waiting for an authoritative meta-study), but I'm getting really tired of people over-concluding the universal truth from a single data point or study. I don't know how closely you follow the AI discourse, but this has been its dominant dysfunction.
Might it be that the problem is downstream of there being too many claims of evidence, and very few people equipped to judge between them? Child gender "medicine" is a good example...
Normie: Surgically transition my child?
Genderists: We have studies! The science is settled!
Normie: How is this different from lobotomies and hysterectomies?
Genderists: It's different this time! Pinkie promise.
Normie: But the Cass Report!
Genderists: But the Cass Report has been DEBUNKED due to Methodological Errors!
How does the normie decide? There are studies on both sides, and claims and counterclaims couched in academic language. What we believe has to be down to how much we trust the person doing the study, and whether the results seem to match common sense, mostly meaning falling back on confirmation bias.
In this context, the sin of science is not that it changed its mind so many times, but that in the past Serious Men in White Coats have been jolly certain about some pretty extreme things with very bad results.
I agree with your view on evidence though I am uncertain that your view of the position you’re contesting is what the author holds.
Why?
I think you have interpreted the original piece as saying ‘we shouldn’t ask for robust empirical evidence when things are obvious from personal experience’.
A more charitable reading would be something like ‘we shouldn’t use the absence of robust empirical evidence as a means of shutting down discussion of novel hypotheses that have been suggested to us by our own experience, especially where these hypotheses have not yet been tested and/or where existing research that points in the opposite direction is poor quality’
I have to respond to what is actually said and I think I did that by citing it and then responding sentence by sentence. I would not have written a piece arguing against what you said.
Indeed, but 'what is actually said' may have more than one reasonable interpretation.
Sometimes, but I think he was clear. And the best I can do is cite what people actually say and then respond to the words themselves. If you believe that McFillin's piece was an argument for not shutting down novel hypotheses rather than an argument that one should not be expected to cite evidence when something seems obvious even though he literally said "Just know that demanding citations for obvious observations is the intellectual equivalent of asking for a permit to think' and nothing at all about novel hypotheses (which are, by definition, not obvious), I think you have veered from charity into optimistic apologism. You may be addressing a much more defensible argument that you wish he had written rather than the one he actually did.
Also, no productive discussion can come from, "I think what he really meant was...". I'd just have to accept that the stance you gave is your stance and then we have no disagreement.
"You may be addressing a much more defensible argument that you wish he had written rather than the one he actually did."
This made me chuckle as I am definitely guilty of this a lot of the time! (I think it comes from marking undergraduate essays that I am not allowed to fail)
I understand your argument, but I suspect the idea of evidence is not as well-supported as you state.
It is a rare scientists who caveats their study with “The empirical evidence I am claiming is only a statement of repeatability under highly localized conditions.” Yet this is the case even with perfect repeatability.
The issue isn’t just the lack of conditional language on the part of those using intuition, it is also the unreasonable certainty of those conducting analytical/empirical science.
I can agree that lived experience is not an epistemology. But neither is science identical with truth. Science maybe a rigorous method for testing empirical claims. Truth is wider. We also reach it through logic and mathematics, by historical inquiry, and through moral reasoning. The practical rule is simple. When a claim is empirical, ask for evidence. When a claim is conceptual, historical, or moral, ask for clear arguments, sound methods, and converging sources. That avoids two errors at once, the elevation of anecdote into knowledge, and the slide into scientism. In Stoic terms, practise the discipline of assent. Test impressions, choose the right tool for the question, and keep the humility to revise. I explored this more in my article The Truth of Science and the Science of Truth https://therationalcosmos.substack.com/p/the-truth-of-science-and-the-science
I have to go read Anuradha's piece, now. I glom onto Anuradha, in large part, because she has been speaking to my 'lived experience' in my former work world (non-profit, education in San Francisco). I glom onto you because l, well, this piece and your work.
I just this weekend received another email from the SF Unified School District reaffirming lived experience. My former bosses were silent when I asked if I have a lived experience.
Both you and Anuradha keep me sane. The argument against authority and the argument against lived experience both speak to me, i believe in large part because I am a liberal and wish to remain one. Meaning, I value the observational, experiential reflection AND the evidence-based analysis because they help me see the whole better, not perfect. And, I value the ability to be willing and open to being incorrect, wrong, misguided, foolish, naive, etc.
I wonder if the stuff in Anuradha 's piece is more the observational, emerging science of pattern recognition BEFORE experimentation (early thesis) and what you are highlighting is the experiment, reflect, re-think thesis, etc. Anyway, I need to get reading!
Read it. Quick read. I would argue that the best part of the piece by McFillin is the part about badly reproduced "The Science TM".
For instance, everyone in my field was discussing White Fragility (as John McWhorter stated, 'the second worst book ever written.') and I seemed to be the only one that noticed her scientific truth claim, that all white children are racist by the time they are 8-12 was based on one very bad piece of non-replicated science studying roughly 230 white children in Lisbon, Portugal. Nevermind that her entire book is about the United States onf America and the study didn't even bother to test the black youth at the school in their analysis.
This is the issue, as I see it. It is the issue you clearly and effectively highlighted with Lindsay and Boghossian.
So, yes 100% with you that abadoning real science for feelings is just as bad as perpetuating bad science.
If studies and citations are needed, in a dinner conversation, then they are needed for everyone. Otherwise, get better friends.
Correction, the piece Anuradha shared.
Something related, perhaps, on the claim by left wing women’s rights campaigners that ‘There is no evidence that people seeking refuge are more likely to commit acts of sexual violence’. https://open.substack.com/pub/mattgoodwin/p/why-wont-they-talk-about-these-crimes?r=23ix4k&utm_medium=ios
I saw the same article and wanted to write a response piece, but you said it better than I could have!