The importance of stupidity in scientific research

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Only In It For The Gold - Michael Tobis - "Bad Media Advice"

by Dan Olner March 4, 2011 1:11 AM:

Here's Feynman on the 'terrible uncomfortable feeling called confusion'. And here's a great little paper on 'the importance of stupidity in scientific research' - "actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid."

The importance of stupidity in scientific research

Martin A. Schwartz - 9 April 2008 - jcs.biologists.org

Excerpt:

I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.

I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid. I wouldn't know what to do without that feeling. I even think it's supposed to be this way. Let me explain.

For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it. That can't be the only reason – fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. But high-school and college science means taking courses, and doing well in courses means getting the right answers on tests. If you know those answers, you do well and get to feel smart.

A Ph.D., in which you have to do a research project, is a whole different thing. For me, it was a daunting task. How could I possibly frame the questions that would lead to significant discoveries; design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing that, solve them when they occurred? My Ph.D. project was somewhat interdisciplinary and, for a while, whenever I ran into a problem, I pestered the faculty in my department who were experts in the various disciplines that I needed. I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me he didn't know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn't have the answer, nobody did.

That's when it hit me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn't really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

Links on Rational Discussion

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Currently, I see that Rationality is all about a very high standard for yourself and for your allies. Worrying about the standard of rationality of enemies and opponents should be a very small part. There is a finite amount of energy, and that energy is best used to keep the self from deluding the self with comfortable ideas.

It is interesting that nobody wants to be seen as irrational, but very few happy assume the burden of a very high standard for rationality for their own thoughts.

John Wilkins - Evolving Thoughts - A Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion

1. The Fallibility Principle
2. The Truth-Seeking Principle
3. The Clarity Principle
4. The Burden of Proof Principle
5. The Principle of Charity
6. The Relevance Principle
7. The Acceptability Principle
8. The Sufficiency Principle
9. The Rebuttal Principle
10. The Resolution Principle
11. The Suspension of Judgement Principle
12. The Reconsideration Principle
13. Fleck’s Addendum

Some of my own posts on Rational Discussion and Rationality:

• The next tack in Climate Disruption denialism - Scientists must be Nihilists
• The difference between Skeptics and Deniers
• Shifting between the genial general and the hard-nosed specific as a form of the "Shell and Pea game" - A juicy example of The Art of Controversy
• Uncertainty is not an argument for the status quo

Can it be Irrational to prize Rationality? What is Rationality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia

I am a big fan of Scott Plous's The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, because not only does it call out cognitive failure modes, but it also suggests remedies.  The book is written in a non-technical style, so uses the conventional language of modes of thought being "Rational" or "Irrational", and "biases" leading to "Irrational" decisions.

I found a blog post "Is postdecisional dissonance functional?" that takes exception to calling "Post-decision dissonance" irrational (post-decisional dissonance is where the self-judged value of a chosen item increases, and the value of a declined item decreases, compared to the self-judged values before the choice is made: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Post-decision_dissonance ).

"Is postdecisional dissonance functional?" seems like a yes/no question, but the answer can change from situation to situation.  We can construct a situation where this bias is "Irrational/dysfunctional", or is "Rational/functional".

Example: If postdecisional dissonance is the way that one "stops" the decision process, instead of endlessly revisiting a decision and wasting time and energy, then postdecisional dissonance is functional (this is the point raised by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski).  If postdecisional dissonance keeps you from switching decisions when later you are offered the alternate choice along with a small but real payment, because you deny yourself the additional payment even though the options were judged to be identical in value, postdecisional dissonance is dysfunctional.

Which is the most likely scenario?  What is the cost of a more rigorous and rational analysis?  Different answers from subtle changes to these questions...

All of these biases, because they are manifest in humans today, cannot absolutely prevent reproductive success or success in cultural transmission of ideas, obviously.  So you are on very shaky ground calling these biases non-adaptive.  And if you cannot call them non-adaptive, what is the exact basis for calling them "Irrational/dysfunctional"?

Modeling, instead of using the language of Bias and Rationality and Functionality

George Mason University,
Dept of Statistics,
Gallery of Great Statisticians,
George E. P. Box
http://statistics.gmu.edu/pages/famous.html

That is why it is not always wise to use the culturally defined notion of rationality, or assume an implied sound situationally defined notion of rationality, and why *sometimes* there is benefit to specifically stating:

(1) the failure mode of decision that you are trying to avoid and

(2) how you are modeling the
(2A) cost of falling victim the failure mode and the
(2B) cost of remedy

(3) how you are modeling the likelihood of different scenarios taking place.

And different models will give different answers.  As George E. P. Box says "All models are false but some models are useful."

[Edit 7/29/2010]

Very helpful reply [ http://deisidaimon.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/is-postdecisional-dissonance-functional/#comment-1675] from academic Konrad Talmont-Kaminski, but my profound ignorance prevents me from getting much from it.  I am self-taught exclusively from an engineer's perspective of decision making from Decision Analysis texts [ term coined in 1964 by Ronald A. Howard ].

I fixed the post above, to add

1) specific examples as to how postdecisional dissonance can be functional or dysfunctional,

2) why one is unjustified to call manifest biases non-adaptive, and

3) the need to model the likelihood of different situations arising, or else the the analysis is nonsensical.

[Edit #2 7/29/2010]


Konrad Talmont-Kaminski recommends the writings of Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize winner in Economics 1978.

Catching up to my hand written journal

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Catching up on my notebook, notes on: indulgences, financial assets, sovereign default, hierarchy, responsibility, free will, reason or excuse, interruption, implementation intentions, Keith E. Stanovich, Peter Gollwitzer, outrage porn, proselytizing, BRAC, Fazle Hasan Abed, enjoyment, rationality

In theory, each one of these points could be a blog post, but I have to clear out my notebook, so consider these placeholders.

Note 1: Adam Carolla and loving Red Wine

Adam Carolla talking about red wine.  He loves it so much, that he takes great pains not to abuse it, so he will never risk having it taken away from him forever.  This should be how I treat a lot of the things I eat and drink, like beef jerky, sweets, coffee, Monster Energy drinks.  Taken to an extreme, this could include internet porn and masturbation.  Some days later, the Upright Citizen's Brigade hosted the Adam Carolla podcast, and Ian Roberts talked about binge eating and binge drinking.  Using Carolla's advice, the pleasure you derive from eating and drinking should make you careful not to binge, because that is a path where others could rob you of those pleasures through rehab!


Note 2: Really existing financial assets, and what low interest rates and sovereign default really mean.

The Economist, October 10th 2009, p 76, Buttonwood - The Nature of Wealth.

http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_TQVRSNGN  (subscription only)

[paraphrasing] Financial assets are not "wealth", but a claim on future real wealth.

My idea, to develop more later, is that "really existing" financial assets:

1) Pay interest as a reward for an obligation, under pain of punishing penalty, to not withdraw before a maturity date.

2) When a withdrawal is made, it is in chits that can only be used in a regularly scheduled auction of a fraction of outstanding assets that cannot risk drastically devaluing the whole.

3) Unused chits have a severe negative interest rate.

3) Transparency in preparation for future potential obligations is the only basis of relative soundness.

Under this scheme, paper money and a central bank goal of low interest rates is an appeal to the animal spirits of the monied masses, to make as much wealth as possible available for manipulation by bankers.  During "normal" times, this works very well to make capital available to those who will use it best, but, this is unsustainable, and so there is a predictable cycle of crashes by way of sovereign default, on the order of every 200 years or so.

Gold backed money is not a solution, because all you have done is added a superfluous level of indirection (you cannot eat gold), and you have denied the central bankers the ability to come arbitrarily close to a crash from time to time, while avoiding devastation of the full crash.  The gold standard is like an airplane designed to explode if it comes within 200 feet of the ground without an airport runway underneath.  The knowledge of the explosive charges will force the pilots to fly with more care, but no human could condone killing people when there is even a small chance of a maneuver for restorative assent.  So the cycle is 200 years between sovereign default with paper money, instead of every 225 years on the gold standard, with the gold standard assuring that 120 years out of the 225 are lived in sheer terror and deprivation.

Note 3: No right to the desired outcome, only a right to the prerequisite work

I forgot I already wrote this up: http://manuelmoeg.blogspot.com/2010/02/no-right-to-outcome-only-right-to-work.html

Note 4: Is my current action or inaction in opposition to any conceivable personal hierarchy of values and goals?

I am lying in bed.  I want to stay in bed.  I know, rationally, that my current inaction is in opposition to any conceivable personal hierarchy of values and goals.  So get out of bed now, dummy.

Note 5: It is not free will, it is a motivating sense of responsibility, that is the thing.

Because free will does not exist.  It is being hunted down the same way scientific inquiry hunted down vitalism [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism ], or the supernatural origin of man, or the supernatural origin of the world, or miracles, or the Jesus of the Scriptures, or primitive gods demanding sacrifice, etc.

But we need to explain differences in outcomes, so we care about a motivating sense of responsibility, and the rigor that demands to perform due the responsibility.

Note 6: Is what I am currently doing or not doing have a reason or merely an excuse?

Always because of reasons, never time to entertain excuses.

Note 7: To do right by a hierarchy of values and goals, you need the ability to interrupt merely coping or distracting activities.

Maybe to mentally visualize the interruption process, as practice.  Also, Peter Gollwitzer's implementation intentions - "mark the cue-action sequence with the conscious, verbal declaration: "when X occurs, I will do Y"."  [ from Keith E. Stanovich's What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought, page 200, referring to Gollwitzer P M 1999 Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54, 493-503. Gollwitzer P M, Schaal B 1998 Metacognition in action: The importance of implementation intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 124-136 ]

Note 8: Avoid Outrage Porn

So many left-wing websites are simply outrage porn.  I am attracted to them because I agree with the viewpoint, but it is nothing but a coping mechanism for anxiety and a distraction.  No time for outrage porn.

Note 9: Free Will as a very scarce resource

To describe the process of enforcing motivating sense of responsibility, we use the language of "free will", without making any claim about free will existing (good thing, too, because it doesn't).

The moments when we take responsibility to rise above the constraints of situation, we call this a moment when we can exercise free will.  These moments are few and far in between.  They can be imagined as a single spark of energy & life.  What a terrific sin to squander them!

Note 10: Proselytizing for Rationality is very suspect.

If you have an agenda for rationality, your first subject should be yourself.  Your energies to make yourself more rational will never find a satiation.  So proselytizing to other for the cause of rationality is suspect, and probably a way to excuse yourself from the rigors of rationality.

Note 11: BRAC - Fazle Hasan Abed

The Economist p60 Feb 20th, 2010 "BRAC in business" - Fazle Hasan Abed has built one of the world’s most commercially-minded and successful NGOs

quote:

In a book on BRAC entitled “Freedom from Want”, Ian Smillie calls it “undoubtedly the largest and most variegated social experiment in the developing world. The spread of its work dwarfs any other private, government or non-profit enterprise in its impact on development.”

BRAC pays far more attention to research and “continuous learning” than do most NGOs. David Korten, author of “When Corporations Rule the World”, called it “as near to a pure example of a learning organisation as one is likely to find.”

Note 12: Failure of hierarchy of values and goals with perverse outcomes in the particular case

I have no idea what I meant here.  Just typing what I wrote longhand.  I think I already spoke to this above - I think it is more of not tolerating any coping or distraction that cannot possibly be congruent with any possible personal hierarchy of values and goals.

[ Edit 3/8/10 ]
I remember now.  Must have just woken up when wrote that in notebook.  It means that indulging in something that is in violation with any possible reasonable hierarchy of values and goals, will lead you to a place where you are denied the opportunity to every indulge in that thing ever again.

Note 13: Reason & Rationality follows Responsibility

I already spoke to this above.  Typing what I wrote longhand: More important than free will is self imposed burden of responsibility and confidence in being able to make meaning choices followed by meaningful commitment followed by meaningful action.

Just realized: I have a "duty" to enjoy myself, under my so-called "self imposed burden of responsibility", or else I just will not do it.  Hey, man, have fun, keep fun close, Mister Responsibility Man.

OK, Reason & Rationality follows Responsibility, got it - what then IS reason and rationality?

1) Avoid failure modes & make progress toward achievement of goals consistent with values.

2) Remove the contradictory from the set of goals & values

3) Improve the consistency of the goals and values, using every new situation as an opportunity to do such.

That is it!  Up to date dumping out notebook!

Everything about causal inference in 40 pages

I will go over this with a fine tooth comb. I am looking forward to Judea Pearl's 2nd editon of _Causality_. I will have to transfer a whole bunch of margin notes!

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My take. Causality is a hack. The structure of the universe doesn't guarantee anything that would causality a fool-proof technique. But it is very effective, and it is a built-in hack in the brains of humans. Humans handle causal relationships quite naturally and usually correctly in simple (and not so simple) situations. But, very effective or not, it is still a hack.

Hack or not, you have to use causality to understand the world, and make decisions about the world, and make rational actions inside of the world.

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I would make the cycle-free directed graph the _definition_ of causality. Then there is the "do" operator on the graph, where a node is constrained to a particular value, chosen by analysis or chosen by a randomizer (from a range suggested by analysis).

In this causal graph, you can have "nodes" that, inside, contain

** relations from statical properties of historical data

** relations from statical properties of simulations, however the simulation is constructed

** relations from scientific laws

** relations from non-scientific laws - like "rules of thumb" and other relations that no one would defend as being laws of nature

** relations suggested by symmetry

** relations suggested by "smoothness" - filling in gaps or smoothing errors with "simple" equations

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** relations suggested by naive Bayesian - using the Bayesian equation to add missing information, possibly quite naively

The analysis begins with 3 or more of these causality graphs - each chosen from a different discipline of analysis, and each chosen as the "simplest" thing that could possibly work, to start.

The graphs suggest experiments to carry out, and the graphs can be scrutinized.

The graphs change, more are added, some are deleted, just keeping 3 or more, with examples from different effective domains of analysis (one graph may be suggested by the laws of physics, another by the laws of economics, another strictly statistical from historical data, another from political science storytelling, etc.)

Some quite optimistic (borrowing the analysis of the most active participants) and some quite pessimistic (even so pessimistic so that a majority of current activity would not be advised by the model).

Each is must simpler than reality, and, thus, suitable to run against many many different future eventualities. Keep them simple so they are nimble and responsive tools.

None would really be defended as the complete, because so simple. The cost of any complexity is considered to be great. Simple models, easily manipulated, quickly manipulated.

We would have a personal standard of rationality, and a lower standard for semi-rational actions in a group (economic/social groups are demonstratively loath to hold themselves to the highest disciplines of rationality). For the personal standard of rationality - think Socrates. For the lower standard of group semi-rationality - think Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Neither is better or worse than another, each is to be used in their own domain. The real-world economic/social group would immediately feel paralyzing anxiety when presented arguments from people who hold themselves to the highest disciplines of rationality - so it is irrational to present that to them.

Everything about causal inference in 40 pages: "
Judea Pearl describes his new article Causal inference in statistics: An Overview as 'a recent submission to Statistics Survey which condenses everything I know about causality in only 40 pages.' That seemed like a bold claim, but after reading it I'm sold. I don't come from Pearl's 'camp' per se, but I found this a really impressive overview of his approach to causation. His overtures to folks like me who use the potential outcomes framework were much appreciated, although it is clear throughout that there is still intense debate on some of the issues. The bottom line: if you've ever wondered what the structural equation modeling approach to causal inference is all about, this is your one-stop, must-read introduction (and an insightful, engaging, and thorough one at that).
"

The Rational and Irrational in Politics: Gaining and Holding Power

Bryan Caplan on the idea of "Totalitarian Political Entrepreneurship". http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/07/sorel_on_totali.html

The premise: While guys like Lenin, Hitler, and Mao were hopelessly deluded about many things, their beliefs about how to win and hold power were probably correct. After all, these totalitarian political entrepreneurs managed to pull themselves from obscurity to absolute power - no easy feat.

Good comment by Edgardo E. Barandiaran:

Bryan,

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Perhaps you should distinguish between winning power and holding power. A politician can succeed in winning power by promising irrational policies (Obama is just the latest example). It is much harder to succeed in holding power by implementing irrational policies--you can do it as, for example, Mao did it in China (the only measure of success in holding power is to die of natural causes while still in power--if you have any doubts about this point, talk to Gordon). To illustrate my point of how difficult is to hold power by implementing irrational policies, I suggest that you look at the experience of Argentina since Peron was first elected president (February 1946). There have been presidents that won the position just by default (they were "elected" or "appointed" because any of the strong man could not defeat the other strong men) and others that succeeded to win power promising irrational policies (Alfonsin, Menem, the Kirchners) but had a hard time holding power. Read this application of some of Mancur Olson's ideas to the current situation of Ms. Kirchner (published today in La Nacion)

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http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1157009&pid=6991666&toi=6261 [In Spanish - applying Mancur Olson's idea of roving thieves and stationary bandits from Power and Prosperity, nice write-up http://www.fff.org/freedom/0900h.asp ]

I am very hesitant to use the term "irrational" to describe the actions of others. Living your life using a rough model of the germ theory of disease is Rational. Not doing so is Irrational. Beyond that, I find those terms too prejudicial for reasoned analysis of other's actions. I would prefer to talk about "actions leading to winning power" and "actions consistent with holding power until natural death". Or, in the case of United States Presidents "actions consistent with holding power for two terms and commanding respect and notoriety and large speaking fees until natural death".

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Obama seems incapable of making the same mistake twice. You can go far with only this skill, in politics, if you have some reserve of good will. Obama will veer to the right to hold on to power, reflexively. To the disgust of progressives, and to the delight of some, and the apathy of the rest.

The Backfire Effect

By way of "icebrc" on Google Reader, by way of Larry Moran; nice write-up in Mother Jones, by Kevin Drum [ http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/09/backfire-effect ]

When Corrections Fail: The persistence of political misperceptions Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler http://www.duke.edu/~bjn3/nyhan-reifler.pdf

Larry Moran:

Can factual information change people's minds? Most people assume the answer is "yes." After all, if people believe something that isn't true then exposing them to the truth should cause them to abandon their beliefs, right?

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Wrong. There's plenty of evidence that life is much more complicated. An interesting posting on MotherJones.com entitled The Backfire Effect, alerts us to a study suggesting that knowledge may even have the opposite effect to what you expect. ... The authors review the literature and conclude that substantial numbers of people are quite resistant to facts when they hold strong opinions. Surprisingly, some people actually become more convinced they are right after hearing facts that contradict their belief. This phenomenon [is] called "The Backlash Effect"...

This suggests to me that rationality, free will, choice, consciousness, self-knowledge, etc. demand that people use techniques to counter-act bias and failure-modes of human thought.

Un-subscribing to "Overcoming Bias"

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Un-subscribing to "Overcoming Bias". What drove me over the edge was Robin Hanson's agreeing with the "Darwinism"-Nazi link pushed by "Expelled: No Ferris Bueller Allowed", starring Ben Stein. But it was a gradual slide down in quality, and a greater realization what a tiny contribution "Overcoming Bias" was going to have in fulfilling my personal goals and aspirations. What is "Overcoming Bias"? I cannot see it as more than Libertarians and Trans-humanists joining together to help each other in the "Art of Controversy". The point is: we don't want Rationality, we want Human Effectiveness. If there was some way to achieve your highest held goals, requiring you to dispense with all Rationality, dispense with Rationality you should. Imagine a malicious God, omniscient and omnipotent, causing you to stub your toe, or suffer other indignities, every time you attempted a Rational analysis. All evidence suggests that Rationality is a large component of Human Effectiveness. But it is not the whole thing. Like the parable of the two frogs in a bucket of cream. Both are swimming furiously to keep atop and keep from drowning. The first frog surveys the situation, realizes that his swimming will give out eventually, realizes that drowning is inevitable, and gives up and sinks to the bottom to die. The second frog, an irrational optimist, keeps swimming furiously, keeps swimming, keeps, swimming, the cream turns to butter, and the frog is able to hop on top, and hop out of the bucket. Which frog was Rational? Which frog was Effective? You can conflate the two (if it makes you happy to do so), but the distinction remains in reality. OK, we have Human Effectiveness and Rationality. Rationality is a large component of Human Effectiveness. What are the failure modes of Rationality, as practiced by humans or groups of humans? Well, there are a lot. Consider the list of logical fallacies. Consider the examples in the book Predictably Irrational. Consider Robert Cialdini's study of human influence, beneficial and malevolent. Each failure mode has the potential to deprive you of successfully achieving your goals and aspirations.

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So, I don't see the point of studying "bias" outside of the context of:

• a human identifying what they believe to be their highest goals and aspirations

• a human having to accomplish this goals and aspirations with limited resources; the most important of which are time, energy, attention, focus.

• with goals and aspirations identified, and limited resources acknowledged, the human can now proceed acting like a stakeholder: observation of situation; leading to analysis; leading to identifying choices; leading to decision; leading to action; leading to evaluating effectiveness; leading back to observation.

• critical analysis of the soundness and ranking of the goals and aspirations identified earlier. Were some chosen simply from social pressure? Are some simply impossible? Are some harmful?

• We expect goals and aspirations to augmented, to be tossed out, to be raised or lowered in relative importance.

Without this context, judging the value of anything claiming to be "Rationality" is pointless. Is it a tool for helping human achieve goals and aspirations? Does it work? And this is where "Overcoming Bias" leaves me cold. There is absolutely no interest in integrating these tools of rationality into a framework of human achievement of goals and aspirations. But the tools of the art of controversy are constantly leaped to, when there is a chance of harming the relative standing of Libertarianism or Trans-Humanism in the world of ideas and notoriety. It happens too often for an observer to miss it. So, I gain little for the cost of my limited attention.