Ok sure but that isn't science! Because the way I experience the world may not be the way others do. For example, there are really minor instances of mistakes I've made where I felt incredibly...
I can’t help but notice that these ideas have a couple things in common. First, you can do a decent job of replicating all of them yourself. To replicate the planning fallacy, for instance, just keep track of how long you think it will take to do stuff and how long it actually takes to do stuff. To replicate the fading affect bias, keep track of how stuff feels at the time, wait a couple days, weeks, months, or years, then rate how it feels to remember it. Better yet, do these things to someone who doesn’t know the hypotheses.
Ok sure but that isn't science! Because the way I experience the world may not be the way others do. For example, there are really minor instances of mistakes I've made where I felt incredibly negative about them. I realistically shouldn't feel shame about those things today. When the memory appears it feels as strong as the first time. It doesn't get better.
Science can look at that and go, huh, is Fae just an outlier? Are all people with ADHD outliers? Is this a symptom of anxiety or something else? But without science I assume everyone feels the same way as this poster might.
I think there's a good thought in here, but it gets lost in the weeds and ends up at a bad conclusion. Science is still valuable. No you can't actually replicate it by just living your life. But a concept not being replicated yet doesn't necessarily mean it's trash, it just doesn't mean it's truth either. (And a concept replicated only among white male college students like many of our psychology studies have been historically isn't necessarily truth either.)
I think you're right, but I'm going to quibble with the way you use "truth" and "science." I agree that trying it yourself isn't a good way to find a universal truth about all people, because...
I think you're right, but I'm going to quibble with the way you use "truth" and "science."
I agree that trying it yourself isn't a good way to find a universal truth about all people, because people vary. But science can also be about studying one particular thing, such as one person. Sometimes that's useful.
It's what doctors do, for example - taking research that's about everyone and adapting it for a patient, sometimes through trial and error. Maybe the first drug a psychiatrist tries doesn't work, so they try another. When it's an unusual patient and they write up what happened, it's a case history. That's useful to scientists too!
Particularly for anything about people, I think it's important to pay attention to scope - as you say, something might just be true of college students in one country or at one school. Taking very specific research findings and generalizing them to sound like broad truths happens all the time. It's terrible but it's how scientists promote their research. (Or the university PR department does it for them.) You're right to be wary of that.
Finding universal truths is high-status because it's hard to do and they seem important, but often they aren't practically useful because they're only statistical averages and don't fit any particular person particularly well. It's like the old joke about someone having an average family with 1.8 children.
One thing I find refreshing about Adam Mastroianni's writing is that he has a broad idea of what science can be, one that encourages people to try things themselves. But sometimes he's not careful about scope and you picked up on that. I think the phenomena he talks about happen sometimes.
Yeah I'm using science and truth broadly here because I don't want to get into the details of what makes studies good, bad and everything in between. And I'm not saying that case studies cannot be...
Yeah I'm using science and truth broadly here because I don't want to get into the details of what makes studies good, bad and everything in between. And I'm not saying that case studies cannot be helpful though they rarely are on yourself and still should require some neutrality or at least acknowledgement of researcher bias. Maybe the guy that cracked one hand's knuckles but not the other one had the knack of it but most people don't.
But I also think that if a guy in a position of authority tells ten people "hey this phenomena is real and you experience it" Probably most of them will just believe him, though he cited no sources other than "hmm that feels right." And that feels irresponsible to me. Especially when he tells me falsehoods about how I personally experience the world. (Maybe most people do experience that, And maybe I experienced it different ways or in different times. But because it didn't resonate with me as a truth, I didn't just nod and assume it was factual across the board)
Saying "these are some interesting things that we haven't gotten good replicable research on that I think are valid but they need more actual research. However just because we don't have them yet, and we're in this replication crisis, doesn't mean they're bad concepts, do these resonate with you?" Would have been better IMO.
And I get he's in the field, I just dislike using the authority to declare fact. This is likely some of a counselor/psychologist divide here in my training vs his.
ETA: Anxiety and depression do impact FAB, I can't find good research on ADHD. And it has been replicated but most in the US and doesn't seem to be enough to indicate a cross cultural/universal effect.
I may honestly just like dudes writing authoritatively but I just don't vibe with him.
In psychology, we’ve recently been kicking down a lot of barn doors. In 2015, a bunch of psychologists tried to redo 100 studies and less than half replicated. Even the ones that “worked” produced much smaller effects than the original authors reported.
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Instead of asking “How bad is it?”, I’m here to ask “What’s good?” When people start kicking down barn doors, you could politely ask them to stop, or to at least kick down a representative sample of barn doors instead. Or you could go looking for barn doors that don’t deserve kicking down at all. Maybe if you look closely at these barn doors, you can learn something about building good ones. And you might rediscover why you cared about barn doors in the first place.
Ok sure but that isn't science! Because the way I experience the world may not be the way others do. For example, there are really minor instances of mistakes I've made where I felt incredibly negative about them. I realistically shouldn't feel shame about those things today. When the memory appears it feels as strong as the first time. It doesn't get better.
Science can look at that and go, huh, is Fae just an outlier? Are all people with ADHD outliers? Is this a symptom of anxiety or something else? But without science I assume everyone feels the same way as this poster might.
I think there's a good thought in here, but it gets lost in the weeds and ends up at a bad conclusion. Science is still valuable. No you can't actually replicate it by just living your life. But a concept not being replicated yet doesn't necessarily mean it's trash, it just doesn't mean it's truth either. (And a concept replicated only among white male college students like many of our psychology studies have been historically isn't necessarily truth either.)
I think you're right, but I'm going to quibble with the way you use "truth" and "science."
I agree that trying it yourself isn't a good way to find a universal truth about all people, because people vary. But science can also be about studying one particular thing, such as one person. Sometimes that's useful.
It's what doctors do, for example - taking research that's about everyone and adapting it for a patient, sometimes through trial and error. Maybe the first drug a psychiatrist tries doesn't work, so they try another. When it's an unusual patient and they write up what happened, it's a case history. That's useful to scientists too!
Particularly for anything about people, I think it's important to pay attention to scope - as you say, something might just be true of college students in one country or at one school. Taking very specific research findings and generalizing them to sound like broad truths happens all the time. It's terrible but it's how scientists promote their research. (Or the university PR department does it for them.) You're right to be wary of that.
Finding universal truths is high-status because it's hard to do and they seem important, but often they aren't practically useful because they're only statistical averages and don't fit any particular person particularly well. It's like the old joke about someone having an average family with 1.8 children.
One thing I find refreshing about Adam Mastroianni's writing is that he has a broad idea of what science can be, one that encourages people to try things themselves. But sometimes he's not careful about scope and you picked up on that. I think the phenomena he talks about happen sometimes.
Yeah I'm using science and truth broadly here because I don't want to get into the details of what makes studies good, bad and everything in between. And I'm not saying that case studies cannot be helpful though they rarely are on yourself and still should require some neutrality or at least acknowledgement of researcher bias. Maybe the guy that cracked one hand's knuckles but not the other one had the knack of it but most people don't.
But I also think that if a guy in a position of authority tells ten people "hey this phenomena is real and you experience it" Probably most of them will just believe him, though he cited no sources other than "hmm that feels right." And that feels irresponsible to me. Especially when he tells me falsehoods about how I personally experience the world. (Maybe most people do experience that, And maybe I experienced it different ways or in different times. But because it didn't resonate with me as a truth, I didn't just nod and assume it was factual across the board)
Saying "these are some interesting things that we haven't gotten good replicable research on that I think are valid but they need more actual research. However just because we don't have them yet, and we're in this replication crisis, doesn't mean they're bad concepts, do these resonate with you?" Would have been better IMO.
And I get he's in the field, I just dislike using the authority to declare fact. This is likely some of a counselor/psychologist divide here in my training vs his.
ETA: Anxiety and depression do impact FAB, I can't find good research on ADHD. And it has been replicated but most in the US and doesn't seem to be enough to indicate a cross cultural/universal effect.
I may honestly just like dudes writing authoritatively but I just don't vibe with him.
From the blog post:
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