What’s helpful and what’s unhelpful about postmodernism, critical theory, and their current intellectual offshoots?

March 29, 2021

More often than not, I find that postmodernist thought obscures rather than illuminates. But I also see useful elements in it. Here's my very un-postmodern attempt to "steel man" (i.e., find the value in) ideas related to postmodernism: 1. Narratives Serve Power - powerful groups do tend to have a substantial influence on narratives, beliefs, and what's "normal." Something "obvious" or "objective" or "a fact" may just (invisibly) be a part of the narrative you're immersed in and sub...

Disputes Over How to Use Statistics in the Real World

January 21, 2018

There is a surprising lack of consensus on how to do statistics, especially as applies to science. As the tool that underpins the scientific enterprise, you'd think we would have figured it out by now. You'd be wrong. The mathematical proofs are, of course, very rarely disputed. The use of mathematics is much more often disputed. Why do these disputes arise? I've observed five different types. Disputes in Applications of Statistics to Science (1) Disputes over philosophy: Exa...

The Brain of Theseus – a thought experiment

July 27, 2017

Here's my favorite philosophy of mind thought experiment that challenges pur view of personal identity or "self". It takes a while to explain but is quite a mind fuck, so bear with me. THE SETUP It feels, to nearly everyone, on a gut level, that I am 'me' and you are 'you', and consciousnesses are distinct from each other and easy to separate. Moreover, the vast majority of people accept that you 1 minute from now is still the same "YOU" in a meaningful sense as YOU right now; that ...

Testing Too Many Hypotheses

October 10, 2011

For each dataset, there is a limit to what we can use that dataset to test. Using the standard p-value based methods of science, the more hypotheses we check against the data, the more likely it will be that some of these checks give inaccurate conclusions. And this presents a big problem for the way science is practiced. Let's take an example to illustrate the principle. Suppose that you have information about 1000 people selected at random from the U.S. adult population. Your dataset includ...