Although I don’t claim to be doing EM, my “meta-rationality” work draws heavily on it, and its whole purpose is to be useful in practice for working scientists and engineers (NOT to be philosophy or any other academic theoretical thing). Whether I succeed remains to be seen!
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Replying to @Meaningness
EM = ethnomethodology? Thanks for clarifying the distinction between Lynch & Latour. I'll check out Lynch's book. Given the clarity of your other writing, I'm sure you'll succeed, if you can finish.
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Replying to @mrgunn
Yes, EM = ethnomethodology I wouldn't actually recommend the book. It's extremely tedious but it was important for me to make sure I understood the framework. If you are interested I can try and point you at some worked-out examples instead!
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Replying to @Meaningness
Examples would be great! I'm very curious about how it could reject probability & Bayesianism but still have use for science.
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Replying to @mrgunn
Distinction between technical rationality = ways of applying formal methods in concrete real-world situations & rationalism = metaphysical claims that some sort of rationality guarantees correctness, optimality, or some other epistemic wonderfulness
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Replying to @Meaningness
Yes, the -isms present all sorts of problems, don't they? Still, I wonder how prevalent the belief is that rationality guarantees correctness or optimality. My perspective may be skewed, but I see widespread understanding among scientists that truth is probabilistic.
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Replying to @mrgunn @Meaningness
So you're saying that as a practice, it works, but as a religion/metaphysics, it has to fail. You've certainly convinced me of that, but I don't know how many people take the religious stance.
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Replying to @mrgunn
Yes, I don’t have numbers. My impression is that it’s common, and probably a substantial majority of working scientists, but I could be wrong!
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Replying to @Meaningness @mrgunn
This is a pop statement of “religious” probabilistic rationalism (if I understand it, which I’m not sure I do):https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CPP2uLcaywEokFKQG/toolbox-thinking-and-law-thinking …
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Replying to @Meaningness
Having read all the above, some thoughts: a) yes, I do find the EM jargon impenetrable. b) I think, based on my experiences as a scientist & publisher, that the "religious" form rationalism is rare enough to be discounted as a major influence on how research is done.
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Re a), I seem to be doomed to be the first person to explain the point in plain English. I don’t know what monstrous sin I committed in a previous life to have been punished this way.
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Replying to @Meaningness @mrgunn
Re b), I think the influence of ideological rationalism is pervasive and significant, but somewhat subtle; it mainly acts to prevent people from examining implicit assumptions.
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Replying to @Meaningness @mrgunn
I think the whole NHST disaster can be largely blamed on rationalism. The assumption was that, as a quasi-religious matter, there MUST be a way to get an objective belief strength (or else objective science would be impossible), so it was reasonable to assume NHST was that.
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