There are fields that haven’t quite managed to get into a normal-science groove yet, because the methods are still shaky or there’s still ontological problems. Kuhn called them “pre-paradigm”.
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Replying to @Meaningness
I think my line of questioning is trying to get at whether the fandom community around a science or quasiscience is directly relevant. Radiologists and psychologists aren’t signal processing experts re fMRI, but they are not “fans” so much as adjacent experts
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Replying to @vgr @Meaningness
Related thread I’m pulling at is that not all domains will even admit a strong paradigm understanding. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily dubious. They’re just low paradigm. Fundamentally nebulous rather than just at a nebulous stage on the way to a more rigorous stage.
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Replying to @vgr
Right. One can do good work in a field in which nebulosity is inevitable and no hard-edged ontology is possible. Again in fact that’s what I most enjoy.
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Replying to @Meaningness
I think what you’re calling a quasiscience may be the specialized restriction to science of what I’ve been calling an escaped reality. A domain of phenomenology that admits a shaky epistemology and ontology that will crash with probability —> 1 given enough time
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Replying to @vgr @Meaningness
Like the world of a movie, where the suspension of belief is possible for about 2 hours if you do nothing more than stay in a seat and watch. Or a conspiracy theory where you can sort of believe so long as you avoid asking certain skeptical questions.
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Replying to @vgr
Aha! Yes, a tacit social agreement to not ask particular awkward questions is key to keeping quasisciences going.
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Replying to @Meaningness
I think that’s actually fine and healthy in general. A sort of fake it till you make it epistemology. Cellphones as design fiction in Star Trek without people asking how they work before they get real etc. Intent rather than rigor determines pathology level.
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Replying to @vgr
Well... except no one confused star trek with reality. Institutions make major decisions based on taking neuroscience and AI as reality, and would make different ones if they understood that they mostly aren’t.
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Replying to @Meaningness
Yeah hence the importance of intent. Speculation, entertainment, inspiration are good quasiscience intentions. Justification, analysis etc are bad intentions that may also be bad faith
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Yes… A major bad-faith institutions make is to talk about “the best scientific understanding” (or other words to that effect). We want to make decision X, and that is supported by “the best” science. That science may be completely worthless but it’s all there is. And now >
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Replying to @Meaningness @vgr
> The institution can throw lots of money at the quasiscientists, with the implicit deal that they continue doing the same line of work which will continue to justify whatever the institution wanted done.
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