[SPOILER] Dark Savant graduates from blatant n00b to plain n00b

[RefSteel]

I mean that even findings that seemingly are both simple, and evoke no sort of controversy for whatever social reason, usually aren't.

Cool - but this is a pet peeve of mine: This use of the word "even." The clear implication is that (in this case) seeming-simplicity and absence of social controversy are indicators of actual simplicity: That when anything seems more complicated or does evoke social controversy, the science is much less clear. This unstated and taken-for-granted assumption is completely untrue, and that's a much more interesting point than the one you appear to make when you say "even."

I don't think it helps to teach science that way, because my experience is that it was very jarring to go from media and classroom into an actual lab and discover that it didn't actually work that way.

Sure; I think it's important to teach people in science class just how difficult it really is to get answers right, or even to know when you've done so. I feel like we tend to teach the scientific method as though there are these specific steps you're supposed to do - e.g. establish a control group - and then ta-da! You have correct results! When in fact e.g. controlling for all of the possible random factors and making sure your control group really does differ from your experimental group only in the way you're trying to test is incredibly difficult and takes an enormous amount of dilligence, creativity, and frankly luck.

That's true, but you can use that to doubt the doubters, if you're doing it right.

But again, arguments like "even simple-seeming and non-controversial science can be wrong!" do not encourage "doing it right;" they're misleading and readily used to obfuscate and confuse and drive people back to their default positions - "don't bother trying to learn the science; it'll just be wrong anyway, even when you think it's simple! Just go with your gut and the polemicist who says what you want to hear and words it cleverly."

And that gets into something else which I believe strongly: the very accusation that someone is corrupt or otherwise behaving poorly is itself a far stronger indicator of corruption than most other people believe.

I agree it should be cause for more suspicion than it seems to be afforded presently!

I wouldn't use that as an example; I can think of a couple things that are (or at least were; I don't follow it nearly as closely as I used to) massively controversial there.  (Is cooking with aluminum vessels a risk factor for Alzheimer's?  Plaques and tangles: cause or effect?)

That's what I was talking about in my post above: It depends on what you mean by "controversial." Scooter is exactly correct here: Most laypeople have no idea that there is or was any controversy about aluminum vessels vis a vis Alzheimers - apparently (like me) you don't know whether it still is either, since you no longer follow it closely. Most laypeople don't even know what "Plagues and tangles" means in this context - I certainly don't. There's a huge difference between actual scientific controversy and seeming/apparent/political controversy, and I think that's the main point that I would clarify from your post. (Of course, knowing how to tell actual scientific controversy from the "controversy" created by politically-driven research groups - the kind whose findings are decided prior to starting their research - is another skill I'd like to see become more widespread than it is.)

[ipecac]

I quite enjoy the off-topic posts as well, so here's a ++ post from me Now if you really want to increase your post count you could post an opinion on a controversial scientific subject to spark a conversation

I'll contribute a fact: it is possible and plausible for both ' taking vacinne X gave my child autism' and 'vaccine X does not correlated with autism in the general population' to be true at the same time.

[RefSteel]

I'll contribute a fact: it is possible and plausible for both ' taking vacinne X gave my child autism' and 'vaccine X does not correlated with autism in the general population' to be true at the same time.

No. It is in no way plausible that taking any vaccine gave any child autism for any useful definition of "plausible." It is true that "correlation between X and Y does not appear in the general population" does not by itself rule out "this specific instance of X might have contributed to this specific instance of Y," but there is no reason to believe that any vaccine has ever contributed to the development of Autism in anyone ever: Lack of correlation in the general population is by no means the only reason the idea is ridiculous, and the only way someone can pretend otherwise (apart from ignorance) is with the exact kind of argument that Scooter and I were warning about: "Science has been wrong about many things, therefore it is plausible that science is wrong about this thing I want it to be wrong about in spite of literally all the evidence being against me."

[ipecac]

I think it's rather disturbing that it's not possible to criticise overstatements of the meaning of scientific results without being met with 'stop, you're casting doubt on the sciences'.

Leaving aside the public controversy, while some can be discounted on the basis of trying to obtain profit through litigation, there are enough before-and-after stories to make it plausible the idea that for some cases, taking a certain vaccine caused the autism.

[RefSteel]

I think it's rather disturbing that it's not possible to criticise overstatements of the meaning of scientific results without being met with 'stop, you're casting doubt on the sciences'.

Please refrain from putting words in my mouth; while you're at it, please refrain from putting words in the mouths of - and identifying me with or as - an arbitrary and imaginary class of conspiratory antagonists. People regularly criticize overstatements of the meaning of scientific results. I did so, for example, just a few posts upthread. The specific issue you raised however is not a question of overstatement; you're supporting a political controversy that is completely non-controversial scientifically, in a case where that political controversy, driven by fear and ignorance, has unthinkinkably high costs in both dollars and lives.

Leaving aside the public controversy, while some can be discounted on the basis of trying to obtain profit through litigation, there are enough before-and-after stories to make it plausible the idea that for some cases, taking a certain vaccine caused the autism.

This is an excellent example of why "anecdotal evidence" is completely worthless. Childhood vaccinations are administered at a variety of ages, one of which tends to be around the developmental stage at which autism, if present, is likely to be noticed for the first time. Of course there are going to be before-and-after stories! Meanwhile, there are far (far!) more numerous before-and-after stories about [religious leader from a religion you don't believe in; pick one] blessing a sick person and the sick person getting better. In fairness, the blessings of those religious leaders may have had a placebo effect, but you can find before-and-after stories about just about anything you want.

The fact is that children don't become autistic after they are born; they're born somewhere on the spectrum, and the reason we tend to notice at a particular age is that the normal childhood developments that would occur around that time are the earliest on which autism is likely to have a noticeable impact. There are no known post-natal (after birth) circumstances that in any combination increase or decrease a child's risk factor for autism; all the evidence we have suggests that by the time the baby is born, that baby is autistic or is not (that is - is far enough along the spectrum that we call it "autistic" or is in the range that we call "normal") and we're just waiting to find out. The vaccine idea is beyond ludicrous, and was literally invented by a charlatan trying to take advantage of parents' fears to make a fortune with an "alternate" vaccine.

More to Dark Savant's original point: There is no one thing that "causes" autism. Everything is always way, way more complicated than that. There are risk factors for autism, relating to the parents' genes, the parents' ages, and a number of situations surrounding the pregnancy, and no one of them - and no combination of them - is actually "the cause" of autism: It's a combination of innumerable pre-natal (before birth) developmental factors, many of which have yet to be discovered, to the extent that - though we can identify risks - there is for all our current intents and purposes a very large amount of random variance. The point being: There is not one thing. There is no one cause. Fortunately, we do know some things that are not causes: Letting a child watch too much television doesn't cause autism. Giving a child the wrong baby formula to drink doesn't cause autism. Exposing a child to people with head colds doesn't cause autism. Getting vaccinated doesn't cause autism. Nothing that happens after the baby is born causes autism.

But it's still more complicated than that, and the additional complications still make it even more obvious that the vaccine myth is bunk: It isn't possible for something to "cause autism," because autism isn't one thing. It's an arbitrary label we assign to a set of developmental variations ("the autism spectrum") along which basically everybody varies to one extent, and in one way, or another. People who fall far enough along the spectrum in a given direction get labeled "autistic;" the rest get labeled "normal." Autism is just a huge complex of mental limitations and behaviors ... that anti-vaccers pretend are magically caused by some dead virii being injected into a kid. That position is untenable and indefensible, and it threatens not only the health of the children who go unvaccinated because of their parents' fear and ignorance, but the herd immunity of the entire human species.

...

Ugh. Sorry for the threadjack, DarkSavant. This one goes a little beyond being just a pet peeve. On the other hand: Maybe I'm making your point about "using it to doubt the doubters"?

[Dark Savant]

I mean that even findings that seemingly are both simple, and evoke no sort of controversy for whatever social reason, usually aren't.

Cool - but this is a pet peeve of mine:  This use of the word "even."  The clear implication is that (in this case) seeming-simplicity and absence of social controversy are indicators of actual simplicity:  That when anything seems more complicated or does evoke social controversy, the science is much less clear.  This unstated and taken-for-granted assumption is completely untrue, and that's a much more interesting point than the one you appear to make when you say "even."

I get the impression that you and I don't have the same meaning for the term "controversy" -- there's plenty of it even just within the confines of specialized academic disciplines.

And I don't get why you think I'm implying that -- I'm saying precisely the opposite: seeming simplicity and the absence of social controversy are in no way an indicator of actual simplicity.

I have a turn report and a turn to play, anyhow -- I can get back to that.  And don't worry about the threadjack, really -- sometimes I have a lot of time, sometimes I don't.  

[Dark Savant]

I was traveling much of the weekend, going snowboarding for the first time.  I, uh, fell down a lot. 

Turn 28 - 2880 BC (Part 1)

I scout GermanJoey's capital some more.



So ... everyone has exactly one silver near their capital? ... maybe.

The unnamed warrior continues to scout:



Most of that land isn't islands ... at least there's no sign of anyone else around here.

Also, let's continue to move Antigonus ... Uh.



 Well, Antigonus has a roughly 75% chance to survive that bear (~70% odds in combat, ~5%+ chance it just won't attack).

[Dark Savant]

Turn 28 - 2880 BC (Part 2 - C&D)

Donovan Zoi has a scout just outside Glaurung's borders.

Score interturn:

• Aretas: +1 point, pop 3 to pop 4.
  
• Boldly Going Nowhere: +1 point, pop 2 to pop 3.
  
• naufragar: +1 point, pop 2 to pop 3.
  
• superdeath: +6 points, technology (which I'm taking as Bronze Working, researched in 13 turns).
  

Score during turn:

• mackoti: +1 point, planted city #2.
  
• Mr. Cairo: +1 point, planted city #2.
  
• Shallow Old Human Tourist: -1 point, whip from pop 3 to pop 2.
  

11000 soldiers appeared this turn, so one warrior got completed somewhere.

The new cities of mackoti and Mr. Cairo only claim 11 new tiles.  They must be closer to the coast than I am.

[scooter]

there are enough before-and-after stories to make it plausible the idea that for some cases, taking a certain vaccine caused the autism.

RefSteel talked about this in good detail, so I won't add much... but this line of thinking always makes me think of this article:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you...nclusions/

The relevant section at the very top:

Paul Offit likes to tell a story about how his wife, pediatrician Bonnie Offit, was about to give a child a vaccination when the kid was struck by a seizure. Had she given the injection a minute sooner, Paul Offit says, it would surely have appeared as though the vaccine had caused the seizure and probably no study in the world would have convinced the parent otherwise.

<snip>

But, as Offit’s story suggests, the fact that a child became sick after a vaccine is not strong evidence that the immunization was to blame. Psychologists have a name for the cognitive bias that makes us prone to assigning a causal relationship to two events simply because they happened one after the other: the “illusion of causality.” A study recently published in the British Journal of Psychology investigates how this illusion influences the way we process new information. Its finding: Causal illusions don’t just cement erroneous ideas in the mind; they can also prevent new information from correcting them.

[Cornflakes]

I quite enjoy the off-topic posts as well, so here's a ++ post from me Now if you really want to increase your post count you could post an opinion on a controversial scientific subject to spark a conversation

Hmm, well, would you like a discussion on why I think it's obvious that pro-lifers should support Roe vs. Wade, and pro-choicers should oppose it?



I think the reverse happens because of a couple of common human failings; nothing nefarious on either side of the debate.  Yes, my answer actually does have something to do with science.

Certainly, I'd like to hear your thoughts! I've studied the subject (abortion) a couple times, but don't remember ever I've hearing that. Ultimately the pro-life / pro-choice "question", "debate", "call-it-what-you-will" falls not in the realm of science (study of the physical world, what is) but in the realm of morality (right/wrong, what ought to be). Science can supply supporting evidence to back up one or more premises of the moral arguments, but a discussion on whether abortion is right or wrong must extend beyond science. I'm happy to contribute a couple posts on the subject if you want to have that conversation. Not sure how deep you want to dive in pursuit of the thread post/view count war