Category: Epistemology and Method

I use the internet to run experiments. I take the results and post them for my students. These serve as case studies. Easy. I’ve only recently started using Twitter more – and the primary purpose is to run tests. Social media is a behavioral scientist’s free-of-charge research lab. Quality of thought is worse than FB, better than reddit, more diverse than blogs and online magagiens, but because twitter profits from generating conflict across the spectrum, twitter conversation much more agitated so demonstrated behavior is easier to provoke. And that’s what we’re looking for: ‘testimony’ or rather, demonstrated behavior (evidence). I  use the public as mice. Rather, experimental test subjects. In previous decades we had to work hard to produce psychological and sociological tests – where self-reporting is always false. Today we can start debates on social media where people DEMONSTRATE rather than report – always true. 😉 So, I’m doing what I said I would do. You can read about my technique on my web site. It’s a long-standing frustration for the mice. 😉 I posted a serious response to a weak publication, you responded with postmodern pseudoscience and I explored it. 😉  So if you want to do ‘research’ you try to find a conversation that that’s tangential to the question, then state a provocative truth that will generate demonstrated behavior (advocacy or criticism). You then seek to construct an operational model of their incentives for making the argument. Repeat the central argument, and then exhaust all avenues of their arguments. This requires you to understand your material. It is why P-Law advocates are so good at it. Because we have mastered the logic of incentives, the logic of truth and most of all, the logic of lies. https://propertarianinstitute.com/2020/05/28/on-king-of-the-hill-games/ You see, people want you to be emotionally invested in their emotional expressions more so than in the reason or science of their arguments. So when you respond with cold hard facts that frustrate their emotions (animal instincts) then they double down in rage because it’s the only thing they can do.  The strategy then is to stick to the central argument until their emotions are exhausted. At that point you have planted seeds they can’t forget, or found one of their member who you have educated, and produced a ‘case study’ to share, just as we share experimental results, legal case records, and economic evidence. Once in a great while you will either gain additional understanding into their position, or you will learn a new method of deception that you must counter, or you will learn how to construct your arguments better. Scientific experimental design varies by discipline with applied science being the ONLY meaningful test. Some tests cannot be run in experimental form (economics, law, or psychological inquiry because the action influences the output.) Hence the failure of academic behavior sci. You’ll find people are making an appeals to preference, or to authority, and not to truth or falsehood. It’s why economics replaced social science, neuroscience and AI replaced psychology, and my work in language unifies them into Law. 1) Darwin met vast disapproval despite his insights. I meet the same. People don’t care about truth in physical science. They HATE it in behavioral science. It prevents their lies. As such my response was that your disapproval was irrelevant. True is true regardless of approval. 2) An ethics board would not approve of my METHOD of running tests. On the other hand they approve of marxism, neo-marxism, postmodernism, anti-male feminism, HBD Denial, and do nothing to correct the replicability crisis in behavioral sciences – which DOESN’T use such methods. 3) You said I don’t use a method. I use the rigorous method in the sciences. Because I understand that science is the name we give to testimony that we warrant isn’t false (under realism, naturalism, identity, consistency, operationalism, correspondence, parsimony, completeness). 4) So either you can defeat the arguments I put forward or you can’t. I know you can’t,because if you were capable you would have put forth academic (scientific) arguments that could survive falsification. You didn’t. You just used sophistry and GSRRM. Meaning, you’re postmodern. I run tests. You proved the theory. You validated the test. I use your examples to educate my students just like teaching law or business theory by using case studies. So again, you claim I didn’t answer your questions but you never understood the simplest thing I said. This is why your generations are lost: you’ve been taught to have opinions you are unworthy of having using pseudoscience that is an anti-science revolution – a religion. I teach operationalism because the lesson of the 20th is (a) the logics are falsificationary not justificationary, (b) that all behavioral science was a failure (projection) subject to the anti-Darwinian revolution. As in subatomic physics any direct measurement biases outcomes. So as in mathematics, we must be able to construct an operational proof. In behavioral science, we must be able to construct an operational proof by incentives in order to ensure we are not using our data to lie to ourselves or others. I teach operationalism: strict construction.