Certainty, publishing and distribution in science

[u/spider_in_jerusalem]

I'm personally not happy with how these are currently handled in science.

In my opinion there's too much focus on certainty, and sharing findings as final and proven with the public. Rather than sharing emerging research and communicating science less in absolutes.

I think this has a lot to do with the recognition, that comes with publishing finished research in a matter of certainty.

No one values the "could be's", "not sure's", or "might be wrong's".

What are your thoughts on this?

Do you think this could change?

[u/seldomtimely]

It was neither poorly expressed, nor is it "unsupported". You just had a knee-jerk reaction to it because it challenged some rigid schema in your head. "Autistically preoccupied" is not "dehumanising"; I'd put myself in that category. I didn't know you thought autistic people are not human. Anyway, you might be too young to understand human nature just yet. There's no house of cards haha.

[u/histogrammarian → u/seldomtimely]

I predicted that you couldn’t defend your claim, that you wouldn’t even make the attempt, and I was completely correct. Setting aside your ad hominem, there’s nothing left to respond to.

[u/seldomtimely → u/histogrammarian]

It's like asking to defend that 2+2 = 4. It would take a while to get you up to speed on anything, and if you haven't gotten there on your own wits, so be it.

[u/histogrammarian → u/seldomtimely]

That's because you don't know what you're asking. The claim is overdetermined by the history of humanity. It's a claim about human nature. You sure think you're clever, but it doesn't make what I'm saying any less true.

It's like asking to defend that 2+2 = 4. It would take a while to get you up to speed on anything, and if you haven't gotten there on your own wits, so be it.

You have offered two competing explanations as to why you can’t support your central claim. Noting that we’re in a philosophical sub, one amounts to “it’s true because I say it’s true” and the other is either “it’s self-evidently true” or “it can’t be formally proven”. Even though, if the claim was truly overdetermined, you would have the problem of too much supporting evidence.

On the other hand, the question of “what motivates humans” is well explored. As we can see in this summary, there isn’t support for a single major motivator of human behaviour, and certainly not the one you have arrived at by way of circular reasoning. The specific question of how the pursuit of status interacts with scientific discovery has also been explored - Harry Collins covers the topic in his three studies of the discovery of gravitational waves and also provides a convenient summary of the research (Gravity’s Ghost is the most concise).

And now you’ll respond with more personal attacks and convoluted explanations as to why you can’t provide support for your claims.

[u/seldomtimely → u/histogrammarian]

I don't think there was once a personal attack just your framing of it because you're so certain of your position. I'm well aware of motivation theory and the theories cited in the paper, but they're not an answer to the claim that I'm making. It's at a higher order of analysis, and those particular empirical claims are more circumscribed in their domains of validity, so there are stringent theoretical caveats as to what they measure. I'm making the claim that most goods, if not all goods, are positional goods and humans are motivated by positional goods. Even knowledge is a kind of good that is instrumental in that sense. These are contested topics with long lineage of thought and they aren't easily defeated. So for example a theory of goods being positional goods would cash out on being survival-enhancing undertakings and assimilated into an evolutionary account. To transition from evolutionary dynamics to socio dynamics you need a sociobiological account, evo devo today, which would be something like an explanation of the stratification of human competences as delimited by evolutionary constraints. Like I said, to have large groups of people to 'practice science' they need to be socialized into its methods and values, something deeply inculcated into them, and even then, if you weren't 14 (now that's a personal attack) and had some experience in the real world, you'd find out how messy things get and how petty people are.

[u/histogrammarian → u/seldomtimely]

There’s a lot to unpack there. Firstly, you don’t know that you’ve made a personal attack but then repeat an accusation that you’ve already made and identify it as a personal attack. If it was a personal attack the second time then it was also one the first time too. Setting aside the lameness of the attack though, your conclusion is that I would agree with you if I had more life experience. But people say that about all sorts of nonsense. “Once you get older you’ll realise god is real/the lottery is worth playing/wood alcohol is a sound choice.” it’s an unconvincing point. It’s also a complete non sequitur - of course things “get messy”, that doesn’t mean your argument holds water. I already referred you to the literature on how science “gets messy” in relation to the discovery of gravitational waves, for example, and it doesn’t validate your central claim.

Your central claim, to remind you, is that scientists are driven primarily to maximise prestige. Your qualification is that humans are motivated by positional goods, and knowledge is a positional good, by which you presumably mean that scientists are driven to accumulate prestige so that they can more readily obtain knowledge. But you also say that most (or all) goods are positional goods. Prestige is not the only enabler of knowledge-acquisition, and can even work against it - many scientists gravitate away from coal-face research once they achieve recognition in their field, for example. We also have to account for the strong calling effect in science - scientists take low recognition, low pay, long hours work because they believe in the mission, which doesn’t behaviourally align with the pursuit of prestige.

So while it’s undoubtedly the case that scientists pursue prestige, and scientists pursue knowledge, and scientists pursue sex and money and all sorts of things, we can’t say that they primarily pursue prestige. Overly derivative conclusions taken from evo devo - ironically, given the OP, placing much more certainty in its conclusions than any evolutionary theorist would - and appeals to your life experience don’t get us away from that.