The Limits to Scientific Understanding


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Title Memo

Limited rationality; limited resources; limited patience; limits to available data. What has and hasn't been studied.

Note Text: 402 Correlation

Although correlational analyses cannot be used to prove causality, they can distinguish variables that are more versus less likely to have a causal impact on functioning; consistently large and significant associations indicate that causal relationships remain possible, whereas consistently weak associations suggest the....

Jensen, M. P.,Turner, J. A., and Romano, J. M., "Changes after Multidisciplinary Pain Treatment in Patient Pain Beliefs and Coping Are Associated with Concurrent Changes in Patient Functioning", HHS Public Access Author Manuscript http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1986708/: 2007

Note Text: 1547 Genetic diversity in the brain

“…a higher percentage of genes are active in the brain than in all other tissues….By some estimates, more than half of all genes express themselves in the brain: that is, more than ten thousand genes. This means that genetic variation for mental and behavioral traits should be especially extensive and fine-grained in ou....

Trivers, Robert, "The Folly of Fools", Basic Books, 2011, 123

Note Text: 1561 Bias in social studies

Second, it seems manifest that the greater the social content of a discipline, especially human, the greater will be the biases due to self-deception and the greater the retardation of the field compared with less social disciplines.

Trivers, Robert, "The Folly of Fools", Basic Books, 2011, 303-4

Note Text: 1564 Deception pressure in social sciences

Thus, psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics have direct implications for our view of ourselves and of others, so one might expect their very structure to be easily deformed by self-deception.

Trivers, Robert, "The Folly of Fools", Basic Books, 2011, 308

Note Text: 1565 Bias in interpretation of Darwin

[For over a century, Darwinian evolution has been interpreted as benefitting the group or the species or perhaps even the ecosystem, while the facts indicate that it directly favors or disfavors individuals.] In turn, the false theory was just the kind of social theory you would expect people to adopt in a group-living....

Trivers, Robert, "The Folly of Fools", Basic Books, 2011, 308

Note Text: 1566 Economics thru a social lens

[Economics until recently has entirely failed to incorporate knowledge of human nature into its thinking. The motivation for economic preferences is labeled as “utility,” but nothing more specific. A very important question is whose utility is being pursued. With such a vague concept of utility, it is easy for some to i....

Trivers, Robert, "The Folly of Fools", Basic Books, 2011, 311

Note Text: 1569 Evolution to benefit the larger entity

We have seen numerous ways in which self-deception may deform the structure of intellectual disciplines. This seems obvious in both evolutionary biology and the social sciences, where increasing relevance to human social behavior is matched by decreasing rates of progress, in part because such fields induce more self-de....

Trivers, Robert, "The Folly of Fools", Basic Books, 2011, 319-20

Note Text: 1484 Neurological research using microelectrodes

[Microelectrodes allow very precise surveillance of operating brains.] “Microelectrodes are so small and sensitive that they can be inserted inside or beside a single neuron and can detect when an individual neuron fires off its electrical signal to other neurons….scientists could “listen in on” one or several neurons a....

Norman Doidge. M.D., "The Brain That Changes Itself", Penguin Books, 2007, 50

Note Text: 1888 Affirmation of consequents

Progress at this level requires the continual application of the time honored but fallacious form of scientific logic known as “affirmation of consequents" (Figure 2.3). Although the logical flaw of this most common mode of scientific reasoning—induction—is obvious, there is no alternative way to extract general princip....

Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 29

Note Text: 1890 Affirmation of consequents 2

All theoretically guided research proceeds via “affirmation of consequents," which is, of course, a logical fallacy since every individual observation can potentially be explained by a variety of theories....if hypothesized experimental predictions do not hold, they negate the general principles from which they were der....

Panksepp, Jaak, "Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions", Oxford University Press, 1998, 30

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Technical Obstacles in Pain Research (Last updated: Mon, Jul 29, 2024)

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