Understanding the World: Good Luck with That

I talk about myself and opine about the world. Of course, I freely admit I may be full of bovine excrement.

Early Curiosity and Naive Expectations

As a youngster, probably nine, ten, I'm not sure when, preteen, let's say, I had a strong felt need to understand the world. Curiosity is too mild a term. I asked myself questions, questions that I would now term metaphysical. I couldn't wait to grow up, because I thought, as an adult, I'd surely understand everything. I thought, when I become an adult, then I'll get it all, because they must know everything. Quite naive; how dumb was that? I also thought if I just read enough, it would all become clear.

Early Fascination with Electricity

About that time, as a preteen, I got really interested in electricity and I took out a book from the library numerous times and tried to read it through. I don't know if I ever finished the thing, but I got stuck over the concept of alternating current. I couldn't get my head around that notion. Maybe it was the fault of the book, or maybe it was just the lack of intelligence that I had at that time. I wasn't a stupid kid. I was fairly bright, but the way the concepts were explained to me exceeded my horsepower at the time. Perhaps someone else could have done a better job of explaining it than the author that I tried to read. I don't know now, and I will never be able to determine that. Nevertheless, I took up electronics as a hobby for most of my teenage years after that, including up until the time on my late teens when I lost interest. I went to electronics technology school, but by then I really had very little interest in the topic. I've only very rarely dabbled into it in my adult life, and now I'm at a three-quarters of a century mark plus.

Teenage Reflections on Epistemology

As I reached my teenage years, I turned my thoughts more and more to issues of epistemological, metaphysical and mind-body problems, trusting that science had some of the answers, but maybe I was a little brainwashed.

University Studies and the Shift to Philosophy

When I reached the university as a young man, a little later than many others, three or four years later, I took a number of philosophy courses. Initially I was in the Bachelor of Science program for Experimental Psychology later changing over to an arts program (I had done math and science all through high school, and wanted a break from such things.) I took a number of philosophy courses, as well as my psychology courses including statistics courses and research methods courses. Eventually, I went to graduate school.

Science Over Philosophy (But Not Entirely)

Over the years, I thought that science was a better route to answers than was philosophy, although I continued to read some of the works in philosophy and popular books on science, psychology and science in general.

Disillusionment with Science

As I got older and reached retirement, I started to look more deeply into science and realized how abominably bad it could be; well documented by a number of critics such as John P. Ioannidis¹. Everything ranging from problems with peer review², to corruption in the publication process, to institutional corruption, and corporate corruption; any number of problems, are well documented by others. Some of these problems addressed the issue of how science was done in practice. Some of them were more fundamental, talking about the suspect basis of the mathematical tools we used in some fields, perhaps being not really fit for purpose.

The Replication Crisis

As I aged, I became further disenchanted in science, in certain fields at the very least, when the replication crisis, documented by Brian Nosek³ and others, became too obvious to ignore. This has been well documented in fields such as nutrition, psychology, and medicine, where it's most crucial.

Returning to Philosophy with Pragmatism

Now that I'm reaching the end of my life, with a health challenges and cognitive decline, lack of fluid intelligence compared to what I was once, I have returned to philosophical issues with a more pragmatic bent. If anything, I am more reflective and analytic -less raw horsepower, but more reflectivity I think.

Cognitive Decline: A Nuanced Perspective

It's not that my thinking is just slower; it’s not as clear. I find things harder to understand than I did in the past. My ability to comprehend complex arguments and remember has degraded. My short-term memory is degraded and my long-term memory is not so hot either sometimes.

The Misleading Concept of IQ

It's quite clear to me that intelligence in the IQ sense is quite misleading, wrong-headed, and there are any number, an innumerable number, of different cognitive abilities. It's also quite clear that these cognitive abilities look more like a mountain range than a single continuum, or even eight dimensions. However, they do decline with age and with injury.

Neurodiversity and Human Capabilities

Neurology backs this perspective up, I think, and the neurodiversity folks, political movement aside, are not wrong, they're right. It's just become a politicized issue, as opposed to an obvious statement about human capabilities.

Nietzsche’s Relevance

I've been heavily influenced by the observation that the world is full of opinion, contradictory opinion, and the observation that logically they cannot all be correct, with the view that perhaps none of them are correct in complex, complicated issues. I guess this echoes somewhat the thoughts of Nietzsche, the philosopher. He asserted, in German of course, that there were no facts, only interpretations⁴. Well, I won't go so far as Nietzsche, but a lot of what we assert are just interpretations, and I don't think science is always the route to greater understanding. So far, it hasn't shown itself to be in a number of scholarly areas, although in others it's arguably quite useful.

Let's reflect on Nietzsche's assertion that there are no facts, only interpretations. I think this is undeniably true. One listens to differing opinions, reads differing viewpoints, viewpoints that are contradictory, and no amount of nuance or qualification will make them agree. Then it's quite obvious, simple logic, that not all can be correct, either individual assertions or complex arguments. There may be elements that are in agreement, but elements that disagree cannot all be correct. So that's the nature of the world. In just about any field you can think of, there's disagreement. You probably find that people would disagree about the best way to knit tea cozies, but regardless, in any significant issues, they find immense disagreement. Political, archaeological, medical, any scholarly discipline, any interpretive discipline, opinions in newspapers, articles, they're all different. It doesn't follow that any of them are right. Perhaps not in whole, perhaps not even in part. So that's where Nietzsche nailed it.

Well, I don't find anything extreme in Nietzsche's views. It's just common sense. They're just logical, based upon any amount of empirical observation. I'm amazed that any reflective person could dispute his main observation that the world is full of interpretations. There may be some things that we can find reliable enough to consider facts, but generally the bulk of human discourse is interpration, its opinion, each one claiming to be correct, each one claiming that they have logic and evidence on their side, and clearly they can't all be correct. That's just common sense. Anybody who does a little bit of reading and reflection will realize this has got to be true if they're not so blinded by their own confirmation bias that they can't see past their own noses.

On the Fence About Science

I remain on the fence about science and its effectiveness, with a disposition to believe that it's actually not at all effective in medicine and psychology, for various reasons; drug treatments come to mind. These things are well documented by others who are much more competent at assessing these issues than I am.

Barriers to Understanding the World

I can think of several problems with our ability to understand the world in any sense:
1 - our own personal intellectual limitations don't let us understand certain concepts.
2 - perhaps the super-brainiac alien, from regula-4, would understand certain things that no human can.
3 - our language may be inadequate.
4 - in principle we could understand things, but the world is too varied and complex and complicated to make sense of it, and probably will always be that case. This is the norm in some fields.
5 - the ideas we entertain are ill-posed. There's no way to describe how we would verify them or how we'd falsify them. They may involve infinite regress. They may be circular. They may be category mistakes. They may be reification. They are fundamentally unrecognized incoherence, taken all too seriously by generations of wild goose chasing scholars. That probably accounts for an awful lot of metaphysics and some other sorts of discussion as well.

Chasing Understanding: A Pragmatic Realization

Now I've decided that understanding is not something we'll ever achieve on many deep issues, for any number of reasons. So, it's chasing the will o’ the wisp, it seems, except in a very limited pragmatic context.

The Limits of Understanding

It's a trope from the philosophical literature⁵. I don't know who said it first, but some things are beyond a man's understanding, just as some things are beyond a dog's understanding. You can't teach a dog calculus. So, some people can understand more difficult ideas, difficult being operationally defined, since understanding has definitional problems. Some people can't wrestle with the more difficult ideas. Difficult seems almost a circular concept. But still dogs cannot understand calculus, and some people can't understand advanced mathematics, no matter what the training. They just, in principle, don't have that capacity, that raw horsepower for those types of problems. Although they may be bright and in certain ways, in those specific ways, they can't deal with it. The brain doesn't allow them to deal with it, no matter what the training.

A Dog and Calculus

But I still say, my dog, if I had one, wouldn't be able to understand calculus.

1. John P. Ioannidis is a prominent physician-scientist and epidemiologist, widely known for his critical work on research practices, reproducibility, and bias in science. He is currently a professor at Stanford University, holding positions in medicine, health research and policy, biomedical data science, and statistics. Some key aspects of his career and contributions include:

Key Contributions:

1. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" (2005)
   Ioannidis is best known for this landmark paper, which argues that a large proportion of scientific studies are flawed due to issues like small sample sizes, bias, selective reporting, and conflicts of interest. The paper has had a profound impact on how researchers and institutions evaluate scientific findings.

2. Focus on Reproducibility and Bias
   His work has exposed the widespread replication crisis in various scientific fields, including medicine, psychology, and nutrition. He has critically evaluated the methods used in clinical trials, observational studies, and systematic reviews, advocating for higher standards and transparency.

3. Research on Meta-Analysis
   Ioannidis has highlighted how meta-analyses can themselves be prone to bias, particularly when they combine low-quality studies or cherry-pick data. He emphasizes the need for rigorous methodology in synthesizing evidence.

4. Critique of Medical and Nutritional Science
   Ioannidis has been outspoken about the unreliability of nutritional epidemiology and the exaggeration of small or flawed studies in medical science. He advocates for large-scale, well-designed trials to draw more reliable conclusions.

5. COVID-19 Research
   During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ioannidis attracted significant attention—and controversy—for his early estimates of the infection fatality rate (IFR) of SARS-CoV-2, which suggested that the virus might be less deadly than initially feared. While some viewed his work as a valuable contribution to understanding the pandemic, others criticized aspects of the methodology and timing of his studies.

Broader Influence:

Ioannidis has been a vocal advocate for reforms in academia, including addressing perverse incentives in research funding, publication pressures, and conflicts of interest in science. His work has spurred important conversations about improving the reliability and trustworthiness of scientific research.

Criticisms:

While many praise Ioannidis for his contributions, some critics argue that his critiques can be overly broad or insufficiently nuanced, potentially discouraging trust in science. Additionally, his COVID-19 work has sparked intense debate, with some accusing him of downplaying the severity of the pandemic, while others defend his call for a data-driven approach.

Ioannidis remains one of the most cited and influential scientists globally, with his work continuing to shape discussions on how science can become more rigorous and trustworthy.

2. One of the most influential and frequently cited papers addressing the problems with peer review is:

"The Peer Review System Should Be Improved Instead of Being Abandoned"

• Published by Drummond Rennie in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), 1998.

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Key Points:

1. Systemic Flaws in Peer Review:

   • Rennie highlighted that while peer review is central to the scientific publication process, it suffers from significant flaws, including:

     • Biases: Reviewer and editorial biases, such as favoritism, confirmation bias, and gender or institutional bias.

     • Inconsistency: Variability in the quality and conclusions of peer reviews for the same manuscript.

     • Lack of Accountability: Anonymous reviews sometimes result in superficial or unconstructive critiques.

     • Slow Process: Peer review often delays publication unnecessarily.

2. Need for Reform:

   • The paper emphasized improving the transparency, fairness, and efficiency of peer review, rather than abandoning it altogether.

3. Proposed Solutions:

   • Enhancing training for reviewers.

   • Introducing open peer review systems.

   • Utilizing technology to streamline processes and improve detection of issues like plagiarism or fraud.

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Other Major Contributions on Peer Review Problems:

• "Editorial Peer Review for Improving the Quality of Reports of Biomedical Studies" (2002, Jefferson et al.):

  • This systematic review found little empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of peer review in improving scientific rigor.

• Richard Smith’s Critiques (2006, BMJ):

  • The former editor of the BMJ argued that peer review is slow, prone to bias, and fails to consistently detect major errors or fraud.

  • He provocatively called peer review "the worst system, except for all the others."

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Broader Context:

The issues with peer review highlighted in these papers have spurred the development of alternative or supplementary systems, including:

• Open peer review: Making reviewer identities and comments public.

• Post-publication review: Allowing the scientific community to evaluate published work.

• Preprint servers: Allowing immediate dissemination of findings without the delays of peer review.

While no single "keynote paper" addresses all aspects of the peer review crisis, Rennie’s work, alongside critiques by Jefferson and Smith, has shaped ongoing discussions and reforms in scholarly publishing.

3. The most influential and widely cited paper on the replication crisis in science is:

"Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science"

• Published in Science in 2015 by the Open Science Collaboration, led by Brian Nosek and the Center for Open Science.

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Key Details:

• Purpose:
  The study aimed to systematically assess the reproducibility of psychological science by replicating 100 published experimental and correlational studies from three prominent psychology journals.

• Findings:

  • Reproducibility rate: Only about 36% to 39% of the studies produced statistically significant results in the replication attempts.

  • Effect sizes: Replication studies often had much smaller effect sizes than the original studies.

  • Factors affecting replication: Original studies with larger p-values (closer to 0.05) and smaller effect sizes were less likely to replicate.

• Implications:
  The paper highlighted that a substantial proportion of published findings in psychology could not be replicated, raising concerns about methodological practices, selective reporting, publication bias, and pressures to produce novel results.

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Broader Impact:

While focused on psychology, the 2015 replication crisis paper triggered scrutiny across other fields, including medicine, economics, and neuroscience. It catalyzed a movement to improve transparency, rigor, and reproducibility in science, leading to reforms such as:

1. Preregistration of studies to reduce biases.

2. Open data and materials sharing to enable verification of results.

3. The rise of registered reports to minimize publication bias.

Related Work:

• John Ioannidis's Paper (2005):
  "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"

  • This earlier paper provided a theoretical framework for understanding why many findings are unreliable, serving as a precursor to empirical efforts like the 2015 study.

Both the 2015 study and Ioannidis's earlier paper are cornerstones of the replication crisis discourse.

4. Friedrich Nietzsche's assertion that "there are no facts, only interpretations" ("Es gibt keine Tatsachen, nur Interpretationen") is found in his unpublished notebooks from the period of 1886 to 1887. This idea reflects Nietzsche's perspectivist philosophy, emphasizing that our understanding of reality is shaped by subjective perspectives rather than objective truths.

5. The idea of dogs and calculus could function as a trope in philosophical literature. This trope would symbolize inherent limitations of understanding—a common theme in philosophy when discussing the boundaries of human cognition, the capacity for knowledge, or the limitations of other beings (or even artificial intelligence).

The Trope's Use in Philosophy:

1. Symbolizing Cognitive Boundaries:

   • The phrase "you can't teach a dog calculus" serves as a metaphor for the limits of intellectual capability. It illustrates the idea that certain concepts are inherently beyond the grasp of particular beings due to biological, cognitive, or structural constraints.

2. Philosophical Themes It Relates To:

   • Epistemology: Examining the limits of knowledge and understanding, particularly in humans.

   • Animal Cognition: Comparing the intellectual capacities of humans to other species.

   • Anthropocentrism: Highlighting the hubris of assuming humans can understand everything.

   • Philosophy of Mind: Exploring whether some problems are as incomprehensible to humans as calculus is to dogs.

3. Historical Examples:

   • The trope echoes themes from figures like Wittgenstein, who famously said, "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him," pointing to the incomprehensibility of other beings' perspectives.

   • It parallels Kantian philosophy, where the human mind is bound by its categories of understanding, unable to perceive "things-in-themselves."

4. Modern Adaptation:

   • It could be applied to discussions of artificial intelligence or posthumanism, questioning whether certain forms of intelligence (like AI) might surpass humans in understanding while remaining incomprehensible to us.