developing multiple hypotheses

[Tuckeroo]

Hi TP,


Thought I’d drag this comment back down from Nugg’s thread to ‘off topic’, easy to side track that thread,
so I didn’t want to help it along.

( as an aside I had a chuckle over Nugg’s welcome to AYR turning into a lengthy debate, probably wondered
what he had stumbled into, but he held fast and showed some metal, sticking to what he believes in,
by his fourth post he fell into the thick of it. If you end up reading this post Nuggs, all respect from a fellow poster.)

Some great info in your post about developing multiple hypotheses. I’d heard this term before and it confirmed how
I was already thinking, but hadn’t heard it explained like that.
I suppose people in marketing would use a model of multiple hypotheses to find success with their product.
‘In system analysis this model is important in finding equilibrium’, I think that’s what the scientist said in the doco
I was watching.
I see ‘status quo bias’ as what religious groups practice, I think in law they call it ‘terms of reference’,
where they state what evidence is included and what will be excluded.

The confirmation bias is how politicians behave with their rhetoric. I think confirmation bias is part of human nature
and helps the less enlightened ones construct a world around themselves, maybe we could call it ‘comfort bias’.

Frank Zappa, a famous American philosopher once said ‘the mind is like a parachute, unless it’s open it doesn’t work’.



T.

[TrevorPeters]

Hi Tuckeroo,

Yes I ran across the multiple working hypothesis concept during my wide ranging reading experiences. I think it was when I was investigating cases of scientific bias.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to remain ignorant and just float along in life accepting everything at face value and blissfully thinking that people have your best interests at heart. People like our government, medical profession and the scientific community in general.

Unfortunately I scratched the top off that boil a long time ago and the pus that came out was pretty bad. You should try studying US foreign policy sometime, that's just nasty.

It is an unfortunate reality that scientific bias is alive and well in many forms. There are papers on the subject that investigate things like intentional abuse of power, deliberate falsification of data, right through to unconscious confirmation bias, which is a little scary when it happens in important medical studies. Scientific careers have been ended many times because a person insisted on reporting the truth rather than following accepted wisdom.

As humans we find it so hard to run with multiple working theories of anything even though most academics know it is the best approach when dealing with theoretical constructs.
Part of the reason is that we invest so much time and effort into things that it becomes too painful to accept that we have followed the wrong path or backed the wrong team. Another part, on a general level is that our brain works in strange ways. It has built in mechanisms to make associations and short-cut our thinking process to give us an answer quicker.
That's why we often "say the first thing to pop into our head". Sometimes that results in a stupid answer but sometimes the right one pops out too.
Generally, we don't like to crunch through a laborious process of logical thinking and then follow it with necessary rational thinking to join the dots, we want the answer quickly.
So basically we are mentally lazy and this can contribute to close-mindedness as well.

The topics discussed on this forum are often interconnected, wide ranging, come with lots of baggage and train loads of data. Trying to sort through all that and assess a single theory is hard enough, but to do justice to it all, you need to entertain not only several possible answers at the same time but also the possibility that your favourite on just might be wrong. It all depends on what the next piece of evidence shows.

You talked about balance (finding equilibrium) and that's important - imagine how unbalanced your world-view can become if you tenaciously stick to the wrong theory despite it's obvious mismatch to the evidence or even if you refuse to test your beliefs at all? It's a bit like walking a tight rope, but that's what makes it fun.

One thing I have learned is, the answer that ultimately proves to be correct is not always the most popular or the most likely.

Cheers
TP

[Tuckeroo]

"TrevorPeters"] Hi Tuckeroo,


Unfortunately I scratched the top off that boil a long time ago and the pus that came out was pretty bad. You should try studying US foreign policy sometime, that's just nasty.



Thanks TP for your interesting reply,............had a few of those boils myself.

T.