Interesting paper. It defines an entropy of the information source and shows how the required information capacity of the transmission of information must be at least as great as this entropy of the information source.
I think the problem I was running into when I looked into the topic before reading this paper was the many different ways the concept of entropy has been adapted for use in information theory. None of these adaptations are much related to the concept of entropy in physics where my expertise lies. So I kept seeing the opposite claim probably because it was talking about the entropy of the transmission method rather than the entropy of information source.
Now I know that much more about information theory and will be able to make this distinction when the topic is raised. Thanks.
the naivety of such a statement is amusing. one could think you haven’t done science yet as the testing of a hypothesis automatically creates bias. A lot of people are eager to prove their hypothesis correct as it gives you fame and access to money. There are numerous scandals that you should be aware of, the recent one of faking gels on Alzheimers diagnostics being one of them. The issue with science that people do not understand is that you cannot prove things right even by having repeatable results, as a single experiment can prove you wrong. This is why I teach people to try their best to prove their hypothesis wrong, as that is the only proof that science can obtain and show that you failed in doing so.
Remember that science is done by humans. Do not assume they are a better class of people because they get paid from the magic money tree
But that’s why science requires such things as peer review and reproducibility. For every scientist who is eager to prove their own hypothesis correct there are other scientists who are just as eager to prove it wrong. After all, they themselves may be competing against it for a Nobel Prize.
Really?
If you could prove something supported by repeatable results wrong with a single experiment, you would be granting a free pass to astrology, homeopathy, water divining, reading tea leaves, and tobacco companies claiming that smoking is good for you.
Falsification needs to be reproducible too. Especially when the theory being falsified has a lot of data supporting it. Or has real-world commercial and practical applications. Or has a lot of other science that depends on it.
Yes, but remember that science is done by a lot of humans. With many eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
The key questions to ask here about any scientific theory or question are these:
Is there a large amount of evidence, and a large amount of studies supporting it?
Is the consensus among subject matter experts clear?
Does it have any practical or commercial applications?
Are there other scientific theories that depend on it?
If the answer to either (1) or (2) is “yes,” then you may occasionally be able to demonstrate some sort of systemic bias if the subject is politically contentious, though you need to be careful as your own challenge needs to be based on honest reporting and honest interpretation of accurate information, and needs to be consistent with the aspects of science that you are not challenging. But if the answer to either (3) or (4) is “yes,” then trying to challenge it is getting into crackpot territory.
The incomprehension of the English language shown by your comment is amusing. One would think you haven’t ever looked up the word “ideal” or used it in a sentence. People fail to live up to all kinds of ideals and it doesn’t change the fact that many others are determined to defend those ideals by pointing out such failures as contemptable. Do you just use failures as an excuse to trash various ideals of human civilization so you can pursue ambitions and desires at the expense of others? It makes me wonder if the snake fascination I see in so many people with the failures of people to live up to ideals is because they are building of their own case of excuses to do as they please. I am reminded of the TV show House which I have been watching where the main character behaves so contemptible all the time, apparently thinking his talents for diagnosis gives Him the right. Definite God complex.
Science is not about proof. Science is about what is reasonable. If a procedure gives the same results a thousand times then it is only reasonable to expect the same results when you do it again. Thus it is reasonable to expect the sun to rise and the road/bridges/floors you use every day to continue to support you. It is not proof. But knowledge isn’t based on proof, it is based on the everyday experience of what is reliable.
That we try is what the word “ideal” means.
Remember that you are just as human. Do not assume you are a better class of person just because you can throw out wild unjustified accusations at other people. And I definitely know that religious people, Christians included, are human. Have you overcome the foolishness that Christians are a better class of people just because they wear that label?
But yes I definitely think the people who fight for ideals ARE a better class of people. I think this includes many scientists as a better example of faith than we see in most religious people. But the ideals of science are hardly the only ideals people defend to make the world a better place. I don’t even think they are the most important ones. Love, justice, freedom, and service are few of those which I think are worth defending. And so I hardly think scientists are the only ones or even the most important.
Sounds like I upset the Gods
I do indeed. The point of trying to falsify your own results is to demonstrate critical thinking by doing controls controls controls. The acceptance of data because they fit your narrative is far too common and the pressure to deliver expected results has become frightening, combined with the lack of scepticism when it comes to machine generated data. Thus Popper is a good reminder about hypothesis and proof. The good thing is that in your PhD you proven your hypothesis wrong is not a failure but a success. Even more important, it is mainly the failures from which we learn. The scientific literature is unfortunately far to biased as rarely people want to publish results that did not meet the expectation.
Where do you teach scientists? Is this an advanced class in some university?
I sure wish the moderators would find Karl Giberson’s excellent article on the nature of science.
Scientists are trained to be skeptics. And they work knowing that at any time another scientist could falsify their work in any number of ways.
I don’t think so. But then I am not willing to give publications of that sort the name of science. Besides there are plenty of others ready willing and able to disprove your hypotheses if you don’t do it first. That how they take the creds right out from under you.
To be sure there is plenty of pseudo-science going on where people with scientific training are paid to produce publications with the requested results. We see plenty of this in creationism but I think there are plenty of that sort of thing on the other end of the political/philosophical spectrum also.
With hundreds or thousands of students looking for PHDs in the same area, trying to reproduce your results in order to understand the science and look for more research opportunities, bias like that doesn’t work for very long.
New rules: now in addition to doing your own (Google) research, everyone must also do their own peer review which they must publish on their own blog, podcast or at least Facebook page.
There is a difference between science as a method and the story or body of knowledge constructed with science. The story (Big Bang, evolution, etc.) is just that–a story, and a story that could and likely will change as new evidence comes in and challenges older theories. What makes the scientific story different from any other story (think of the creation myths from around the world) is that it is constructed based on a method that tests the story against evidence through experimentation and repeated observations. When people (whether religious believers or post-modernists) say that science is just another narrative (or more annoyingly, just another religion), I always point out that science is really the method used to arrive at the story not the story itself. What scientists need to hold on to is not any particular theory or hypothesis, but the tradition of testing ideas against evidence. Science of course is not the only way to arrive at truth and it is not infallible, but it does have a very good track record when it comes to understanding the natural world.
The incomprehension of the human condition shown by your comment is amusing
When you talk about politicians, lawyers, preachers and salesmen one could think so. It implies that politics is not about honesty, not is the law, not is religion, let alone selling you a product.
Remember that you are just as human. Do not assume you are a better class of person just because you can throw out wild unjustified accusations at other people. And I definitely know that religious and secular people, Scientists included, are human. Have you overcome the foolishness that Scientists are a better class of people just because they wear that label?
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Bias in the research literature and conflict of interest - NCBI
by SN Young · 2009 · Cited by 62 — The idea that scientists are objective seekers of truth is a pleasing fiction, but counterproductive in so far as it can lessen vigilance against bias .
do I sense some phobia here? “Publications of that sort” Are you afraid of failure? What publications “of that sort” do you project on me - and why?
Sometimes the best response to people who persist in trashing ideals and talking nonsense is to refuse engaging their insanity and just ignore them. The failures to live up to ideals is a good reason to re-emphasize those those ideals and defend them, not to attack them.
Let’s reiterate those ideals and ignore the background noise.
Science is only honest as long as it sticks to its methodological ideal of testing hypotheses rather than simply looking for evidence to prove them as we see in creationism and other pseudo-scientific efforts. Science is only objective as long as its conclusion provide written procedures which anyone can follow to get the same results no matter what they want or believe. Without these methodological ideals of honesty and objectivity it is not science but mere rhetoric and thus no different than the spiels of politicians, pastors, and used car salesmen. When something calls itself science without these standards, that is pseudo-science, regardless of whatever show of mathematics and evidence is displayed.
Of course, I really didn’t understand what Marvin’s snide offensive comments were trying to get at, and it all seemed like a mindlessly unjustified attack for no reason.
But then I had a thought…
There is a piece of rhetoric you often hear in Christianity which might bear some similarity and thus point to what Marvin was really going on about. It is basically a justification for Calvinist dogma that human beings are totally depraved, by arguing that none of our good deed are really good because our motivations are all poisoned somehow by sin. So I thought maybe that is how Marvin is thinking. Science defined by ideals would mean there is no science because every attempt to do something good in accordance with ideals is necessarily poisoned by total selfishness or something.
Well… I don’t buy the argument and I certainly do not buy into the Calvinist dogma. The Bible makes it quite clear God is frequently delighted by the good He sees in people. And I think it is more Godly and Christian to see the good in people rather than the oppressive dogmatic people-bashing obsession with sin, which cannot see anything good in people outside their dark anti-human religion, which BTW I cannot believe is good at all.
Likewise… the evidence clearly doesn’t agree with regards to science either. Science clearly does make significant discoveries all the time, advancing our understanding of the universe – even in ways that defy our expectations and common sense. Thus I think we have good reason for confidence that the devotion of science to its ideals far exceeds the few cases where they are not upheld properly. Yeah yeah… I get it – the religious want to take all the credit by saying that science only discovers anything because of some divine miracle… to which I say the ideals of science ARE the miracle, and the piece of rhetoric, saying all our efforts are worthless, is just self defeating.
Maybe this is just semantics but I would use the word ‘faith’ from the everyday use of roads/bridges/floors/chairs. People do not usually analyze or even think about the structural reliability of an ordinary strong-looking chair when they sit on it. They just believe it will work as hoped and act based on that belief - hence ‘faith’. We can say that this kind of faith-based behavior is reasonable because we do not have the time or knowledge to analyze every little detail in our life and ordinary strong-looking chairs seldom crash when we sit on them. Reasonable but not science or knowledge.
I would also say that ideals do not define science. We have an expectation that what scientists publish in peer-reviewed academic journals is reliable information, that the published information tells about the findings of research based on honesty and objectivity. This is reasonable because we do not have the time or knowledge to critically evaluate every published piece of information. Yet, it is an expectation, assumption rather than a fact.
Researchers believing they act honestly may subconsciously plan their research or filter their data in a way that leads to biased results. Reviewers should pick up the weaknesses of the study and manuscript before publication but it is a fact that many times that does not happen because the referees have limited knowledge or they are just too busy to inspect the manuscript with sufficient detail. If there are two or more reviewers, they may all note some obvious weaknesses but often they criticize different weaknesses in the manuscript. Some weaknesses are not commented by any of the reviewers (personal experience).
We expect or hope that also other people are driven by the ideals of honesty and objectivity. These are the ideals of politicians although we have the assumption that few politicians are truly following these ideals - those sticking to the ideals are seldom elected to important political seats. Yet, these are the ideals.
Yep. I would say that all knowledge derives from faith. It is unavoidable – even when deduction is used rather than induction. Logic is also useless without faith. No conclusion is possible without putting your faith in the premises of the argument you are making.
Incoherent. Science works in exactly the same way. Our only evidence is that the tests give the same results each time. It is all induction not deduction. We have faith that the same procedures will give the same results the same way we have faith that the sun will rise again. That is why it is not about proof but about what is reasonable. This problem with the use of induction in science has long been understood and the denial of those making science into some kind of religion is pure delusion.
So creationists would argue and the scientists will never agree. Those ideals are the ONLY thing that distinguish science from mere rhetoric.
At what point does the word faith become meaningless if we are going to include obective, verifiable evidence as belonging to faith?
Is that how people use the word assumption? When they say you are assuming something do they mean that you are citing mountains of supporting evidence and decades of science that support your position? I would argue that this is not how we use the word assumption.
What is a fact? Can anything be a fact using your definition?
Faith doesn’t include objective verifiable evidence. It only acknowledges that such evidence doesn’t quite equal proof. It might reduce the role of faith to jumping over a much smaller gap, but it doesn’t make the word completely meaningless. Of course there are always those ready and willing to jump much larger gaps with faith, and even a few determined to go against the evidence with blind faith. But insisting on a black and white choice here as if blind faith is the only faith or that evidence provides certainty is the real foolishness.
It is the methodology used which provides a reasonable basis for the expectation that people can agree with the results. We can simply tell them to make their own tests and do the procedure themselves if they doubt the results. I call them methodological ideals, to acknowledge that they are not quite some paint by the numbers set of instructions, but nor are they the vague pie in the sky sort of ideals either.
Scientific theory becomes fact when it becomes one of the routine tools of scientific investigation. Knowledge and fact are simply the things we live by. Of course this means that many facts are far from objective. Most like to think that “fact,” objective or otherwise, is about certainty. But the only certainty is a willful delusion on the part of people wanting to push their thinking on other people. So they speak of fact divorced from anything they can demonstrate. But all the hot air and blowing rhetoric cannot change what they want to be the case into objective reality, with a reasonable expectation that others should accept their claims as truth.
