From Greg Williams (930415)
Bill Powers (930414.1430 MDT)
What _do_ we require of tests in order to accept them as yielding
scientific data?
I like your list of the requirements.
When you and I were participating in the Test, we could not, by
definition, satisfy all the criteria above. You were the sole
judge of whether the challenge had been met. Therefore it didn't
matter whether there was a consensus between you and me, or among
all those observing the proceedings. The requirement for public
criteria publicly applied couldn't be met, as the criteria
existed solely in your head, and you didn't say what they were.
I agree.
I simply did the best I could until I was satisfied that I had
identified a number of controlled variables. Then, by presenting
my method and my observations to you -- publicly -- and by laying
out my reasoning so you or anyone else could see it, I tried to
get you to pronounce the challenge either met or lost.
I now see your statement
I admitted to Bill that his predictions last week (ca.?) were
reasonable in terms of my subjective impressions of my
motivations.
... as indicating some consensus between you and me at least on
the outcome of the Test.
I've been saying all along that I don't count my subjective reasonability
as sufficient to judge the outcome of the Test. By "objective," I was
referring to evidence resulting directly from The Test, not the
(subjective, of course) weighing of that evidence.
Suppose you do The Test on me and propose that I have a reference signal
in a loop with considerable gain for heading South. I tell you that I
don't want to go South, but North. Do you propose that we to count as
evidence for my actual "going" reference signal my tale about wanting to
go North with at least equal weight as the evidence derived from applying
The Test?
You never commented on whether my evidence or my reasoning were
acceptable to you.
I thought that was implicit in my final comment regarding "where we
stood" regarding the challenge, namely that you had not met it, in my
opinion. Explicitly, my (SUBJECTIVE) opinion is that you did not provide
sufficient OBJECTIVE evidence because you did not apply The Test
adequately to sufficiently (FOR ME) pin down potential ambiguities.
Others might think that you DID apply The Test adequately. But, on a
higher level, I don't think taking a vote on it among some witnesses
would count for much; what would be doing science, in my opinion, would
be the give-and-take of argument and discussion among the witnesses,
bringing up why and why not each (subjectively) thinks The Test was or
was not applied adequately.
If we took a vote on this, asking if people felt that they
understood the evidence, the method, and the reasoning that led
to the conclusions, we might come nearer to a scientific
consensus. But the rules of the challenge forbade that, and still
do. Such a vote would be interesting, not because it would prove
anything but because I would like to ask dissenters what there
was lacking in the procedure, so they remain unconvinced.
As indicated immediately above, I think this is a good way to begin.
You made the rules, you can change them. I believe a discussion about the
ins-and-outs of using The Test in this case and in general would be
helpful to flesh out the potential problems in applying it and
interpreting the results.
As you say, applying the Test can be difficult, particularly if a
person does not want a controlled variable to be identified
publicly.
This is the sort of problem I'd like to see discussed.
It is really very difficult to conceal a controlled variable if
one is actually controlling it. The only practical way is to stop
controlling it, or to make the means of control so indirect and
devious that the connection is hard to see. And even then, one
can hardly conceal ALL controlled variables; to do so would make
behaving impossible.
"Very difficult to conceal" seems to shift the burden to the concealer,
whereas the difficulty is in the UNCOVERING. It might be very difficult
to conceal a controlled variable from a Tester with unlimited time and
resources, but very easy if the Tester is pressed. Another potential
difficulty is low loop gain. Another is Tester interference, if the
very application of The Test alters the testee's control structure. These
sorts of eventualities need to be looked at in considering the practical
use of The Test.
"Motivation," by the way, is too ambiguous a term to be of much
use in a scientific discussion (although I'm sure you didn't mean
it in any precise sense).
Perhaps its only virtue is in not presupposing a PCT-type control
structure. If kept within a highly specific context, I see nothing wrong
with speaking of having, i.e., a "motivation to travel South."
Science doesn't give anyone automatic permission to find out
things about people that they don't want known -- even if it may
provide methods for doing so.
Certainly. But you probably don't need to do that to say more about
whether the "may" is a (practical) "can," and to have a better idea of
the limits of the "can."
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From, of all places, GLOBAL STAMP NEWS:
"Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did -- only backwards and
in highheels."
As ever,
Greg