Post #4049662

2026-07-23 23:28 UTC

@Spoofer3@infosec.exchange Seems sensible to me, though I’m not sure how to operationalize it. Judging from my small sample, the scientists working in the “squishy sciences” (biology, medicine) don’t fuss so much about uncertainty and the discovery of capital-L Laws of Nature. Uncertainty is the air they breathe and Laws are unacheivable. Maybe: living systems are about evading the long-term consequences of physical laws for long enough (thermodynamics), so studying scofflaws is a different kind of science.

Replies (1)

@Spoofer3@infosec.exchange 2026-07-24 00:06

@marick@mstdn.social I guess I'd be quite surprised if the squishy sciences ignored "p-values" and the related mechanism, which I lumped into "uncertainty" here, though aware there are lots of closely related items, including variance, confidence levels, accuracy, precision, etc. Anything that makes repeated observations (counts, measurements, etc) or makes predictions, etc has to deal with this. Another way I sometimes look at these models is that a model is asking/answering a question that either has been answered before, or this is the first time it's being asked. If it's not the first time being answered, then new results have to be compared to previous times it was answered and there should be a metric for assessing "better." ... If there isn't, then I'd say that the scientist isn't completing their job. Though after reading your series, I'm also realizing there is a lot of jargon (e.g. induction) that I presume I know, but is clearly being used quite a bit differently by the community you are writing on...so it's likely we agree a lot more than it might seem.

Open ##4049660