Name: Science and Intuition
Uploaded: 2020-03-27T18:22:51.000Z
Duration: 12 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

isn't science folk law littered with stories of the people who ignore their intuition and investigated.

The weird result on that led to the breakthroughs training the other.

They bring an end to those moments of great discovery.

So there's a There's a riel worry about using one or two isolated cases to make generalizations about the use of intuition in science, so it would be unscientific, right?

It would also be un philosophical on me, so But let me let me just talk about about a couple.

So there are some quantum mechanics is a really obvious case to talk about, because there are some people who would maybe say that the reason that quantum mechanics took so long to be accepted was people thought it was just not very intuitive.

And so, yeah, intuitions there might might hold us back might prevent us from from seeing what's going on.

On the other hand, there are various discussions from Einstein where he wants to seemingly talks about the way that his intuition has guided him and helped him enabled him to see things.

Now I don't want to say that's Einstein using his intuitions as evidence at all right?

I want to say it's just really messy and really difficult to see what's going on with the use of intuitions in science.

That's why we need to get much clearer on a doctor very scientific and thorough approach to finding out what's going on there.

One thing that Lady Ross say which I think is absolutely right on, is that there are times when what scientists do is they use their intuitions to see in advance of careful testing how a particular theory or model will apply to a problem space.

And that's because of their great experience in doing science on that Seems right to me that that seemed absolutely right.

And then the thought is, is the experimentalists who come in who do the checking of the careful work to see whether or not those theories are right?

Although I'm not sure I don't have any data, right?

I mean, it would seem right to me that it would seem right to a scientist, but that they're seeming they're not my seeming so, so we'd have to check.

What interests me, though, is the claim that lady moon rocks make, which is actually that.

That's the only use that the theoretician makes of their intuition.

So it's It's in advance of careful checking to see how something will apply to a problem space.

I just don't know, even in that idea to write that the idealized science includes that use.

What I'm interested in, I guess, is then whether or not the idealized science should also allow us to make other use of intuitions experimental at the experimental phase or at the theoretical phase, you've gone over into the lion's den and spoken to scientists about this.

I know you gave a talk to Yes, that's about it.

How does have some of the things you're saying here, go down when you talk to scientists about so some of my best friends, a scientist.

I think that when I gave the talk to the guys over in Over in physics, there was a wide, a bit off skepticism about the claims that intuitions are being having an evidential role.

Okay, so that was something I touched upon a little bit in the tool on DDE.

Waas Look, when it comes down to it, it's all about the data that that's the be all and end all in the end of what goes on in science now, I'm happy enough that they're right, right?

Ignore the thing about dropping data points based on things right?

Let's just let's just talk about what happens in the other 85% of the cases.

I think that they're right, that in the end what it will come down to the evidence the data will trump everything else.

But I'm not just worried about trumping concerns, so it's perfectly consistent with what What folks there said to me that in the end, you've just gotta go with the data.

The intuitions are nonetheless playing an evidential roll, right?

So it is to look a reason to believe a theory that it's intuitive or reason to think that some observations right, that it's intuitive.

It's just that what we're most interested in is the data is the observation that we make it.

So it might be that that the the evidential wait that we give to the intuitions of scientists is tiny, but the big works done by the observations.

But even if there is a tiny bit of evidential use of of intuitions in science, that's gonna factor in it.

Some in some places, particularly way you have data that seems to be neutral between two theories or the point where you're undecided about which way to pursue a particular theory or what to do next.

If you've got an intuition that some particular thing is right and that intuition is doing some evidential work, you're likely to go one way rather in the other.

But then, if the scientists will say when I go that way, if the data doesn't back it up, it's still a dead end.

And I gotta be man or woman enoughto turn around and go back to stuff absolutely and again, right?

So I'm not suggesting that the intuitions playing an evidential roll trumps the data.

What kind of scenario you've described their responded with us when we go.

Yet the intuition was some evidence, so we went that way.

We found the data didn't match it, so we had to come back and go that way again.

But notice that in that process, that process of scientific deliberation.

The intuitions were still doing so evidential work.

Instead, Why don't you think that's evidential?

That's just it was just It was just a feeling.

I mean, it was the toss of a coin and you and you allowed your feelings to toss the coin, but I don't think it would count as evidence.

So I'm honestly not sure without really filling in the details of the case is so what you really need to test this is to actually go and work in someone's lab with them into new than a regular basis and actually interrogate the decision making process a little bit more.

It it seems to you a Ziff that that's ah, that's a case where intuition isn't playing an evidential role.

Might my seemingly more neutral around here?

I'm not quite sure that that's going to be right.

I mean, here's another way to say it back.

That maybe will make my reasons for saying that a bit clearer.

We think that they're competing on on I say, my look, this theory is the one that seems right to me.

So I'm gonna pursue this one now the way that I've just described that from the internal side of things, that wasn't a case where someone said, Well, flip a coin, Go that way It was.

But this just seems right because it seems right.

Given a non random waiting, it was given a non random waiting.

Yeah, and that seems to be giving it some credence.

You're not talking about evidence that will be in the footnotes of a paper?

This is evidence that helped you decide which experiment to do one on Wednesday afternoon.

Does anyone disagree about Well, so it would look like Lady Man and Ross would disagree when they say that there's only a very narrow use for intuitions in science.

And when I do want to go over the gave this talk over and in the sciences, people seem to be disagreeing with me that intuitions are playing any kind of evidential.

Seems to me that might be wrong on apologies for all the bags.

But that's why we need to actually go away, investigate and really find out what's going on in there.

I think it feels to me that when you talk about using intuition as evidence, you're almost using as evidence with a little eh, as opposed to evidence with a capital K, which is what makes it into your paper in Yeah, So the idea that evidence that the intuitions are playing a very small evidential roll versus the data on that you would never site your intuitions as evidence for a theory in a paper that strikes me is right.

Okay, that I'm totally on side with that.

And I I don't think that practicing scientists typically go around if or if you've ever running their papers for for nature and say, Well, I intuited that this theory was right, so it's rise right.

But what I do think is that in those little steps along the way, where you're thinking, what do I do next?

Which theory looks like it's gonna be right.

Well, that one seems like it's gonna be right.

I think that that's some small evidence for that view.

That still seems to be a case where someone's using their intuition as a reason or as some reason to believe that a theory is true.

That seems to be evidential to me in some small way again, very small way.

But it does seem to be getting intuition, some evidential role.

We've talked a little bit about the intuitions of the trained practitioner, right?

So that physicist who has been in the lab for many years, they've got a really clean sense of what works and what doesn't what's right and what isn't on.

They are able to tell whether or not to drop in observation on dhe, someone and so forth.

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Science and Intuition

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