(please read Part I first.)
3. The Evidence
The first factor in the overthrow of phyletic gradualism was the identification of the actual mechanism by which the information carried by the DNA is expressed. A sequence of DNA codes is nothing like a blueprint for some specific trait. Instead, each DNA code identifies a specific amino acid in one of thousands of strings of amino acids. These strings are called peptides. Each peptide, in turn, may have one or more functions that it performs in the organism: as part of the structure of a protein, or as an enzyme, or a hormone, or a neurotransmitter, or as a part of the molecular "skeleton" that determines the structure of tissues and organs. These, in turn, participate in biochemical pathways and physiological and anatomical structures responsible for the observed traits of the organism. Thus, the correspondences between the codes and the traits are manifold, multivariate, non-linear and often discontinuous. They result in complicated probability-of-reproductive-success surfaces that have many small local optima, most of them low hills whose peaks are far below the high peak of a global optimum.
The second was discovered (see MODPAC: A modular package of programs for fitting model parameters to data and plotting fitted curves. Reed, Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 1976) by mathematicians and computer scientists working on the problem of finding the optimal values of the parameters of a quantitative model to fit a body of data. All the methods, including not only algebraic approximations but also "genetic programming" methods that simulate the mechanisms of genetic evolution (Koza, Genetic Programming, MIT Press 1992) when invoked on a problem with multiple local optima, converge rapidly on some happenstance local optimum near the starting point. Once at this happenstance local optimum, the parameter-fitting mechanisms are at equilibrium. The values of the parameters stay permanently frozen, with a fit often far below the global optimum, unless dislodged by additional computational techniques (exploration, explosion, simulated annealing) that have no equivalent in natural evolution.
The third came from paleontology. In the fossil record, new traits and species appear in the course of only a few dozen generations, only to continue practically unchanged for tens of thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, or millions of generations thereafter. It was this observation that first led to the label "punctuated equilibrium."
The fourth came from engineering. Until the 1970s, it was generally assumed that evolved organs, particularly those that remained unchanged over many millions of generations, and passed unchanged from very ancient classes of organisms to new ones, had evolved to a structure that was optimal for their biological function. Even when the evolved structures were not what an engineer would have designed, it was assumed that the result of evolution was optimal under some set of as yet unidentified constraints. In the 1970s, mechanical and electrical engineers began to look at evolved systems in the hope of identifying designs that might work better than those they already knew. They found only a few rare cases where the results of evolution were anything close to objectively optimal. They were confronted, instead, with all manner of clumsy contraptions just barely good enough for organisms to survive. The vertebrate eye, for example, has not changed in its basic structure from fishes to humans. Yet if an engineer were to design an array of light sensors - as for a digital camera - she would attach the outputs to cabling on the back or the side of the sensors, so that nothing would disperse, or block the path, of light coming into the front of the sensors from the lens. In the vertebrate eye, on the other hand, the optic nerve, which carries the output of retinal sensors from the eye to the brain, comes from the brain into the inside of each eyeball through a hole in the retina. This hole in the array of retinal sensors is why we have a blind spot in each eye (which digital cameras don't have.) The neurons of the optic nerve then pass in front of the light sensors, in the path of incoming light, and connect to the light-sensing rods and cones from the front (where the light comes in.) This is just one of thousands of examples of globally sub-optimal, clumsy structures; just-good-enough-to-survive local optima frozen by evolution.
The fifth was the discovery of recent, ongoing evolutionary changes in human traits whose relevance to reproductive success was affected by recent changes in the human cultural environment. One such change was the introduction of military conscription in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the introduction of footwear with stiff lateral support at around the same time. Before mass production of boots and shoes most humans went barefoot. When most travel was by foot, and most work was done walking or standing, anatomical abnormalities of the feet were severely disabling. The effect of flat feet and other inherited abnormalities was so adverse, and the abnormalities so rare, that men with these abnormalities were (and, in countries with conscription, still are) exempt from conscription. This exemption had two effects. Men with anatomical abnormalities of the foot were much less likely to be killed or maimed in war. More importantly, they stayed and reproduced, while conscripts were away from their neighborhoods and families for a large part of the duration of their prime reproductive years.
Switch to the 1990s. The Achilles Project (Burzykowski et al 2003) measured the incidence of foot disease, including the prevalence of inherited anatomical abnormalities of the feet, in a sample of 1085 randomly selected subjects in 16 European countries. The incidence of anatomical abnormalities of the foot varied between 20.4% (one in five subjects) and 24.8% (one in four.) This in a mere 8 generations after a changed cultural environment moved the local optimum for reproductive success to a different place.
4. Punctuated Equilibrium
Two thousand years ago, Archimedes' formulation and derivation of Archimedes' Principle demonstrated that the laws of nature can be not merely observed and measured, but grounded and understood through the application of reason - of logic and mathematics - to more fundamental and evident laws and facts. The principle of derivation set what is still the highest standard in scientific understanding of how nature works. Punctuated Equilibrium is the fact that when a change in the environment changes the locations of local optima for reproductive success, the traits and species affected by this change are efficiently and quickly moved by natural selection to new local optima - where they may stay, without further modification, until the location of the local optima changes again. The local optima of evolutionary equilibrium do not correspond to "design," in the sense of some global optimum of fitness or health. They are, rather, the product of a random process, which converges on some local optimum without regard to its optimality in any global sense. And this fact can be mathematically derived, in the best tradition of Archimedes, from the application of mathematical measure theory to genetic programming.
(continued in Part III.)
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Why Evolution Doesn't Do Design: Part I
1. Introduction
This blog post is about how the Phyletic Gradualism model of evolution is disconfirmed and false, and why the Punctuated Equilibrium model is right. Who cares? If you use (or try to use) the conclusions of evolutionary science to improve your health and your life, you ought to care.
Most people (even scientists) who believe in a God or Gods, and also "believe in evolution," even if they deny the explicit interventionist versions of "intelligent design" still think of evolution as design by other means. In other words, they believe that God's creation is perfect; that God set up and used the laws of nature to result in organisms capable of optimal life and optimal health. The reason for this blog post is to make it easier for my fellow Atheists to separate the science from the beliefs of scientists.
2. The Intellectual Origin of Phyletic Gradualism
It is not the custom of scientists to challenge cultural preconceptions without first having confronted and assembled overwhelming evidence. The religious belief in the perfection of God's creation was not seen by Darwin and his contemporaries as challenged by the theory of evolution. In their day, to contradict, from evidence, the scriptural account of creation, in favor the operation of natural laws that might or might not have been created by a God, was challenge enough. As late as 1970, the phyletic gradualism model was generally accepted by evolutionary biologists, in part because it did not contradict the notion of evolution leading to, or at least moving in the direction of, organs and organisms optimally suited to an optimally healthy existence in their natural environment.
Since the course of evolution is set by a random process of mutations followed by natural selection through differences in reproductive success, its Archimedean derivation is necessarily based on measure theory, probability theory, and mathematical and computational statistics. (Reader, do not be intimidated. You do not need to be a mathematician to understand the essence of the derivation; I will give pictorial hints so that you can let your visual imagination do most of the work.) In measure-theoretic representations of evolution, the probability of reproductive success can be visualized as the height of a variable surface, above the multi-dimensional space representing the state of the genome. A peak at which this probability is higher than it is at all points around it, is called a local optimum. The global optimum, corresponding to the highest possible likelihood of reproductive success, is the highest peak.
Up until the identification, in 1953, of DNA as the genetic material of life, biologists thought of "genes" as direct blueprints for all the tissues, organs and structures of the organism. Assuming this correspondence between the genes, and the traits of the organism, led the scientists of the time to think of the probability-of-reproductive-success surface as having a single optimum only: the location at which the genetic "blueprint" corresponds to the optimal, rational design for the given structure, organ or tissue. Then natural selection selects those mutations that move up the upward slope, rather than down the downward slope, from the present spot on this surface. Gradual evolution to the single, global optimum: this is the mathematical expression of the "Phyletic Gradualism" model.
It took two decades, roughly from 1971 to 1992, for this model to be overturned.
(continued in Part II)
This blog post is about how the Phyletic Gradualism model of evolution is disconfirmed and false, and why the Punctuated Equilibrium model is right. Who cares? If you use (or try to use) the conclusions of evolutionary science to improve your health and your life, you ought to care.
Most people (even scientists) who believe in a God or Gods, and also "believe in evolution," even if they deny the explicit interventionist versions of "intelligent design" still think of evolution as design by other means. In other words, they believe that God's creation is perfect; that God set up and used the laws of nature to result in organisms capable of optimal life and optimal health. The reason for this blog post is to make it easier for my fellow Atheists to separate the science from the beliefs of scientists.
2. The Intellectual Origin of Phyletic Gradualism
It is not the custom of scientists to challenge cultural preconceptions without first having confronted and assembled overwhelming evidence. The religious belief in the perfection of God's creation was not seen by Darwin and his contemporaries as challenged by the theory of evolution. In their day, to contradict, from evidence, the scriptural account of creation, in favor the operation of natural laws that might or might not have been created by a God, was challenge enough. As late as 1970, the phyletic gradualism model was generally accepted by evolutionary biologists, in part because it did not contradict the notion of evolution leading to, or at least moving in the direction of, organs and organisms optimally suited to an optimally healthy existence in their natural environment.
Since the course of evolution is set by a random process of mutations followed by natural selection through differences in reproductive success, its Archimedean derivation is necessarily based on measure theory, probability theory, and mathematical and computational statistics. (Reader, do not be intimidated. You do not need to be a mathematician to understand the essence of the derivation; I will give pictorial hints so that you can let your visual imagination do most of the work.) In measure-theoretic representations of evolution, the probability of reproductive success can be visualized as the height of a variable surface, above the multi-dimensional space representing the state of the genome. A peak at which this probability is higher than it is at all points around it, is called a local optimum. The global optimum, corresponding to the highest possible likelihood of reproductive success, is the highest peak.
Up until the identification, in 1953, of DNA as the genetic material of life, biologists thought of "genes" as direct blueprints for all the tissues, organs and structures of the organism. Assuming this correspondence between the genes, and the traits of the organism, led the scientists of the time to think of the probability-of-reproductive-success surface as having a single optimum only: the location at which the genetic "blueprint" corresponds to the optimal, rational design for the given structure, organ or tissue. Then natural selection selects those mutations that move up the upward slope, rather than down the downward slope, from the present spot on this surface. Gradual evolution to the single, global optimum: this is the mathematical expression of the "Phyletic Gradualism" model.
It took two decades, roughly from 1971 to 1992, for this model to be overturned.
(continued in Part II)
Sunday, May 16, 2010
No, I do not "publish in JARS."
I have heard from a friend that someone is circulating, in media to which I don't have access, the rumor that I publish - note the use of the present tense - in Chris Sciabarra's "Journal of Ayn Rand Studies." In reference to peer-reviewed media, "publish" would mean that I'm still submitting original articles for publication in JARS. (I understand, from comments, that some may be tempted to replace this meaning of "publish" by other meanings that this word has in other contexts; and then twist the result into a contradiction - and accuse me of dishonesty or incoherence, on the basis of equivocations thus manufactured. In this note, I am using "publish" in the one specific sense stated above, where "He publishes in Journal X" means "He submits his original articles for publication in Journal X.") I have not submitted an original article to JARS for years, and I have no intention of doing so, ever. The rumor is false.
In my early, pre-tenure years at my university, beginning in the 2000-2001 academic year, I did some research on the origin of the parallels between the schemata of knowledge representation in Ayn Rand's Objectivist epistemology and in object-oriented programming languages. JARS was a new journal that had just published its first volume, and its charter - to document Ayn Rand's influence on the history of ideas and culture - fit my research. I submitted my article on the origin of the parallels, and it was published. I noticed the poor quality of Sciabarra's editorial process, but I ascribed this to the "teething pains" of a new publication. I communicated my concerns about editorial laxness to Sciabarra, and I expected the quality of his editorial policy to improve.
Sciabarra's editorial policy did not improve. By 2006 he had published several articles of such low quality that they were clearly counterproductive to his stated goal, of getting Ayn Rand's intellectual and artistic influence to be taken seriously in academia. I communicated with Sciabarra at length, and I suggested changes that, had they been made, would have turned JARS into what, according to its published charter, it should have been. Sciabarra discussed the changes that I had suggested to him with his editorial board, but no changes were made. JARS continued to publish articles that were, in my judgment, unscholarly, intellectually disreputable rubbish. It was at that point that I decided never again to submit an original article for publication in JARS.
About a year later, JARS published a couple of articles on Objectivism and religion. My notes on those articles evolved into commentary that, in my judgment, needed to be aired. When I publish an article that may invite commentary, I expect that commentary to appear in the same journal, where I will see it and where I can reply. This is standard academic practice, with which I agree. While I would not submit an original article to JARS, it was and remains my judgment that my commentary was productive and useful. Therefore I followed normal practice, and sent my commentary to the journal that had published the articles that I was commenting on.
There was also an article that I submitted to JARS back in May 2005, and which was accepted for publication after being reviewed, by a peer reviewer whose work with me was unusually productive and well-informed (especially for JARS!) and continued well after the article was accepted. Peer review work is unpaid and anonymous; the reviewer's only payment is in the quality of work published in the journal to which the reviewer contributes her otherwise un-renumerated work. I participate in the peer-review process of a broad range of meetings, journals, and granting agencies. If a paper I had worked on were withdrawn after acceptance, for any reason short of its author repudiating the content, I would judge this as a breach of trust, the work I had worked having been wasted and unpaid-for. Therefore, I would not consider withdrawing an already accepted article, whose content I still stand by, as an ethically justifiable option. This last article was recently printed, bringing all association that I've ever had with JARS to a final close. (I have been told that the person who started the rumor - that I still submit articles to JARS - had prior access to the full text of the article, and should have read in the top footnote that it was submitted in May 2005, but only mentioned that the article was printed recently - not that it was originally submitted 5 years ago.)
I agree, after long scrutiny, with everything Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff have written about the principle of moral sanction. I find nothing in this principle, or in Ayn Rand's own actions on this principle, that would mandate more than I have already decided and done. I have no proof that the failure to disclose the May 2005 submission date of the article, which I deduce is what started the rumor, was deliberate; and therefore I am not ready to judge its moral import.
The quality of JARS has continued to fall, so I'm not likely to find another of its articles worthy of comment in the future. I've let my subscription expire years ago (although, as is standard for refereed journals, I did receive an author's copy of the recent issue.) In the present, the rumor that I publish in JARS is false.
In my early, pre-tenure years at my university, beginning in the 2000-2001 academic year, I did some research on the origin of the parallels between the schemata of knowledge representation in Ayn Rand's Objectivist epistemology and in object-oriented programming languages. JARS was a new journal that had just published its first volume, and its charter - to document Ayn Rand's influence on the history of ideas and culture - fit my research. I submitted my article on the origin of the parallels, and it was published. I noticed the poor quality of Sciabarra's editorial process, but I ascribed this to the "teething pains" of a new publication. I communicated my concerns about editorial laxness to Sciabarra, and I expected the quality of his editorial policy to improve.
Sciabarra's editorial policy did not improve. By 2006 he had published several articles of such low quality that they were clearly counterproductive to his stated goal, of getting Ayn Rand's intellectual and artistic influence to be taken seriously in academia. I communicated with Sciabarra at length, and I suggested changes that, had they been made, would have turned JARS into what, according to its published charter, it should have been. Sciabarra discussed the changes that I had suggested to him with his editorial board, but no changes were made. JARS continued to publish articles that were, in my judgment, unscholarly, intellectually disreputable rubbish. It was at that point that I decided never again to submit an original article for publication in JARS.
About a year later, JARS published a couple of articles on Objectivism and religion. My notes on those articles evolved into commentary that, in my judgment, needed to be aired. When I publish an article that may invite commentary, I expect that commentary to appear in the same journal, where I will see it and where I can reply. This is standard academic practice, with which I agree. While I would not submit an original article to JARS, it was and remains my judgment that my commentary was productive and useful. Therefore I followed normal practice, and sent my commentary to the journal that had published the articles that I was commenting on.
There was also an article that I submitted to JARS back in May 2005, and which was accepted for publication after being reviewed, by a peer reviewer whose work with me was unusually productive and well-informed (especially for JARS!) and continued well after the article was accepted. Peer review work is unpaid and anonymous; the reviewer's only payment is in the quality of work published in the journal to which the reviewer contributes her otherwise un-renumerated work. I participate in the peer-review process of a broad range of meetings, journals, and granting agencies. If a paper I had worked on were withdrawn after acceptance, for any reason short of its author repudiating the content, I would judge this as a breach of trust, the work I had worked having been wasted and unpaid-for. Therefore, I would not consider withdrawing an already accepted article, whose content I still stand by, as an ethically justifiable option. This last article was recently printed, bringing all association that I've ever had with JARS to a final close. (I have been told that the person who started the rumor - that I still submit articles to JARS - had prior access to the full text of the article, and should have read in the top footnote that it was submitted in May 2005, but only mentioned that the article was printed recently - not that it was originally submitted 5 years ago.)
I agree, after long scrutiny, with everything Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff have written about the principle of moral sanction. I find nothing in this principle, or in Ayn Rand's own actions on this principle, that would mandate more than I have already decided and done. I have no proof that the failure to disclose the May 2005 submission date of the article, which I deduce is what started the rumor, was deliberate; and therefore I am not ready to judge its moral import.
The quality of JARS has continued to fall, so I'm not likely to find another of its articles worthy of comment in the future. I've let my subscription expire years ago (although, as is standard for refereed journals, I did receive an author's copy of the recent issue.) In the present, the rumor that I publish in JARS is false.
Kenyan, Nigerian, all the same...
From the morning's e-mail:
Dear Friend,
This letter is not intended to cause any embarrassment in whatever form, rather is compelled to contact your esteemed self, following the knowledge of your high repute and trustworthiness.
I am David Garfield, Chief Campaign Officer of the PRINCIPAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE OF DEMOCRATS: OBAMA 2014 INC ID: C00411934.
I write to seek your sincere assistance in transferring the sum of 10M GBP 10 million Pounds sterling.
I discovered my office has some excess funds amounting too 10 million Pounds recovered from donations and grants from democrats around the world during our election campaign and pleas for support for our incumbent president Barack
Hussein Obama, According to plans, The excess funds was to used in clearing debts owed by Mrs Hillary Clinton during her campaign programs,I taught there is a better way of expending this funds.I want this money to be used to alleviate the poverty and sufferings of children in Iraq and Africa and donate to Charity organizations around the world.
My plea to you is that you assist me get this funds out of the United Kingdom where it is presently lodged safe and for your assistance ,you will have a fair percentage of the total money and all investments shall be under your supervision.
This simple transfer process could be arranged in less than 3 working days.
I await your sincere response,
David .A. Garfield.
Chief Campaign Officer,
Barack Obama Campaign Office.
Phone: +447035969385.
E-MAIL:davidgarfieldsr@gmail.com
garfield.david@krovatka.su
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
My Premise-Checking Habit
What is the difference between a philosopher and a scientist? When the philosopher comes to a contradiction, she checks her premises. The scientist does not wait for a contradiction.
Maybe. My own premise-checking habit predates my career choice. When I first realized that some grownups believed, and told me, things that were false, I decided that I would rather doubt a hundred truths than believe one falsehood. Later, on encountering the derivation of Archimedes' Principle, I was so taken with the realization that the facts of reality not only could be observed, but could be understood by reason, that I decided to make this my future job. It helped me to know that as a scientist, I would never need to pretend that I knew, when I doubted.
Later, when I began to read the work of Ayn Rand, I was struck by the similarity between her approach to knowledge and that of the scientists I had met. The scientists knew that certain assumptions had to be made for scientific investigation of nature to be possible; Ayn Rand pointed out that these "assumptions" were really axioms that could not be contradicted without self-exclusion, which made them certain. I already knew that in science the results of replicated measurements comparing an observed value with an external standard were "practically certain;" from Ayn Rand I learned the principles that make them contextually certain. Laws that exactly describe some set of contextually certain measurements are also contextually certain, in the context of the precision and range of the measurements that such laws describe. Logically necessary deductions from already certain premises are contextually certain in the intersection of the contexts of their premises. As long as one tracks context in one's deductions and derivations, one can be certain about what one knows with contextual certainty; and one can know in what contexts that which one knows is certain. Everything outside those contexts is rightly open to doubt, regardless of how many people think it true or wish it were true.
Later, as a student of cognitive psychology, I learned about confirmation bias: the universal human tendency to notice and think about evidence that confirms one's prior beliefs and hypotheses, and to ignore and evade evidence to the contrary. I trained myself, as rigorously as I could, in the habit of going against my own confirmation bias; of looking for experiments and observations that would produce, if such evidence existed, evidence against the hypotheses that I myself advanced and wanted to be true. And, like many in the human sciences, I worked on methods for guarding the process of science against confirmation bias and other biases common to all men, including scientists such as myself.
One of my PhD mentors was Ray Hyman. Ray studied physical scientists who had become interested in "psychical" (later called "paranormal") phenomena. Physical scientists, like Objectivists, pride themselves on thinking conceptually, yet grounding even their most abstract ideas in observable and measurable fact. Yet physical scientists, ignorant of their own confirmation bias, were always the first to be fooled by "evidence" that invariably disappeared under the lens of bias-proof methods worked out by cognitive psychologists. More recently, those of us who look at the work of physical scientists through the lens of cognitive psychology were treated to "climategate:" the ultimate spectacle of physical scientists intoxicated with confirmation bias, and keeping their data secret lest their hypotheses be debunked, as alleged "paranormal phenomena" have been, if subjected to the methods of bias-proof analysis that have become standard in the human sciences.
In Objectivist circles, it is customary to give to ideas held by fellow Objectivists the benefit of the doubt. Surely, the reasoning goes, one's fellow Objectivists have sound epistemology, and therefore are less likely to be mistaken than non-Objectivists. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Ayn Rand knew what we now know about confirmation bias. My guess is that she didn't, because she would have advised Objectivists to guard against it, if only she had known. And so some Objectivists, as I recently found out, regard my own attitude - that I would rather doubt a hundred truths than believe one falsehood - as a flaw of character. As one put it in a letter, 'it indicates a juvenile "iconoclastic" mentality rather than a strive (maybe "a striving?") for knowledge.'
The iconoclasts were early Christian fanatics who defaced artwork, lest statues and paintings receive admiration that the iconoclasts reserved for God. How one gets from an observation of habitual premise-checking to a diagnosis of "iconoclasm" I don't know. What I do know, is that no idea should be exempt from doubt because of who holds it. Even if that person is an Objectivist. Even if it is an idea held by many Objectivists. If this be "iconoclasm," make the most of it.
Maybe. My own premise-checking habit predates my career choice. When I first realized that some grownups believed, and told me, things that were false, I decided that I would rather doubt a hundred truths than believe one falsehood. Later, on encountering the derivation of Archimedes' Principle, I was so taken with the realization that the facts of reality not only could be observed, but could be understood by reason, that I decided to make this my future job. It helped me to know that as a scientist, I would never need to pretend that I knew, when I doubted.
Later, when I began to read the work of Ayn Rand, I was struck by the similarity between her approach to knowledge and that of the scientists I had met. The scientists knew that certain assumptions had to be made for scientific investigation of nature to be possible; Ayn Rand pointed out that these "assumptions" were really axioms that could not be contradicted without self-exclusion, which made them certain. I already knew that in science the results of replicated measurements comparing an observed value with an external standard were "practically certain;" from Ayn Rand I learned the principles that make them contextually certain. Laws that exactly describe some set of contextually certain measurements are also contextually certain, in the context of the precision and range of the measurements that such laws describe. Logically necessary deductions from already certain premises are contextually certain in the intersection of the contexts of their premises. As long as one tracks context in one's deductions and derivations, one can be certain about what one knows with contextual certainty; and one can know in what contexts that which one knows is certain. Everything outside those contexts is rightly open to doubt, regardless of how many people think it true or wish it were true.
Later, as a student of cognitive psychology, I learned about confirmation bias: the universal human tendency to notice and think about evidence that confirms one's prior beliefs and hypotheses, and to ignore and evade evidence to the contrary. I trained myself, as rigorously as I could, in the habit of going against my own confirmation bias; of looking for experiments and observations that would produce, if such evidence existed, evidence against the hypotheses that I myself advanced and wanted to be true. And, like many in the human sciences, I worked on methods for guarding the process of science against confirmation bias and other biases common to all men, including scientists such as myself.
One of my PhD mentors was Ray Hyman. Ray studied physical scientists who had become interested in "psychical" (later called "paranormal") phenomena. Physical scientists, like Objectivists, pride themselves on thinking conceptually, yet grounding even their most abstract ideas in observable and measurable fact. Yet physical scientists, ignorant of their own confirmation bias, were always the first to be fooled by "evidence" that invariably disappeared under the lens of bias-proof methods worked out by cognitive psychologists. More recently, those of us who look at the work of physical scientists through the lens of cognitive psychology were treated to "climategate:" the ultimate spectacle of physical scientists intoxicated with confirmation bias, and keeping their data secret lest their hypotheses be debunked, as alleged "paranormal phenomena" have been, if subjected to the methods of bias-proof analysis that have become standard in the human sciences.
In Objectivist circles, it is customary to give to ideas held by fellow Objectivists the benefit of the doubt. Surely, the reasoning goes, one's fellow Objectivists have sound epistemology, and therefore are less likely to be mistaken than non-Objectivists. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Ayn Rand knew what we now know about confirmation bias. My guess is that she didn't, because she would have advised Objectivists to guard against it, if only she had known. And so some Objectivists, as I recently found out, regard my own attitude - that I would rather doubt a hundred truths than believe one falsehood - as a flaw of character. As one put it in a letter, 'it indicates a juvenile "iconoclastic" mentality rather than a strive (maybe "a striving?") for knowledge.'
The iconoclasts were early Christian fanatics who defaced artwork, lest statues and paintings receive admiration that the iconoclasts reserved for God. How one gets from an observation of habitual premise-checking to a diagnosis of "iconoclasm" I don't know. What I do know, is that no idea should be exempt from doubt because of who holds it. Even if that person is an Objectivist. Even if it is an idea held by many Objectivists. If this be "iconoclasm," make the most of it.
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