Actually the jailer would have to cooperate by performing an entangled measurement. Further, I think the empirical behavior of players in the dilemma can be understood without invoking the metaphor of quantum superposition but by using a concept that cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter has called “superrationality”—that is, based on players thinking, “My opponent is like me, so he will do what I do.”
Howard Barnum
commenting at www.ScientificAmerican.com
MUSSER REPLIES: Jailers in the real world are unlikely to let prisoners use entangled particles anytime soon. The question is how to model an expanded notion of rationality mathematically; it is one thing to suppose that human beings do behave rationally in some sense, quite another to capture this notion with precision. That is where quantum superposition might help. It provides a useful set of mathematical tools without having to assume that our thought processes literally are quantum.
RIGOROUS REPLICATION?
Michael Shermer's notion that the Dateline NBC program he worked on, as described in “Shock and Awe” [Skeptic], replicated Stanley Milgram's famous shock experiment (in which an authority figure instructs a subject to take action that the latter believes is harming a second subject) is flawed. The point of the original experiment was testing whether people would follow authority, and scientists doing a scientific experiment were used as that authority.
Shermer's Dateline “replication” told the subjects that the purpose was a reality TV show! “Trusting authority” does not mean “trusting anybody who tries to make me do something.”
Alice Savage
via e-mail
SHERMER REPLIES: Savage makes an excellent point, but this would apply to Milgram's original studies as well because they were inspired by the obedience to authority the psychologist thought was on display in the Holocaust. At no stage of the extermination of Jews and others did the Nazi perpetrators think they were being instructed by scientific authorities conducting research in the name of science for the betterment of humanity. Their motives were entirely different from those of the subjects in Milgram's lab or in our TV studio.
The most such social psychological research can hope for is an approximation of conditions that an institutional research board will approve of, and neither this experiment, nor Philip Zimbardo's famous Stanford Prison Experiment, will likely ever be approved for replication again. So we have to come at these social problems from different angles and interpret our provisional results cautiously and extrapolate them judiciously.
CLARIFICATION
“What Is It?” by Ann Chin [Advances], asserted that “about 97 percent of Greenland's ice sheet melted” last summer. It should have stated that 97 percent of the surface of the ice sheet melted.
This article was originally published with the title Letters.
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12 Comments
Add Comment99.9% of science is non-political. Also, science doesn't recognize borders...it's largely irrelevent what any Demo or Rep says about science...it doesn't effect what's happening in a lab in Shanghai.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRelativity is relativity..a carbon atom a carbon atom, etc. The social or political influence of that's happening in the USA is a thinning veneer.
Re 'which party'...guess which party advocates spending the most on an advanced military...the bulk of the USA's sciencific spending from chemistry to metallurgy to aeronautics to satelite technology to radiation to ....hint, it's not the Democrats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReason and logic, the basis of the Scientific Method, are most at home in a republican form of government which is, inherently, based upon the same. Religious, political, social, and cultural movements which are inimical to the principles of a true republican form of government (for example Fascism, Nazism, Communism)reject both the principles of the Scientific Method and those of a true republican political state as inimical to their unjust means and ends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs these authoritarian dogmas become politically dominant in any nation, including the USA, science,the scientific method, and republican principles will diminish in authority and prevalence.
Sounds like some people in
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like some people in Washington are sailing perilously close to the edge of the Earth.
Guess what party believes in intelligent design? Hint its not the Democrats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is about politics, not science. People who do not favor cap&trade even though they believe in AGW would not have much of a problem voting for a candidate who denies it. Likewise people who want equality in every single way between men and women no matter what science says wouldn't have much a problem voting for a candidate who denies the reality of biology and gender.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is all this talk about "the antiscience movement?" Where does such a movement exist that has any power whatsoever?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if antiscience behavior is considered a hate crime.......
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat Is It?” by Ann Chin [Advances], asserted that “about 97 percent of Greenland's ice sheet melted” last summer. It should have stated that 97 percent of the surface of the ice sheet melted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt was not even that. 97 percent of the surface of the ice sheet had some surface melting. It did not all melt.
George Smith...great points. People over rate any suppresion of science. I tend to be a 'liberal' but am amused by most liberal denial of how socio biology excludes humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArchimedes...true to an extent. However dogma didn't stop the Nazis from developing rocket technology or the Soviets being ion the cutting edge in my niche of geology. The Chinese are probably going to zoom ahead in human genetic engineering. Anti-democratic regimes stifle some science but also can clear away obstacles to fast track others.
It is not really an "Anti-Science' issue as much as it is an "Lazy Science" issue. I doubt that the vast majority of people in the US could accurately define what defines, comprises and constitutes real science. They are plainly ignorant of the type of mental discipline it takes to get to the bottom of something.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example:
1. If you think that consensus is relevant to science: FAIL
2. If you think that correlation proves causation: FAIL
3. If you think that a person or groups reputation, education, or qualifications decides whether something is scientifically valid: FAIL
4. If you think that politics, morality or values determine scientific validity: FAIL
5. If you think that computer models are scientific evidence: FAIL
6. If you believe that two totally contradictory outcomes provide solid evidence of your theory: FAIL
I'm sure there are many more examples, but I think I've made my point.
If the Pro-CAGWer's could develop and present arguments that didn't trip over any or all of the six points I've listed, I may take them seriously. Until then, I view them as nothing more than science wanna-be's who are too lazy to do their homework.
Science and truth are not the same thing.Science is the method by which you you collect the data the reviles facts that lead you to the truth of what you are researching.It isn't truth until someone replicates the outcome of the experiment.Even then the truth can remain elusive,as technology advances,what is truth today can be proven otherwise at a later date.This is why science must not be trapped by the dogma of truth.We must be able to change our view of the truth as the ability to collect data improves and thus not be trapped in the dogma of past beliefs.Change is hard and sometimes it is scientist's themselves that refuse to move forward and accept the facts that what they thought was true isn't.
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