alt Hacker NewsI've also found simply testing a hypothesis without reasoning about it can quite often outdo your own reasoning and the reasoning of everyone else. Sometimes you are wrong, and everyone else is wrong, and only an empirical test can separate the wheat from the chaff.
Although maybe this method only works for me because I am a moron, and many people can out reason me, so the only way I can discover anything is to do something all reasonable and rational people are already sure is wrong.
> Sometimes you are wrong, and everyone else is wrong,
Happens all the time.
> and only an empirical test can separate the wheat from the chaff.
Not for the vast majority of political issues and indeed for most of Social Sciences. In these cases, empirical evidence is just an accessory, it's still evidence but it's never conclusive, you need reasoning to sort out the complexity.