alt Hacker NewsHaving read through this whole discussion, and as an outsider: they're approaching this from a much stronger and consistent position than you. This is most obvious given how far you've moved the goalposts along the way.
Having read through this whole discussion, and as an outsider: they're approaching this from a much stronger and consistent position than you. This is most obvious given how far you've moved the goalposts along the way.
Maybe they've been more consistent but the strength of their position is not measured by my inconsistency.
Look at how much "trust me, I've got training, I know what's good, I know what's already right" is in their argument.
What is their actual point? That we can say across the board that good research must have easy-to-control experimentation and guarantee novelty?
Good research is field dependent; some fields are younger than others, some fields have an easier time controlling experiments than others.
I'm saying what matters is what people care about. My point about stances being political is because what gets funded is what people care about, not what can guarantee the highest confidence using research design.
My point is that their stance is political too, because it says 'I don't care about this like how they care about this, so I think it should get cut'.
Their position is not some innocent defense of empiricism, it's a political stance that says "these questions don't matter, I already know how the world works."