Re: Abundance (was: Re: Take Back Your Time Day)

    --
On 2 Dec 2003 04:08:43 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (tg)
wrote:
> Necessary but not sufficient. It is necessary that there be 
> correlation before you can _infer_ causality, but it is not
> sufficient to begin a research program _by itself_. What
> happens is that we have all these other conscious and
> unconscious reasons,  often very reasonable ones, to believe
> something to be caused by something. Then, when we see the
> correlation, we say "aha" . Trick is to recognize those
> biases as the actual foundation of our belief---not the
> correlation.  Then you begin the testing. Look, I am
> fanatical about this, and I still have to check myself all 
> the time because I lapse into the same fallacy. Tough habit
> to break.

Your epistemology is ass backwards.

To discover truth, we need both theory and observation.  Theory
is not "unconscious bias".   It is *understanding* correlation.


    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     CU/q/7/yBDOQewq4XDjXWKKSiHd7yzJS+mAReU4X
     4++m4+ldeu8JJ5GvSgphRzmdU19fuDd1dnYCRpebC