wellwisher
Well-Known Member
The Statistical based sciences have a major conceptual problem. A statistical analysis is a powerful mathematical approach. What makes it powerful is the same basic method can be applied to almost anything, and therefore works apart from the unique details of the application.
For example, if you were doing quality control on a complex machine, with a lot of variables, you would measure the input and outputs, and you can predict trends. It is not necessary to know how the complex machine works. You could employ a mathematician, who is not necessarily a mechanical engineer. The machine is placed in a black box by the mathematician. The value of the black box is this same basic math analysis can be used, by a mathematician on any machine, since the math approach is not fundamentally dependent on any particular machine theory.
The black box approach also means the math results exist independent of any theory use to explain the operation inside the black box. In other words, if my theory was the machine's black box function is based on the squirrels who run the treadmill that drives the machine, and/or the worms that crawl in the circuitry to make connections, the math and black box will still produce the same results.
Many aspects of Science has fooled itself into believing theory can be proven by statistical methods, even though the statistical methods can produce the same results independent of the theory of the black box. I am not anti science but anti-scam science.
I remember doing a development project which had political consequences for upper level management; good and/or bad. I am a rationalist and had invented and defined the science needed for an emergency process, and was 99% confident of a successful field test. Management was a little nervous since I did this so quickly. They decided to hire a statistician to parallel me. He would give them regulatory wiggle room if the worse case scenario was to happen. I did not need him, but had no choice.
I was surprised that my assigned mathematician did not need to know the exact chemical process but could nevertheless set up his math model around my process and black box the rest. He was operating independent of my theory. In the end, the process was 100% successful, with the statistical results similar, even though done independently of my reasoning and working theory.
That experience has stuck with me and recently made me realize how easy it would be to create theory illusions, using statistical results, and the black box. Irrational theory could work just as well as rational theory since statistics does not care what is in the black box. This approach is done during political polling season, and appears to be done even in modern science.
I can accept the basics of evolution, but the statistical approach makes me suspect of many of the assumptions; black box theory is not needed by statistics. However, if you use prestige to push a theory and attach this to sound statistical results, you can do a magic trick.
For example, nothing in life, down to the smallest scale, will work without water, nor can water be replaced by any other solvent. This makes water as important as the organics of life, since neither work without the other. Yet the black box theory of biology does not make water and organics co-partners. It does not have to, since it does not matter what is in the black box, if statistics is used. It can defies common sense and get away with it, theory is not critical to statistics. Evolution has similar problems. These can be corrected, if we detach statistics and require a rational theory with no black box fudge room for illusions.
