I would love more on this! To me it (later obviously) seems tied to the pressure to only publish positive results too
“Science is a practice, a method of engaging with the world and establishing fact. It’s not an ideology. But when you’re forced to accept and write up results that aren’t actually borne out by the data, you’re learning that science is an ideology. Or perhaps you’re learning that the practice of doing science isn’t accessible to you—like when I resolved the cognitive dissonance of getting the ‘wrong’ result by assuming that I was the problem. “
the McMansions to body parts parallel is really cool and also really grim. I too loved reading "The Age of Instagram Face" and also found it interesting to learn how body-mod trends come in and out of vogue (for example the "snatched" look has replaced the babyface look of round cheeks, big lips, and puffy, shiny features that was big like 5 yrs ago). Makes me wonder how faces following closely will look in 10 or so years, given how we're already kind of on the cusp of the uncanny valley
Your section on the Tongue Map made me think of this quote:
"Never before have there been so many gaping chasms between what the world seems to be and what science tells us it is. 'Us' meaning laymen. It's like a million Copernican Revolutions all happening at the same time. As in for instance we 'know,' as high-school graduates and readers of Newsweek, that time is relative, that quantum particles can be both there and not, that space is curved, that colors do not inhere in objects themselves, that astronomic singularities have infinite density, that our love for our children is evolutionary preprogrammed, that there is a blind spot in the center of our vision that our brains automatically fill in. That our thoughts and feelings are really just chemical transfers in 2.8 pounds of electrified pate. That we are mostly water, and water is mostly hydrogen, and hydrogen is flammable, and yet we are not flammable. We 'know' a near-infinity of truths that contradict our immediate commonsense experience of the world. And yet we have to live and function in the world. So we abstract, compartmentalize: there's stuff we know and stuff we 'know'. I 'know' my love for my child is a function of natural selection, but I know I love him, and I feel and act on what I know. Viewed objectively, the whole thing is deeply schizoid, yet the fact of the matter is that as subjective laymen we don't often feel the conflict. Because of course our lives are 99.9% concretely operational, and we operate concretely on what we know, not on what we 'know'."
- David Foster Wallace, Everything and More
I think the survival of the Tongue Map theory is a symptom of how modern science has diverged from our day-to-day perceptions of reality. We are all faced with an onslaught of non-intuitive 'truths'. Is it possible for us to fully vet every proposed fact we are presented with, or are we doomed to choose our battles?
I would love more on this! To me it (later obviously) seems tied to the pressure to only publish positive results too
“Science is a practice, a method of engaging with the world and establishing fact. It’s not an ideology. But when you’re forced to accept and write up results that aren’t actually borne out by the data, you’re learning that science is an ideology. Or perhaps you’re learning that the practice of doing science isn’t accessible to you—like when I resolved the cognitive dissonance of getting the ‘wrong’ result by assuming that I was the problem. “
the McMansions to body parts parallel is really cool and also really grim. I too loved reading "The Age of Instagram Face" and also found it interesting to learn how body-mod trends come in and out of vogue (for example the "snatched" look has replaced the babyface look of round cheeks, big lips, and puffy, shiny features that was big like 5 yrs ago). Makes me wonder how faces following closely will look in 10 or so years, given how we're already kind of on the cusp of the uncanny valley
Your section on the Tongue Map made me think of this quote:
"Never before have there been so many gaping chasms between what the world seems to be and what science tells us it is. 'Us' meaning laymen. It's like a million Copernican Revolutions all happening at the same time. As in for instance we 'know,' as high-school graduates and readers of Newsweek, that time is relative, that quantum particles can be both there and not, that space is curved, that colors do not inhere in objects themselves, that astronomic singularities have infinite density, that our love for our children is evolutionary preprogrammed, that there is a blind spot in the center of our vision that our brains automatically fill in. That our thoughts and feelings are really just chemical transfers in 2.8 pounds of electrified pate. That we are mostly water, and water is mostly hydrogen, and hydrogen is flammable, and yet we are not flammable. We 'know' a near-infinity of truths that contradict our immediate commonsense experience of the world. And yet we have to live and function in the world. So we abstract, compartmentalize: there's stuff we know and stuff we 'know'. I 'know' my love for my child is a function of natural selection, but I know I love him, and I feel and act on what I know. Viewed objectively, the whole thing is deeply schizoid, yet the fact of the matter is that as subjective laymen we don't often feel the conflict. Because of course our lives are 99.9% concretely operational, and we operate concretely on what we know, not on what we 'know'."
- David Foster Wallace, Everything and More
I think the survival of the Tongue Map theory is a symptom of how modern science has diverged from our day-to-day perceptions of reality. We are all faced with an onslaught of non-intuitive 'truths'. Is it possible for us to fully vet every proposed fact we are presented with, or are we doomed to choose our battles?