#sensibility

dredmorbius@joindiaspora.com

An Empirical Razor for Discerning Rare, False, and Faked Phenomena

In an HN discussion of whether or not the supposed oldest person to have ever lived, Jeanne Calment, was a fraud or not, I noted that the one modern social phenomenon that's been most strongly associated with a reduction in the number of superannuated persons in a population is accurate demographic recordkeeping.. See, e.g., Saul Justin Newman, "Supercentenarians and the oldest-old are concentrated into regions with no birth certificates and short lifespans" (2019).

xdennis responds:

This is like the UFO observation: camera sensors have improved, but UFO videos stay the same (low details and ambiguous).
reply


A Useful Razor

That raises a possible / probable principle for discerning between rare observations on the one hand and unjustified ones on the other, and a chief limitation of empiricism.

Empiricism rests on the assumption that the Universe and phenomena in it are fundamentally observable. Which means that phenomena generate some kind of interaction with their surroundings. Even if that is very slight (e.g., neutrinos) or difficult to detect (e.g., gravity waves).

Observability is depenent on the frequency, strength, certainty (as opposed to ambiguity), of those interactions. There's a strong association between the sensibility of phenomenon (our ability to see, hear, smell, feel, or taste it directly) and its believability, though also with recordability. "Capturing something", on film, tape, audio, or other sensing devices, is key to demonstrable proof. (In its absence we're mostly limited to testimony or second-hand accounts. Durer's Rhinocerous is a wonderful example of a second-hand account, visualised in detail. It's almost dreamlike, startlingly accurate in some particulars, oddly off in others.)

Empiricism does most poorly with rare or hard-to-sense phenomena. Literal black swans, neutrinos, the interior of the Earth, subatomic particles, the boundaries of the Universe, interiors of stars, black holes and neutron stars (massive, but not very emissive). Or the very long ago (think evolution and geology). Epidemiology and statistical methods for rare and distributed events. Various sensing, visualisation, microscopy, telescopy, tomographic, and other methods.

Even in cases of very difficult-to-sense phenomena, though empiricism tends to improve in its resolving capability with time and improvement of methods. And where those capabilities improve, rare-but-real phenomena are more revealed over time. The distant (or small, or remote in time, or hard to percieve) becomes _clearer). Presumed-extinct species are found. Hidden structures within the Earth are visualised, and correlated with other events (see the evolution of the concept of plate tectonics, one of my favourite instances).

New extreme records become harder to set over time. But in weather data, the decline in new record cold temperatures is falling twice as fast as the rate of record hot temperatures, by a 2019 Associated Press analysis. With improved sensing, evidence suggests overall warming. Similar trends can be sought in other extreme weather events: tornados, hurricanes, extreme rainfall, droughts, sea ice levels, glacial progression.

Where the phenomenon is not real, though ... it either decreases in prevalence (mostly in the case of frauds), or in the case of "edge-of-perception" sensing, in which random noise is mistaken (or hallucinated) as actual, remains roughly constant over time.

There is still the matter of nonce events --- those which have only been recorded or reported once. Or which can only occur once (the Big Bang, the collapse of civilisation, the end of the world, possibly the emergence of life and certain evolutionary steps concerning it). But in many areas, we have a useful guide here.

Spellling all this out, I'm all but certain there's an established concept built around this (or several). Though it seems a useful heuristic in determinng likely validity or falsity of phenomena given enhanced sensing or recording capabilities.

UFOs have remained frustratingly ellusive (fake, fraud, imagined). Meteorites have become stunningly compelling (real). Footage of accidents, abuses of power, or casual racism are now starkly evident (if often undeterred by the fact of video). And so on.

#empiricism #philosophy #epistemology #manifestation #sensibility #perception #fraud #hallucination #reality #truth