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Elon Musk's 'Scientific Method' (rollingstone.com)
From a new wide-ranging interview of Elon Musk: An unfortunate fact of human nature is that when people make up their mind about something, they tend not to change it -- even when confronted with facts to the contrary. "It's very unscientific," Musk says. "There's this thing called physics, which is this scientific method that's really quite effective for figuring out the truth." The scientific method is a phrase Musk uses often when asked how he came up with an idea, solved a problem or chose to start a business. Here's how he defines it for his purposes, in mostly his own words:
1. Ask a question.
2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it.
3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.
4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you're probably right, but you're not certainly right.
1. Ask a question.
2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it.
3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.
4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you're probably right, but you're not certainly right.
What bizarre set of questions, axioms and probability of truths would lead someone to conclude that drilling lots of tunnels without governmental oversight under major metropolitan areas is something that will reduce traffic, be good for the environment, etc?.
We use "scientific consensus" now.
1. Ask a question.
2. Find a group of people who give the answer you want.
3. Misconstrue their statements to remove nuance and ambiguity
4. Package them all together into a "meta study"
5. Tell everyone "the science is settled".
This script is how all of us Trump supporters made up our minds. Dug up my old notes, here they are:
1. Ask a question:
Would Donald J Trump be an excellent president, better than any other?
2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it.
Scan bookmarked news sources for articles supporting this claim. Breitbart? Check. Fox News? Check. Infowars? Check.
3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.
Businessman? 100% per Wikipedia. He sells buildings and stuff, ergo a businessman.
Smart? Yes 100%, per his Twitter feed he confirmed it himself. No better source than the source itself so don't need to look further.
Good looking with excellent hair? Yes, 100%. See entry for 'smart' above.
4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
Donald J Trump would be an excellent president. All axioms were correct and relevant. Since all axioms were 100% the conclusion must be 100%.
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
Scanned my Twitter feed. Nope, no dissenting views among those I follow. Nor on Facebook. Therefore p=0.00.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you're probably right, but you're not certainly right.
Nobody invalidated my views so my choice is 100% certainly right. Further, the opponent is evil and 100% wrong so my conclusion cannot be wrong.