We are our anecdotes.
How often have you had something dismissed because it was anecdotal? You have limited senses. Everything you take in with those senses is anecdotal to you.
At some point there seems to be some mysterious threshold where things are no longer considered anecdotal.
If we are referring to something as scientific and thus we are basing it off of a current scientifically proven model then you do have something to measure by. At least until a better model that explains more observations comes along.
Yet this is one of those Chicken and Egg type of situations... Which came first, the chicken, or the egg?
Which came first the anecdotes or the scientific model?
The truth is you cannot truly proceed with the scientific method until you first observe and then make up a hypothesis (i.e. guess, speculate). At that point you can use the scientific method to try to prove, disprove, or refine your hypothesis. If it explains the observations and the experiment to verify this is repeatable by others then it becomes a theory. This is a scientific theory.
A scientific theory is different from theory as it is used say in conjunction with the word conspiracy. If we were to correctly describe what people mean when they say "conspiracy theory" in scientific methodology the true label would be "conspiracy hypothesis".
Anecdotes are important. They are not certainty but they also should not be casually dismissed.
With our senses and what we consume we are all a product of our anecdotal experiences.
"conspiracy hypothesis".
Ha! I like that. I try to remember and use it in the future. I can imagine when using it might be very useful.
Yeah, I love using "theory" and "hypothesis" in really casual settings. Throws people for a loop to just use words according to their definition. Of course, when we break down the words, the ideas become very clear.
Theory is just a word that means "thesis."
So the word hypothesis is hypo-thesis, which can mean "hypo-theory." Hypo means low or below, in the sense that hypothermia means low heat. So a hypo-thesis is below a normal thesis, in the sense that it's not fully proven, but can indeed be proven if we had the evidence to do so.
And thus I question if the ultimate answers can be called Hyper Theories.
Hypothesis.
Thesis.
Hyperthesis.
And some conspiracies are indeed so incredibly obvious that they stop being mere conspiracy hypotheses, and instead, transcend to the realm of dark, chilling fact.
I never thought of it that way. I don't know why I haven't. I should have. I tend to use the word 'underwhelmed' or just 'whelmed' sometimes to wake people up. Same thing but different.
Thanx.
Yeah, as a scientific person, I somehow didn't get the "memo" that I'm supposed to ignore all my personally lived experiences in favor of what I'm told to consider true. So I don't.
Yet at the same time, I think that the scientific method doesn't have to be as rigid and formal as some would claim. Just as I'm not actually a professional scientist, I also have no plans to do professional scientific experiments.
But it's not as if I don't value experiments and experience. It's that peer review means talking to fellow humans and seeing if what I've seen and experienced matches what other people see and experience. If we're all trying to find truth, then we ought to be experiencing similar things. And often, I do see such similarities.
At a statistical level, if I report 3, 5, 7 and 9, and someone else reports 2, 4, 6 and 12, then in either case, the average of both is 6. If people have different experiences, but the average of each person's experience is 5, 6, and 7, with a majority six, and a few at 5 or 7, then the average of the average is still 6.
Thus, when I talk to a person, I'm not expecting them to have the same experiences, experiments, and data as me, but at the same time, if they report something massively different than what I'm expecting, that's a good reason to investigate them as an outlier for either being wrong, lying, or so incredibly true that it turns the tables and gives us all new insight.
And of course, the numbers I mentioned before are just abstractions of normal statements, beliefs, experiences, and other things that people talk about in a casual, non-professionally-scientific sense. I'm sure you know what I mean. =p
Indeed. We can't ignore our own experiences. It is the only thing we are aware of. Learning the experiences of someone else is still and experience for us. We recall the experience of being told it by another person.
You cannot ignore your own anecdotes.
The main issue that I think the scientific method tries to help us tame is our own biases.
When something happens good or bad we try to explain why or how that happened.
We speculate, we guess, we imagine, we hypothesize...
The scientific method proposes a way we can test those ideas to see if they actually can explain what was observed. They do so in a way we can share the test with others and they can attempt to verify that they get the same results.
We tend to let the thing that BEST fits the observations at the time be the model we follow.
Yet the scientific method doesn't indicate we should ever stop questioning.
We need to keep questioning and keep replacing models/explanations with ones that better fit.
Yet there are also things that coming up with an experiment for is not feasible or just beyond what someone has managed to come up with.
We still speculate/hypothesize on those things.
The scientific method also only works on things we can observe.
It cannot be used to disprove things that concern things we cannot observe.
Some people misuse the term science when they say "Scientist say it doesn't exist".
Many of the things they say don't exist they say this because they don't know how to observe it, measure it, etc.
There are plenty of discoveries that involve things we at one time could not observe or measure. They didn't just POOF suddenly exist because some scientist could suddenly observe them.
They were always there.
The scientific method can disprove hypotheses on observable data, though sometimes it points out flaws which lead to better models. It cannot disprove things simply because they don't know how to observe them.
It should be clear that we shouldn't believe everything that is hypothesized that cannot be observed. That would be quite stupid.
I just use my own personal probability matrixes built off of my personal anecdotal experiences. Those anecdotal experiences include when I am taught something based upon the scientific method.