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Thread: The Truth about the Starting Strength Method

  1. #71
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matthew_888 View Post
    The critical property of an experiment is that it is reproducible, else it is not an experiment.
    Observations are results of some processes that are not always reproducible.
    Reproducibility lays the ground of trust: not only in the people but also in nature.
    It kills magical thinking in general and scientism in particular since it makes observations independent of the scientist who made them.
    Observations only are not enough since it leaves out the process (how some inputs are transformed into outputs) as a black box.
    Great current example, deep learning: sometimes, self driving cars crash and no one knows why and how to correct the problem because deep learning creates only black boxes (as of today).
    I am quite sure that no airplane company would accept such none sense: a crash has to lead to a correction examining a causal path to be avoided next time.

    So: "observation" is too wide a concept.

    "interpreting" is legit as understood in its logical definition: assigning meaning to concepts... but I think that this definition is not accepted wildly and restricted to the "academically educated". I think it can be
    replaced by: "fitting what you think the world is". "thinking what the world is" seems to me sufficiently self evident. "Fitting" introduces the idea that a distance exist in between what is thought and what is out there (the map is not the territory), the contact points being the experimental results. This critical idea implies that science is, by definition, always wrong and has predictive power. It also introduces ideas of humility (a less wrong map probably exists) and agnosticism (the map is not the territory: do not believe in the map else it's narcissism, hubris and ultimately non sense).

    I really dislike the "is" (is/is not dichotomy is too limiting...) but a trade-off I am ready to make depending on who are the interlocutors.

    So here you go: "Science is fitting what you think the world is with experimental results." and from there it can be refined until the idea is understood to the point that interpreting observations can be considered.
    Glad to hear your critics!

    PS: lots of PhD students do not even have a clue of what science is... I've even heard: "religion of progress". Major physics institution... I think SS can spread this very important idea very effectively... it's not so hard considering the state of "education"...
    An experiment that does not produce consistent results when it is repeated should result in an interpretation that accepts the null. I think we agree on that. Controlled experiments are definitely the gold standard for narrowing down causes but there are still other ways. If I observe 100 people that squat over 500 lbs and I observe that they each use multiple sets of 5 when they do so, I would interpret that to mean squatting with multiple sets of 5 contributed to their strength. I do not need to set up a controlled experiment to draw that conclusion. If I wanted to test that or if I wanted a more specific interpretation I would set up a controlled experiment. So I guess what I'm saying is that science is just reasoning with observations. The better the observations (accurate and precise), the more reasonable your interpretation can be.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathon Sullivan View Post
    Predictive power, yes, I agree. This brings us to the occasionally fuzzy distinction between observation and experiment. The theory of relativity makes certain predictions that can't be verified by setting up an actual "experiment" in the usual sense of the word, but such predictions have been verified by cosmological observations. You can argue that setting up the observation (with Hubble or LIGO or whatever) constitutes the "experiment," but I think you know what I'm getting at here. We can't actually set up a cosmic-scale gravitational lens or neutron star merger. But we can predict them and observe, and I do think that's science.

    And then there's another issue: a line of scientific inquiry might make predictions that are testable in principle, but not in practice. Quantum gravity predicts a gravity boson (the graviton) and string theory predicts infinitesmal vibrating fundamental entities, but neither strings nor gravitons are, as far as I am aware, observable with any technology we could even hope to possess for millenia, if ever. So...are these lines of inquiry "science?" I'm inclined to say they are, but I understand that things are fuzzy at this level, and I understand the objections of those who say, for example, that string theory is more philosophy than science, at least for now.

    And so now we're really off-topic.
    I think of smoking and lung disease. I may be wrong but I'm unaware of any experiments that had a randomly assigned group of individuals smoke cigarettes in an effort to observe the chronic effects on their lungs. I'm assuming that's unethical. Despite the lack of experimental observations I think most people would interpret the correlational observations to mean that a causal relationship is likely.

  2. #72
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathon Sullivan View Post
    but neither strings nor gravitons are, as far as I am aware, observable with any technology we could even hope to possess for millenia, if ever.
    Millennia? That's an awfully long time in terms of the progress of technology. It's possible that these are things we won't ever be able to observe based on innate laws of how the universe works. But if they aren't, I doubt it will take millennia.

    But who knows? It's all speculation at this point. Maybe we'll destroy everything in a nuclear war and go back to not even having steam power.

  3. #73
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    Thank God for Herbie. Without him, you'd all be mindlessly agreeing with me and Sully.

  4. #74
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    I do what I can.

  5. #75
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    I agree with your post (#72). It's worth adding that all the public money
    sucked by these snake oil salesmen (and all the others) does not go to things that actually work and that we desperately need. The net effect of this circus is negative: string theory is bad.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sean Herbison View Post
    Am I misunderstanding this? I feel like a moment arm is indeed measurable and does have the dimension of length, measurable in meters.
    Yes. One cannot deny and yet cannot measure the "moment arm" concept like one cannot deny nor measure the "redness of red": measuring a wavelength does not help. One cannot isolate these "things" in space nor give them any physical dimensions, yet they "exist". I am pointing a finger at the deficiency of the language where "exist" (or "to be"...) is too wide (ambiguous) a word for this phenomena and to our general failure at identifying "ideas" for things as real, and sometime dangerous or beneficial, as a car is. I think that SS is a great way to drill down this realization: moment arm concept among other things make the trainee correct a squat. "moment arm concept" as every reasons to be treated as a barbell or a 45. It's a subtle point but taken in time, w/ enough patience, it appears that these immaterial things become very real: not only they change the trainee but also entire countries over generations...

    Quote Originally Posted by Sean Herbison View Post
    Would you though? How pedantic are we being? Because this seems like a pedantic difference, but we can be a lot more pedantic. For instance, you didn't specify that we're weighing them in an atmosphere. If we're in a vacuum, there's no air buoyancy, and they would indeed weigh the same.
    Well... you found the "trick". Given the context, it was targeted at Sam McLeod for a variety of reasons. From a conceptual point of view, the difference is not pedantic: same conceptual ≠ between 0 and 1.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sean Herbison View Post
    Not really, especially if you've seen it before. I'm looking at a color right now that I don't have a word for, and I can certainly think about it later easily enough. I could roughly describe it using other colors (greyish, greenish, blueish color), but I don't have an actual word for it. What is hard is conveying the sense of that color to someone else.
    If you assume that you have no one else to think with, you are correct: you do not need the word "blue" to think about it. You do not even need a language. Turns out that "thinking" is, to a large extent, not personal but shared. It means that somehow "ideas" need to be encoded in the physical world: "conveying the sense of that color to someone else" and "Meaningful distinctions deserve to be maintained" (Bishop) else ambiguities pill up and it becomes a huge mess (like "exist" for ex). A very telling example is that ancient Greek does not have a word for "blue". This is how you get these kinds of things (Homer, The Odyssey, Book V):

    “And jealous now of me, you gods, because I befriend a man, one I saved as he straddled the keel alone, when Zeus had blasted and shattered his swift ship with a bright lightning bolt, out on the wine-dark sea.”
    Language and concepts are as necessary to thinking as barbells and forty fahves are to Starting Strength.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathon Sullivan View Post
    So...are these lines of inquiry "science?"
    Well, the existence of experiments or reproducible observations make a pretty good and clear distinction between science and speculation. If one wants to "do" string theory, then he may join the closest pub and finance his endeavor with his own money.

    The point is: drilling down the meaning of this sentence "Science is fitting what you think the world is with experimental results." is glorious. Drilling down that given enough time, concepts e.g. humility, patience, honesty, anger, solipsism, hubris, moment arms, narcissism are "things" to consider with as much seriousness as a barbell or a gun pointed right at your forehead and it is glorious. But somehow, a new kind of existence must be introduced to distinguish what is measurable from what it is not w/o denying the fact that these things "exist". I think that SS could factor this into itself and develop as much the mind as the body. Maybe even into building 15days or a month long immersive SS experience. "Starting Strength" could be understood in an holistic way, and this is glorious!

    Anyway...

  6. #76
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matthew_888 View Post
    I agree with your post (#72). It's worth adding that all the public money
    sucked by these snake oil salesmen (and all the others) does not go to things that actually work and that we desperately need. The net effect of this circus is negative: string theory is bad.

    (Snip)

    If one wants to "do" string theory, then he may join the closest pub and finance his endeavor with his own money.
    Yeah....no. That wasn't my position; I hope nobody thought it was. So. We'll have to agree to disagree on all of this.

  7. #77
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matthew_888 View Post

    Well... you found the "trick". Given the context, it was targeted at Sam McLeod for a variety of reasons. From a conceptual point of view, the difference is not pedantic: same conceptual ≠ between 0 and 1.
    ...
    Quit trying to lure me back into the rabbit holes that are your logic. Not gonna happen.

  8. #78
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    The post #72 is from Sean Herbison: something that cannot be tested in the foreseeable future (< 1000 years in this case) cannot be science... like a customer that says: "I'm going to pay you" but never shows up.. in fact, he is a thief.

  9. #79
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sam McLeod View Post
    Quit trying to lure me back into the rabbit holes that are your logic. Not gonna happen.
    The rabbit hole here is called "Archimedes' principle".

  10. #80
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matthew_888 View Post
    The rabbit hole here is called "Archimedes' principle".
    Touché.

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