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From: occam <occam@nowhere.nix>
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Subject: Re: PTD was the most-respected of the AUE regulars ...
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2024 11:57:21 +0200
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On 27/07/2024 18:52, Rich Ulrich wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Jul 2024 21:07:49 +1000, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 27/07/24 20:32, Steve Hayes wrote:
>>
>>> [PTD] would pronounce that something someone else had said was
>>> wrong, when it wasn't and continue to insist on it even when several
>>> people had produced evbidence that it was true.
>>
>> The Australian coat of arms shows a kangaroo and an emu holding a
>> shield. These two animals have something in common: they cannot walk
>> backwards. Their anatomy does not allow it.
>>
>> That was PTD's problem. When caught in an error, he was completely
>> incapable of backing out. His only option was to dig a deeper hole.
>>
>> He's the only person I've encountered with such a severe form of this
>> disability. Some others came close, but they got out of the impasse by
>> responding with a non sequitur.
> 
> Anecdote: The great mathmetician/statistician Karl Pearson was
> also the first editor of Biometrika (for 35 years).  He described
> what we know as the Pearson chisquared test -- but for a few 
> years, he insisted that it had 3 degrees of freedom, not 1.  And 
> he refused to publish the folks who argued (what he finally
> conceded) for 1. 
> 
> 
> This is frequent a characteristic of Aspergers Syndrome (which
> is a diagnosis no longer in the book; too bad).

Whoa!  I'm no expert on Aspergers, but that is a big leap. There are
half a dozen cognitive biases that could equally explain Pearson's
behaviour.  Have a sift:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Just for starters:

- Escalation of commitment:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment>

- Illusory truth effect:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect>

-  Big Ego. As the editor of Biometrika for 35 years, he would certainly
not like to be corrected.

> 
> I learned about autism and Aspergers when trying to figure out
> what was wrong with a bright fellow who started contributing 
> and arguing in the statistics groups.  He also refused to reread
> what was written, to see that he got something wrong, which
> happened fairly often. - He was a smart mathematician but he
> had no experience with research, which is where the questions
> cam from. 
> 
> Also typical for the autistic spectrum --he frequently called people 
> 'stupid' and 'liar'. STUPID meant he didn't understand what was said,
> and LIAR meant he thought it was 'obviously' wrong.  Oh, a lot of
> autistics have trouble (for instance) in learning to 'choose the best
> answer' on multiple choice when unsure, because endorsing an
> answer that they are not sure of feels too much like lying, which
> they avoid (and are very bad at).  
>