Glen -
OK. We don't really disagree. But I'll push the point just a tiny bit
further and see if it goes anywhere.
On 04/29/2013 03:31 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
On the other hand, I'm not setting out to *prove* my concept of what is
generational, but rather to explain or illuminate it.
[...]
I'm only trying to make the argument that there *are*
couplings between "generations" which yield interesting oscillations
with periods roughly on the order of human reproduction cycles.
Even though you're not setting out to provide evidence for your concept
of generational, you do assert the existence of generational couplings
(distinct from other types of coupling) and that these couplings yield
interesting oscillations.
I infer that to mean that these generational couplings are somehow more
evident, more influential, more something than other inter-group
couplings. Perhaps they're not "more", but just different. In any
case, what we need in order to have a useful discussion is some definite
identification of that type of coupling. And for that, we need some
type of data, or at the very least a clear measure that could generate
the data.
I agree, a proper social scientist intending to study this rigorously
would, in fact, want to establish a hypothesis or set of hypotheses
which are testable against data which has been or could be gathered.
I am comfortable, in discussions such as these to take a wide swing at
guessing what would A) be an interesting hypothesis and B) where or how
data might be gathered to test it.
I presume this is why various social scientists take a beating from the
hard scientists: It is just a heck of a lot harder to gather data in a
clearly objective and repeatable way. I'm sure there are elaborate
protocols in Anthropology and Psychology to attempt to make this a bit
better. But it would seem that "controls" are much harder to establish
than with physical systems such as masses in motion, electromagnetics,
or even biological systems.
It seems more appropriate for my little "Garage Science" experiment (if
only a thought experiment) to look to the "fossil record"... to some
sort of correlative, already established record of the behaviour,
activities or perhaps as you suggest medical records of the subjects.
I used the example of my grandfather's interest in literacy (as
evidenced in his reading and writing habits) vs my fathers, and then my
own. Each of us has a similar level of education (not normalized to
the eras, but still similar) of roughly 6 years of post-secondary
education (grandfather with a Masters in Geology, father with two
Bachelors in Biology and Forestry, self with Bachelors in Mathematics
and in Physics with a whole wad of graduate credits in Mathematics and
Computer Science). In principle, a sample could be found of 3 or more
generations and through interviews of the living generations, a general
measure of how prone to reading/writing each of the members might be
extractable, etc. (how many books do you/father/grandfather own? how
much personal correspondence do each of you maintain? how many journal
entries (words, lines, pages?) do you average? etc.) The details of
such a test are precisely what academic researchers in the social
sciences do. It even seems likely that a literature search would
unearth such work. It even seems possible that some of the folks on
this list who work more in the social sciences already know of work in
this area. Or that this list could *be* the sample set (not likely to
get more than a small handful of respondents, however).
While I think that *health* statistics are more available suggest, I'm
personally not as interested in those aspects of a life. They may
correlate (folks who spend more time reading/writing may spend less time
running, jumping, tumbling and therefore enjoy the health benefits of
more cardiovascular health, etc.)
I guess at this point, I've proposed a model that is not particularly
well validated (by me)... but then that is usually what this level of
discussion consists of doesn't it? Speculation about what models
*might* have some validity and how they *might* be tested and maybe some
anecdotal dogpiles to support/contradict the models proposed?
If I find some scholarly work already done in the area, I'll toss it
in. In the meantime, I'll hold to my intuition that "stuff skips a
generation" and that this statement is a more specific instance of
"there are generational oscillations of period 1 generation based on
negative coupling between adjacent generations". This could be limited
to our own culture (western, north american, some class subset of
same?). I suppose it could be limited to the (confirmationally biased)
subset of people who I talk to about such things.
- Steve
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