Re: PTD was the most-respected of the AUE regulars ...

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).