Epistemic Virtues for Science in the Age of Automation | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

This is Jessica. Back in the 1980s, novelist Italo Calvino developed a series of six lectures describing literary virtues he felt should be enduring regardless of how the world changed: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, mulitiplicity, and consistency. These were published as “Six Memos for the Next Millennium” in 1993. We aren’t on the verge of a new millennium, but recent advances in AI make automated evaluation and production of science increasingly possible. This raises the question of what qualities we should most be trying to preserve as processes change. It got me thinking it’s a good time to undertake a parallel exercise to Calvino’s, but for science. I enlisted Andrew and Berna, and as a first step we are seeking input on which “epistemic virtues” practicing scientists see as most critical to uphold. By virtues, we mean any durable qualities of scientific character and practice that shape how inquiry is conducted, claims are framed, evidence is evaluated, and disagr

This is Jessica. Back in the 1980s, novelist Italo Calvino developed a series of six lectures describing literary virtues he felt should be enduring regardless of how the world changed: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, mulitiplicity, and consistency. These were published as “Six Memos for the Next Millennium” in 1993. We aren’t on the verge of a new millennium, but recent advances in AI make automated evaluation and production of science increasingly possible. This raises the question of what qualities we should most be trying to preserve as processes change. It got me thinking it