[WikiEN-l] Psychological correlates of deletionism/inclusionism?

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 4:22 PM, David Carson <carson63000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Obviously, either some sound peer-reviewed research displaying that
> "deletionists" suffer from deep-seated psychological problems that make
> them clinically unfit to work on a collaborative project; or some sound
> peer-reviewed research displaying that "inclusionists" suffer from some
> other, similarly severe, deep-seated psychological problems.

I'm not 'hoping' to see anything. The absence of any correlations
would be just as interesting because a lot of people seem to think the
opposite.

My basic observation here is that inclusionism/deletionism debates
seem intractable, like religion and politics, which have long been
correlated with a variety of mental and neurological observations and
this deep-seated roots of those beliefs seems to explain why politics
is so wasteful and damaging; hence the obvious question becomes, is
inclusionism/deletionism another such case?

But such findings would not tell us which side (or both) is the
intractable party. Merely from a correlation you can't infer which
side is right, since there's always two sides to a coin and you don't
know whose beliefs are correct. (Suppose a survey found Republicans
are more fearful of foreigners and foreign countries than Democrats;
well, this is interesting but what does it actually show? Where can we
get the ground truth on this question, what fact would we point to to
prove that Republicans are wrong to fear foreigners/foreign-countries
and allow us to draw a conclusion like 'Republican politics are driven
by excessive fear'? If they were actually right to fear foreigners,
then this finding would be better interpreted as 'Democrats
pathologically optimistic / naive', and of course, both sides could be
wrong on how dangerous foreigners were, in which case we might
conclude both that Republicans are driven by excessive fear while
those suffering from mindless optimism and naivete align with the
Democrats. Just because two groups are arguing doesn't mean either one
is right.)

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net