Research vs. Experience
Oct. 11th, 2011 03:45 pmI got into an argument recently (I know, shocking, right?) where I found myself sounding suspiciously like those wooagers I am usually arguing against. It has been plaguing me for some time, and I feel the need to delve into it more thoroughly.
The argument was over research vs. experience. On my website, I have a graphic based on the Triangle Theory of Love that I use to try and explain how I see my relationships. The theory goes that "love" can be broken down into 3 elements, which can combine to make 7 total classifications for different types of love. I'm told that this theory is largely discredited in psych circles, but I'm not told how or why. The problem is that this theory does, actually, describe how I experience my relationships fairly accurately. Most of the research and theories I have seen have a tendency to categorize things on a binary scale. This Triangle Theory was the first, and so far only, time I have seen someone try to explain the concept of love as a collection of multiple traits.
For example, some will try to say that love can be broken down into romantic love and familial love, and then they will try to define romantic and familial. Except that I have relationships that have elements of both, and are missing elements of each, and have other elements that aren't listed at all. But with this Triangle, it feels more representative of that nebulous sort of way that I experience my relationships. I can draw an X anywhere on the Triangle, closer to this point, further from that one, and that is a description of my love for a specific person at that moment in time. I can move that X around the Triangle over time as my love changes. And, since there are different kinds of love that are represented on that Triangle, I do not get the impression that one type of love is preferred over others - that I am justified in finding value in different kinds of love and not rejecting something as not being "real love" because it doesn't fit onto a binary scale.
When I put this Triangle on my website, I did so to give a graphic representation of a personal experience, but I also cited where it came from since I didn't make it up. I was not discussing research or the validity of the claims. I made only one statement on my website that referred to how other people experience love, and that was that I believe our society values the One True Love over other types of love. I have yet to see any credible research that refutes that claim.
So, the argument started because someone with letters after his name suggested that I remove the graphic from my website because the theory was "largely discredited". It was pointed out by someone else that I was trying to describe a personal experience, so therefore the graphic was accurate. The lettered person then proceeded to suggest that I needed lessons in how to tell the difference between good research and bad research, that he could instruct me, and that I was tarnishing all of the poly community by supporting this theory.
That did not go over well.
I defended my position that, as a description of my personal experience, that graphic was accurate and the research he linked to was actually not relevant at all (he linked to a study of monogamous people where love was defined as 2 different types, and the conclusion was that most people wanted that all-encompassing romantic love). I concluded my rant with "any research that claims that my experiences didn't happen can go fuck itself."
And that statement is what is bothering me.
I often find myself arguing with people about personal experience, and how our perception is flawed and can't be trusted to be accurate representations of the world. Specific arguments that come to mind are: the one where tacit and I tried to explain to a person who was convinced she could predict the future through her dreams that her personal experience doesn't make it true because she cannot account for things like confirmation bias and post hoc ergo prompter hoc and she has no grasp of statistics; or the arguments with people convinced they have some disease that was made up by hucksters trying to swindle them out of money but who believe him because "science" hasn't found an acceptable answer to their symptoms.
In both of these cases, the other side of the argument feels as though their personal experience is being dismissed. I believe that is due to communication errors. The rationalists and skeptics that I have ever heard talk about these sorts of things do not actually say that what these people feel isn't real. What they say is that the explanation they are giving for these experiences is false.
Let's take psychosomatic illnesses, for example. When you try to tell someone that what they have is psychosomatic, they will often respond with "don't try to tell me it's all in my head, I feel this pain!" I have no doubt that they do, and neither do the doctors who try to explain that they don't have whatever wacky, made-up illness they think they do. The experience is true, it's the explanation that isn't.
When a person dreams that her second cousin is going to get pregnant, and the next day the second cousin calls up to say that she's pregnant, I absolutely believe that the events transpired as described (well, OK, I don't "absolutely" believe it - I know enough about the fallibility of memory to know that it's not only possible, but probable, that things didn't happen exactly as reported, but I'm willing to accept the description of events at face value). I believe that she did, in fact, have that experience. It is the explanation of those events that I do not believe - that it was a supernatural, telepathic, future-telling event. In this particular case, when more details were dragged out, that second cousin actually had a very long history of promiscuity (and by promiscuity, I mean unsafe, unprotected sex with large numbers of people, often one-night stands or random hookups). This is what we call a high-probability hit. Based on the facts, it was actually fairly likely that this second cousin would get pregnant, and the dreamer happened to have been worrying about it a lot right up until the dream in question, including earlier that day.
So, I found myself sounding like these people that I usually argue against: the research itself must be faulty because my experiences don't match; how dare you tell me that what I experience isn't real; fuck the research, I know what I feel. And that rankles. A lot. I really don't think that I was able to explain what I meant because I used "fuck" too many times and got the thread shut down. I wasn't making any claims about what research is good or bad, I wasn't talking about trends or other people, and I wasn't giving any sort of explanation for my experiences. I was only describing what love feels like to me. I'm not even sure how something like a theory describing how people experience love can be "discredited" when there are people who say they do, in fact, experience love that way. Maybe you can't say it's how "most" people experience love, but I don't see how it can be claimed that a description of certain types of love is not true when there are people who do actually feel love according to that description.
So, my basic point in that argument, that I don't think I adequately conveyed, is that "research" has not yet been able to tell me that I experienced something, especially when I stand here and tell you that it is not how I experienced it. Research can offer explanations on the how and why I experienced something, but it can't tell me that I didn't experience it.
If I feel afraid, science can tell me that what is making me feel afraid is not real - it's a manifestation of my imagination or it's my inability to tell reality from fantasy, or that it's "all in my head", or even that it's an illusion created by skilled artists. Science may even be able to tell me the physical processes that create the fear, such as too much of this hormone or a missing fold in the brain, or a flaw in the human eye that falls for optical illusions. But what it can't tell me is that I am not feeling afraid. I may have no valid reason to feel afraid, i.e. what I'm afraid of may not exist in reality (like, say, evil dolls hiding under my bed that teleport in every night from another dimension), but it can't tell me that my fear is not real. That's what tacit and I mean when we say a feeling is real, but not valid - that the person is feeling something is real - they really are feeling it, but the reason for feeling that way may not exist in reality, making it not "valid". People get hung up on that word "valid" and think it means the same thing as "real", but it doesn't. Anyway, that's a tangent.
I think that's the difference between what I was saying and what the wooagers say. On my website, I am discussing a feeling - the feeling of love and what it's like to experience love from my perspective. I used a graphic that I found to illustrate what I'm feeling because it was the closest 2D representation of what I was trying to explain. "Research" or "science" cannot tell me that I don't feel what I feel. It can, however, explain where a feeling comes from.
The wooagers make a claim about a feeling they are having, and then extrapolate that feeling to justify the explanation. I feel hurt, therefore you hurt me. I had a dream, therefore psychic powers are real. I feel sick, therefore I have this disease. What I am saying is "I feel love". Period. No therefores, no justifications of external phenomena, just a description of what I feel. I don't know why I feel that way and I'm not making any claims to explain the why or the how. I'm also not claiming that anyone else feels any particular way. But I will defend that I feel that way, and that it is not the role or the ability of research and science to tell me that I do not feel what I feel or that I do feel what I don't feel.
Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works. It can explain the hows and the whys, even if we haven't figured out all the hows and whys yet. But people cannot use science or research to tell someone what they feel in contradiction to their subjective experience. We can only offer suggestions as to why they feel that way. I feel "love" as a feeling that is comprised of several different elements, and the varying balance of those elements is what defines the different types, or categories, of love that I feel. And any research that tries to tell me that I don't feel what I feel can go fuck itself.