Based on this data, the difference between the height of 21-year-old men and women in The Netherlands is approximately 13 centimeters. That is a Cohen’s d of 2. That’s the effect size in the hungry judges study.
If hunger had an effect on our mental resources of this magnitude, our society would fall into minor chaos every day at 11:45 a.m. Or at the very least, our society would have organized itself around this incredibly strong effect of mental depletion. Just like manufacturers take size differences between men and women into account when producing items such as golf clubs or watches, we would stop teaching in the time before lunch, doctors would not schedule surgery, and driving before lunch would be illegal. If a psychological effect is this big, we don’t need to discover it and publish it in a scientific journal—you would already know it exists. Sort of how the “after lunch dip” is a strong and replicable finding that you can feel yourself (and that, as it happens, is directly in conflict with the finding that judges perform better immediately after lunch—surprisingly, the authors don’t discuss the after lunch dip).
It is impossible because we have very strong evidence against it.
The flaw is that the leap from decision in difficult cases to dangerous driving
or other behavior are wild guesses. He sets up straw men versions of what the impact of the evidence should be, then rebuts them.
The reality is that the same psychological state that makes a judge less lenient might also make us better drivers, not worse.
You're missing the point. The point is that the effect sizes in question are large enough that people should notice them in their day to day lives, because the proposed mechanism of action should not only apply to judges, but should apply to everyone everywhere. But we don't see this big obvious affect in other places.
I'd like to postulate that it may be that such chaos actually exists now, it is just spread throughout the day as not everyone takes breakfast/elevensies/lunch/dinner at exactly the same time as their peers, and metabolisms vary from person to person.
> It is impossible because we have very strong evidence against it.
We do not have evidence against it.
Everything he has written is the _lack_ of things that he thinks should logically happen, rather than things that are happening that would disprove the hunger hypothesis.
Evidence would some other experiential data, such as the number of birdies in golf remaining the same before and after lunch.
>Everything he has written is the _lack_ of things that he thinks should logically happen, rather than things that are happening that would disprove the hunger hypothesis.
Actually arguing on the "lack of things that should logically happen" is exactly the same as arguing on "things that are happening".
In other words, what he says is the same whether he says "It can't be happen because X would be happen too and we don't see X", or he says "It can't happen because we see Y" (where Y is not X).
> Actually arguing on the "lack of things that should logically happen" is exactly the same as arguing on "things that are happening".
Reasoning from first principles is a huge downfall the higher up the science stack you go. The only time you really reason from first principles is in math. When you get to psychology and sociology, you need try fit observed data to hypotheses.
The author has suggested interesting follow up experiments, but has given no backing for the disproval of the hypothesis other than "I don't believe that can possibly be true."
That's not science, or even an informed opinion on science. That's just religion.
>Reasoning from first principles is a huge downfall the higher up the science stack you go. The only time you really reason from first principles is in math. When you get to psychology and sociology, you need try fit observed data to hypotheses.
Observed reality/experience -- which is what the author invokes -- is not "first principles" though.
> Observed reality/experience -- which is what the author invokes -- is not "first principles" though.
You're missing a huge point though, which is the difference between "observed reality" and calling out BS.
The author simply says that all these other things should happen if the hypothesis is incorrect, without any experimental data behind it. There is no evidence behind his assertion that all these other things should happen, so he's reasoning from his life experiences and his personal biases.
If hunger had an effect on our mental resources of this magnitude, our society would fall into minor chaos every day at 11:45 a.m. Or at the very least, our society would have organized itself around this incredibly strong effect of mental depletion. Just like manufacturers take size differences between men and women into account when producing items such as golf clubs or watches, we would stop teaching in the time before lunch, doctors would not schedule surgery, and driving before lunch would be illegal. If a psychological effect is this big, we don’t need to discover it and publish it in a scientific journal—you would already know it exists. Sort of how the “after lunch dip” is a strong and replicable finding that you can feel yourself (and that, as it happens, is directly in conflict with the finding that judges perform better immediately after lunch—surprisingly, the authors don’t discuss the after lunch dip).
It is impossible because we have very strong evidence against it.