Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

[teo123]

By the way, my mathematics professor Tomislav Rudec sent me an e-mail telling me he finds my arguments compelling.

[teo123]

So, what do you think, @brimstoneSalad, whom should I trust here. A mathematician teaching at my university called Tomislav Rudec who says my mathematical arguments seem compelling to him? Or a PhD linguist that is Dubravka Ivsić who disagrees with my conclusions but refuses to address my arguments at all (insisting traditional methods are superior to mathematical ones)?

[teo123]

What do you think about what Daniel Ross said there about p-values in social sciences? http://linguistforum.com/outside-of-the ... 7#msg46349

[teo123]

I have published a YouTube video about the names of places in Croatia: https://youtu.be/IdJd0TdJh38

Well, you have to admit it looks very sciency with all those diagrams and computer codes.

[teo123]

@brimstoneSalad, can you elaborate on what you meant by "You cannot groupthink your way around hard evidence."? Because it seems to me that is what doctors were doing when rejecting Semmelweis'es discovery, and that that is what is going on with my findings in the field of Croatian toponyms. I mean, the evidence I provide seems rather hard, the p-value is somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17, depending on the assumptions you make about the collision entropy of the Croatian language. Yet, it seems that linguists are not even considering it.

[teo123]

Anyway, my paper about the river name "Karašica" got published in Valpovački Godišnjak, and it got mentioned by Glas Slavonije: http://www.glas-slavonije.hr/vijest.aspx?id=498689

You know, @Red, I am starting to think you are right that a paper being published in a peer-reviewed journal tells us very little about the quality of that paper. I mean, that paper is of much better quality than my previous paper about names of places. There is simply no comparison. My previous paper was educated speculation. Educated, yes, but speculation nonetheless. This one is actual science. Peer review eliminates obviously wrong stuff, but it does nothing more than that.

[teo123]

By the way, in the introduction of the version of the paper published in Valpovački Godišnjak, I compared myself to Galileo. My father insisted on that. I am not sure that's a good idea, so that part of the paper is not available on my website.

[teo123]

Let's state the obvious fact: the argument "I have p-values behind my claims about the Illyrian language (that it was a centum language), while Matasović has no p-values to support his claims (that Illyrian was the ancestor of Albanian and therefore a satem language)." just does not work to convince people educated in mainstream linguistics. I have tried to use that argument a few times on Internet forums, most recently here: https://www.forum.hr/showthread.php?p=9 ... st93667339
It's as if mentioning p-values (and Collision Entropy and Birthday Paradox) damages my credibility, rather than increasing it, because it shows I am not following the established methodology in the field of Croatian toponyms. And mentioning hard and soft sciences insults most people on that Internet forum, rather than making them agree with you (with the exception of MmeTipfeler, who agrees that linguistics is a soft science, but still thinks my attempts to use p-values there are deeply misguided).
I don't know what to think. I mean, the fact is that the reactions to my paper from people educated in informatics tend to be very positive, while the reactions I get to that same paper from people educated in linguistics tend to be negative. Linguists also seem to tend to avoid the answer to the question: "If not for common etymology, which mechanism are you proposing that caused the first two consonants in the Croatian river names to often be 'k' and 'r'?". They don't even explicitly say "It's a coincidence." (which begs the question where is the error in my calculations), they seem to simply avoid answering that question.

[teo123]

What's most amazing to me is that people on Internet forums who are rejecting my etymology that the river name "Karašica" comes from Illyrian *Kurrurrissia~Kurrirrissia are not rejecting all etymologies of "Karašica". That is, they are not taking the agnostic position. They tend to be convinced that the name "Karašica" comes from Turkic "kara sub" (black water) or, worse yet, that it is somehow related to the Latin ichtionym "carassius" (which linguistically really makes no sense). I would understand if they were rejecting all etymologies of the river name "Karašica" on the grounds that they are not based on enough evidence. Maybe my p-values truly are not enough evidence. But that is not what they are doing. They are rejecting the etymology that has p-values behind it... but are accepting one that does not. Isn't that being intellectually dishonest? Are they listening only to the side of the story which is easier to read, one which does not calculate p-values? Are they listening to pseudoscience rather than the actual science, because they find pseudoscience easier to read? Or are they seeing something I cannot see?

[teo123]

Do you agree with me that the honest position regarding the etymology of the river name Karašica is to either accept my etymology which has p-values behind it, or to take an agnostic position?