Saturday, December 20, 2014

The Null Hypothesis

One of the first things that I was taught when I started studying science at a higher level (in junior high school) was a lay man's explanation of the null hypothesis. The teacher wanted us to construct a hypothesis and test it, but wanted to make sure that we didn't make one which was asserting that something didn't exist. The real explanation of the null hypothesis is more complex, but the simplistic version is that you can't prove something does not exist. You can support the idea that it does exist or has a relationship with something else, but you can't prove a negative.

If you think about this, it makes perfect sense. It is impossible to test and rule out every possible relationship between two things/concepts/etc. This is one of the reasons why science and religion don't play nice together. You can't prove God doesn't exist and scientists have little interest in proving that said entity does exist, particularly when the only means of doing so is to make indirect inferences between natural phenomena and a hazily defined deity.

To give a less emotionally loaded and concrete example, let's say that my hypothesis is that there are no unicorns on earth. Unless I can search every single place on earth simultaneously including any hidden spaces and show that there are no unicorns, then I can't prove that there are none. I can, however, say that there is no evidence of them. I can attempt to prove that they do exist by looking for forensic evidence (rainbow poop, bones, discarded horns, etc.), but I can't prove that they don't exist. While the conclusion to a hypothesis that they exist is essentially the same as they one that asserts that they don't exist, the bottom line is that basic scientific method suggest that you don't look to prove non-existence as it is impossible to do so credibly.

I'm offering a refresher on this topic because it relates to a conversation that I had over dinner with my father-in-law, a man who often picks at research and claims to be a person of science. We were talking about intoxication, and when I use that word, I don't mean simply consuming alcohol. I use it to mean the ingestion of any substance in order to alter ones emotional or cognitive state and am including intoxication by cannabis. Since my father-in-law has a history of intermittent use of marijuana (including a stint in which he grew his own), this is something that he has a vested interest in validating.

Before I get any further, I should assert that I have never been intoxicated through the use of any substance because I have never consumed anything which has a known consequence of changing my emotional or cognitive state. You might be able to count caffeine from soda, coffee, or tea, but my consumption of those items is incredibly modest. I drink one cup of coffee in the morning, cut in half with almond milk, and another similarly diluted cup in the afternoon most days. I drink two cups of tea most days, but sometimes none at all. I drink one to two cans of diet soda, but not only or always caffeinated ones. Sometimes, it'd ginger ale or root beer. Sometimes, I don't drink any at all. I have never gotten an energy boost or buzz from the beverages I drink, and I've never touched an energy drink.
I don't have any moral issues with modest consumption of substances because one likes the taste of something. My husband drinks one drink of some sort each day; he sometimes has a single small bottle or beer or a mixed drink with rum. He has never gotten drunk and extremely rarely consumes more than one drink. His personality does not change, though he never drives after even a small amount of alcohol consumption as we both know that even one beer can affect the ability to perform critical tasks.
While I don't have any moral issues with substance use, I do have some other problems with it. My father is an alcoholic, so I know what it is like to be around someone who is intoxicated.
The primary one is that I don't like how intoxication changes people's personalities. They become mean, stupid, lazy, childish, slow, etc. If someone wants to get high and sit in a room alone, I don't care, but I don't want to be around someone who isn't fully present with me when they are talking to me. I should add that I don't want them to be in that state in a way which cannot be altered on a moment's notice. Someone can be watching T.V. or using the internet and not be "present" with me, but that can change in a second if needed. They can change the focus of their attention or turn off the device. It doesn't work like that with substance-induced intoxication. You can't simply change on a dime.

The other issue that I have with a lot of substance use is that many people use it instead of developing real coping mechanisms. The answer to boredom, anxiety, depression, etc. becomes consumption of a substance. My sister-in-law's youngest son has been using cannabis for so long that he has developed a philosophy of, 'If I'm home, I might as well be high.' He doesn't have any other concrete mechanism to turn to to make him feel better in whatever way he needs to feel better because he's never had to trouble himself. His use of substances started at a relatively young age and now it's just what he uses all of the time. He's not even troubled. He's mainly using it to moderate boredom/enhance how he spends his free time. The problem is that he does it so much and that he is, from all external appearances, on a road to strong addiction that he won't be able to break free from when he finishes college and has to be more present in daily life. I'm not worried about this, mind you, as he is not my responsibility, but his mother is concerned.

Now that I've made my position clear, I will say that the reason my sister-in-law's son was using from such a young age was that their family history was one in which substance use was viewed as inevitable, innocuous, and "normal". My discussion with my father-in-law over dinner ended up being one in which my take threatened all of these notions so he gave a very irrational and unscientific explanation. My basic assertion for why I have never tried substances is that I don't know when I use one if I will be the type of person who is prone to addiction. With my family history, I view it as a not insignificant risk. With my depression, I view it as an even greater risk as any substance which may instantly ameliorate my suffering would be very hard to resist. My feeling is that there is that the risk of becoming addicted is not worth the sating of curiosity or the temporary and false emotional elation that sometimes accompanies such substance use.

My father-in-law's argument for this was that we might be addicted to anything once we try it, including sex. My answer to that is that we have a drive for some behaviors. That is, there are biochemical processes in our bodies that compel us to act on certain impulses. Drives include eating, sleeping, and sex. We are compelled through processes related to survival to do these things and suffer various types of distress if we don't act on them. Men get erections without bidding them to come. Your stomach hurts if it is empty. You can't resist nodding off if you deprive yourself of sleep for too long. These are manifestations of the processes fueling human drives.

When I talked about drives, my father-in-law said, "you don't know that we don't have a drive to get high." I said that, I do indeed know that we lack such a drive. There is absolutely no evidence that humans have a biochemical process that compels them to become intoxicated. He insisted that I couldn't know that, but I have studied psychology and human biochemistry for 30 years. I'm no expert, but I haven't once run across a study, theory, or experiment which suggests a "drive to get high." And, as my husband pointed out on our drive home, not only is there no evidence that we have a drive to become intoxicated, it would go against the grain of evolution and survival. If we ever had such a drive, those who acted on it would likely have been more susceptible to predators, less likely to tend to their needs, and more likely to waste time and energy seeking out intoxicants. There is a reason that tribal cultures use substances for ritual rather than recreation. They can't afford for everyone to be getting hepped up on goofballs all of the time.

My father-in-law, obviously losing ground, blurted out that there was no evidence that we don't possess such a drive. Um, well, yeah, because you can't prove non-existence. My husband said, "I thought you couldn't prove a negative." I mentioned additionally that this is the problem with religion and proving God is/is not real. My father-in-law then changed the subject.

This situation annoyed me because my father-in-law is incredibly pedantic about studies. He won't believe them unless he vets them, and speaks as if he is strict about science, but then he totally tosses science out the window when he needs to validate a lifestyle choice. I realized that this is what happens when you toss a question into the narrative that a person uses to construct his notions of what is "normal". No matter what their asserted orientation is vis a vis "science", it all goes out the window when it doesn't fit the preferred worldview.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your comments are welcome, but only if they are offered with respect and demonstrate that you have actually read what was said. I won't tolerate insults, straw man arguments, or bad attitude. Pretend you're talking to your boss to help put you in the right frame of mind. You can disagree, but be nice about it. Comments are moderated. There will be a delay in publishing them. Any comment that violates my rules won't be published.