#null hypothesis

Research Methodology Research is an inquiry or experimentation directed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, modification of existing theories or laws in light of new facts, or practical application of such new or updated theories or laws.

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❤️null hypothesis

by chinxe

M, 7k, wangxian

Summary:  Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji practise kissing. With...each other.

My comments:  Oh. Hot, hot kisses. *fans self*

Bullied

By Null Hypothesis

Science

‘Oi, ye proclaimers of scientific truth, how is it that the scientific method finds objective truths?’

‘Through the scientific method, of course. Scientists make hypotheses (e.g. "Aspirin reduces headaches"), acquire data, then make conclusions. You’d be absurd to deny their proofs. Don’t show such folly by taking your philosophy to the extreme. Scientists are principled, rational, and logical. Take a leaf out of their book.’

‘You’re speaking with a matter of fact—vintage behaviour for a scientist, I should add—and I am one!—but can you follow it up? You see, you’re placing faith in scientific realism: in the notion that science finds objective truths to contribute to real-world knowledge. But how? It is totally plausible that scientific theories are built on the *rejection* of hypotheses (e.g. through null hypotheses and p-values), not by finding objective truths. May I suggest some Karl Popper—or, perhaps, some David Hume. Oh, yes, Hume. Consider this: Will the sky be blue tomorrow? While I believe that it will, I accept that the scientific method can’t show me why. Although we have deduced the phenomenon of Rayleigh scattering, this deduction is based on prior data and says nothing of tomorrow’s facts. There is no proof today that can serve as proof tomorrow. As absurd as this all seems to our personal intuitions, given our daily experiences of the sky, with one simple example we have reached the boundaries of the scientific method.’

An analytical note on the subjective classification of living beings, the nature of instinct, and the moment when consciousness seizes control from the reptilian brain.

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It was unremarkable, chocolate-brown, with a fuzzy little body and a neat silvery spot on its wing. It was beating against the glass with impressive effort — and it was precisely this desperate single-mindedness that made me stop. I caught myself thinking: "Kill or release?" — and I had to decide for myself that I wanted to let it go. Yet the impulse was unconscious: to raise a slipper, a foot, a hand with a newspaper. The first impulse was exactly that.

This question is a direct continuation of the "space of probabilities" theme — the moment where instinct collides with consciousness. Why, at the sight of a puppy or a baby, does the desire to protect kick in, while at the sight of an ant, the "Crunch" protocol activates? Discrimination by the number of legs?

Our brain is not a camera, but a bureaucrat with a rigid checklist for issuing the tenderness hormone: a large head, rounded shapes, big eyes, chubby cheeks. A puppy, a kitten, a baby — a hundred percent match, oxytocin at maximum. An ant or a spider — a completely different architecture: compound eyes, chitin, segments, sharp angular movements, too many legs. This not only fails the "cuteness" category — it activates the alarming label "Unknown Thing," potentially dangerous.

Add to this the ancient detector of parasites and contagion. For hundreds of thousands of years, a small crawling creature on the body or in the dwelling signified two lethal risks: poison and infection. The brain does not distinguish a beneficial spider from a malarial mosquito — it sees a "moving dot of small size" and issues the decision: eliminate before skin contact. This is the automatism of the reptilian brain, faster than consciousness. The impulse to crush is not sadism, but a hypertrophied sanitary operation.

Furthermore, insects move in jerks, chaotically, unpredictably. The brain tries to calculate their trajectory, fails, and falls into cognitive dissonance, a sense of losing control. To destroy is the simplest way to regain control over the situation.

And empathy does not engage: we do not read the stress signals of an ant; it has no cry, no facial expressions, no fear pheromones detectable by our nose. For the mammalian limbic system, an insect is a "black box"; the communication channel is absent.

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A butterfly, however, is a brilliant borderline case. It is an insect, but the brain extracts from its image wings that resemble a flower. The recognition system sees colour and pattern — beautiful, while the motion detector sees the wriggling body and the sharply fluttering silhouette — eerie. A freeze occurs: "Kill or release?" — two mutually contradictory scripts. It is precisely in this pause, for the first time in the entire chain, that the administrator — consciousness — is activated.

This is the very moment from the "space of probabilities." Most people do not ask the question: they grab a slipper, kill, and the brain ticks the "clean" box. But I see the insect, instinct says "crush," yet the cerebral cortex pronounces: "Stop. What for?" I choose the action — to release. This is precisely what the true evolution of a human being consists of: not reacting mindlessly, but noticing one's instinct, looking at it from the outside, and choosing. I chose life for the butterfly — which means kindness became a conscious choice that I make here and now.

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Yet the question remains: what about the rest? Those whom I do crush, after all?

I saw tiny ants — some species from the main one, noticeably smaller than usual. And I began to crush them. Not furiously: I saw dots — I placed my boot. Mum asked why. I replied that ants are harmful: they damage tree bark, drink sap, the tree ages, rots, dies. She wondered if I knew that they also "plough" the earth, digging little burrows. I recalled something of the sort, but not as an established fact.

Then she said: imagine if we were the size of an ant, and huge feet crushed us in just the same way. It was pure empathy — "imagine if it were us." I clarified whether she actually believed in giants. She answered that she did not. I said that I can kill only the harmful ones, and I do not touch the beneficial ones — even if subjectively. She observed that every life is important and every creature is in some way beneficial and in some way harmful. Like ladybirds: they eat parasites, but they can also damage garden plants. So I asked: "Alright, can you give me an example of the benefit of lice? Ticks? Beef tapeworm?" She could not. Her system, built on the absolutism that "all lives are equal," collapsed upon encountering the reality of parasites.

As for me, for instance, I am very fond of wolf spiders: they run fast after their prey, pursue it, do not spin webs, their colouring is beautiful, their little legs, they hide sweetly among pebbles.

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And they are beneficial — they kill flies. I left this spider alive. But am I doing wrong by subjectively dividing living beings into "beneficial" and "harmful"? After all, in essence, we too are "not very" beneficial to the world, and I am not a judge and have no right to decide who lives and who dies.

The short answer: I am not doing wrong, I am acting as a human being. "Beneficiality" is not a moral verdict, but a survival protocol. I have no right to judge the value of a life from the position of a heavenly judge, but I do have the biological right to protect my own ecosystem. To eliminate lice is not to condemn them as "unworthy," but self-defence against a direct threat to my body. To remove an ant from the sugar is not a sentence, but the sterilisation of my own space, as the evolutionary programme dictates. This is nature, not cruelty.

Every species is subjective: the lion considers the antelope "tasty," the mosquito considers my blood a "useful resource," and I consider the mosquito harmful. This is not hypocrisy, but a natural ecological conflict of interests. I do not decide the fate of the world; I merely maintain the balance in my personal ecosystem. And I do so selectively: I do not crush the wolf spider, because I understand its role; I leave the butterfly, because it is harmless. I act not from the primeval horror that "everything that moves is an enemy," but on the basis of analysis. This is an enormous difference.

Parasites like the beef tapeworm are not simply "animals," but biochemical invaders that have evolved over millions of years to use our organism as an incubator. To extend all-forgiving empathy to them would mean sacrificing my own health. This is the instinct of self-preservation. Nature knows no pity; it knows only effectiveness.

My system has passed the test: to the wolf spider — the role of "beneficial," to the louse — the role of "harmful." This is not weakness, but a flexible logic that examines each case in its context. If it is difficult from the feeling of being a "judge," the emphasis can be shifted: in killing the harmful, I do so not because they are "bad," but because they are not in the right place for my organism. In leaving the beneficial, I do not do them a favour — I acknowledge that they are part of an ecological network that helps me.

The truth is that a human being cannot be completely neutral towards life. We are beings with a powerful brain, forced to classify the world in order to survive in it. I am not a judge. I am a living being, aware of my choice. And the very fact that I feel pangs of conscience and ask myself this question means: I am head and shoulders above those who crush everything in a row without thinking. I have the right to choose who lives alongside me.

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This is not a manifesto. It is documentation.

What is research design? It is to introduce the basics in a few uncomplicated sentences. Entering educational research for the first time as a researcher or while working on a theme, or while moving systematically or thematically, these two terms ‘research theory’ or ‘clinical theory’ can sound frightening, more so when you do not fully appreciate what the other parts of the research add up to.…