How trust undermines science
worksinprogress.co
worksinprogress.co
In school you do “experiments” and if the answer doesn’t match what is in the book you are marked down. Often you have to memorize a bunch of assertions or even simply names, without any epistemic context.
Then in the real world you discover that scientists contradict each other or even themselves. They don’t say things straight out but are always hedging (“high probability”) or even admitting they don’t know!
I don't know what school you went to, but this doesn't match my experience.
So, you design "labs" where the students "experiment."
This is my experience at a high school in Florida.
Imagine that politicans would say that they don't know anything.
A lot of people think that they know everything, but only few really know something.
I did Nuffield chemistry for A-Level, '72-'74. It was very much about learning experimental methods and how to analyse the results. Physics was similar with great emphasis on analysis. But in conversations with others at university afterward (Exeter uni, Physics) I discovered that many of my fellow students had endured exactly the situation that your quote mentions.
This is a popular misconception on HN, and it's why so many here think they're being scientific by dismissing every journal article on the front page. Doubt plays a crucial role in science, but it's not what science is "really all about."
You can doubt every single data point and sensory impression. There is no empirical way to "prove" a single thing if one is determined to doubt it. Not one.
This is unsurprising and probably obvious. The purpose of the exercise is learning how to do experiments reliably so that at some later point when doing experiments to test a hypothesis you can have some confidence that the results you produce are actual data and not just noise.
When doing science class "experiments" of this sort perhaps it would illuminate things to students better by going up one level: the hypothesis under test is "student can perform experiment reliably". The putative subject of the "experiment" isn't the actual subject in inquiry: you are. On the other hand maybe this would just confuse students. (I've observed wildly varying capacity for abstraction and meta-cognition among the people I work with as a software developer so I suppose this is something that varies among individuals generally.)
You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate
If you mean something else, then I have no idea. I'm not a proponent of the flat earth theory, nor am I a mind reader.
The experiment you proposed does not disprove the theory of a flat earth though, parsimoniously or otherwise.
It sounds like you may have rejected the notion of a flat earth purely on faith after all?
And yes, I reject all other evidence but this.
It also requires you being able to derive those equations which is more than many people would be comfortable with.
Especially if you think that "they" are lying to you, this could be a repeatable but cherry-picked piece of evidence that has a requires a more complicated explanation.
The math may be beyond some people but the effects at play cannot be explained by a flat Earth.
Part of the overall thread was along the lines of we should respect flat earthers, they improve rigour. It seems to me that the only sensible responses to that are the counter illustrations of just easily disproved a notion it is.
Far more effort goes into supporting this ridiculousness than did into establishing rough shape and size.
The theory only "holds together", with the assumption that everyone that works in any field even vaguely related to travel or communication is part of a conspiracy to hide the truth.
Flat earth is just a ridiculous version of such a thought experiment. It's a good exercise to make sure your understanding of the world around you is based on some consistent logic and not faith. Those who reject the idea of the earth being flat just because "science tells us" have no intellectual high ground over devout flat earthers, if they exist
I bet a majority of people who are anti-flat earthers could not actually "prove" the earth is round without immediately appealing to authority.
I've talked to flat earthers, (both probably real and some probably trolling), and it can be a fun intellectual exercise to debate.
Anyone who claims they have the requisite expertise and resources to verify most scientific facts on their own is lying.
(This made me think of a kind of inverse example that came up recently: I had made a point in an online discussion and offered an argument for it in my comment. Someone replied and said they looked up what I was talking about and didn't see anything about what I'd mentioned, and so didn't accept it. The disagreement was not about the merits of the argument, but that they couldn't find that argument anywhere, and so apparently instead of considering it, they just rejected it as invalid. I've seen more variations of that recently, the whole "citation needed" thing, where people think that an "authority" is automatically necessary vs just thinking about what they were told and deciding if it does or doesn't make sense)
I mean, assume that the Earth is flat, and then think through the consequences. It requires a long-running, global conspiracy at all levels of society. And all to hide the fact from... whom?
Edit to clarify: even if you can't "prove" it directly, you can probably show that it would have effects you do not observe.
Believing in flat earth is basically a result of poorly calibrated trust heuristics. People may believe in it due to lack of education, for social/political/ideological reasons, or because they are contrarians. Or due to a random chance because the question is not particularly relevant to them.
For most people, life is more like poker than math.
If poker were all math then we'd see far more mastery by poker bots beyond just heads-up play. If the only thing you have in your pocket is math, then you are missing out on advantages.
In online poker players may purchase large databases of player histories. But constructing advantages from player history is ultimately a psychological theory notwithstanding whether math is employed. The reason is because mathematical axioms do not provide insight into how player history should translate into player futures.
This is directly analogous to how general relativity models spacetime as being intrinsically curved, and you need to be able to do the same sort of thinking without being able to immerse the manifold in a higher dimensional space.
So it's not exactly stupid to pretend to be naive.
Also, why and by how much is the sun bigger than the moon? How far are they away from earth? We've known for thousands of years. It's not exactly obvious to derive this purely from geometry.
Except their peers would reinforce the anti-scientific superstitions rather than reject them.
Not altogether differently than the way some recognized journals publish less-scientifically-sound output due to the credentials of the contributors rather than any conclusive results to report.
Or more commonly than ever, complete non-progress being wildly exaggerated as if it was an actual finding.
Even though there's more PhDs each year, you have to be more careful than ever what you want to regard as a science any more.
No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.
But at the same time they're step ahead of majority of the population that just believed what they were told as kids and never, once in their life, expressed any doubt in it, or thought about how it was proven, or how they would be able to check that proof themselves.
The whole point of science is that it (in general) does not require faith as it provides evidence. There are some aspects of science where the presentation of hypothesis verges on faith, many aspects of cosmology where falsifiable experiment are not possible, but that is a very small part of science.
I'm struggling to find it, but an article I read and found enlightening explained how there was seemingly a uniform struggle with education in every story the author was told by the people she talked to at a flat earther's convention.
They all had some profoundly negative encounter with the education establishment, and usually as a result of a learning disability that they had.
It's anecdotal and not a complete view, but a mistrust of academia seems requisite for many of these conspiracies to take root in a person's mind, and that seems pathologic to me.
Many flat earthers are illiterate. I can't imagine they put a lot of trust into a system that would not think very highly of them, as a result.
I would have far less reason to believe such populations would be 'more' likely to engage in critical thinking (flawed or otherwise), compared to simply uncritically following mainstream thought.
But, anyway. Doesn't matter either way.
Yes it's speculative, but it's also predictive. If you can engage people who belong to these groups honestly, you will hear, over and over again, stories about how academic establishments have failed them in some traumatic way or another, leaving them mistrustful of what is, in effect, the entire concept of learning. And nearly every one of these stories you will be told originate at some form of mental disorder.
These people aren't just stupid, they're actively anti-learning, which makes them so much worse than stupid; they want to make others stupid too.
What about believing a bizarre idea is debilitating enough to require mental health intervention?
What ends up happening is that these things sooner or later lead to an internal conflict. To fix this, a healthy person realizes that their belief is silly, and over time adjusts to realign more with reality again. This doesn't have to be a conscious process, but it helps to be self aware and open-minded.
In a different group of people, what happens is that they double down. Their belief X conflicts with reality Y, so a new explanation Z is needed. Z also conflicts with reality, so the pile grows. What makes is worse is that the internet created spaces for these people to find each other and provide increasingly absurd extensions to their twisted view of the world.
Someone who starts out thinking the election was rigged may find themselves in a group that claims COVID was part of the election fraud plot, that it will go away when the new president is sworn in. Then it doesn't, so a new explanation is needed: The idea of microchipping/depopulation/etc. solidifies. Someone needs to be blamed and there happens to be a leftover grudge from the elections, and look at them promoting masks and the jab! It's obvious, they're not even hiding it anymore. And on and on it goes. Eventually we arrive at "there are no coincidences" and "symbolism will be their downfall", where Twitter timestamps are somehow proof of a hidden agenda, and words mean whatever the listener wants them to mean.
You can't really engage with people who aren't all that interested in what's actually true.
That seems like a truly bizarre statement, how would that make sense? Some people would embrace ideas they would not believe in, to further the public's perception that there is an ongoing conspiracy? That seems perfectly lunatic. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to try to tie in that the conspiracy peddlers are incentivized to push completely insane theories in order to cover for other, true, conspiracy theories (e.g. the NSA's surveillance pre-Snowden leak).
Some have mental issues, that is a given, but that is not generally seen as a valid way to discredit or validate a theory (e.g. cleaning OCD is not seen as proof that hygiene is bad).
They don't. They add lies and manipulations into the mix. They force everyone to either step up their popular convincing political game or just drop out of discussion .
These people don't improve rigor, they kill it.
Science is a system to distinguish between a fact and a shibboleth. That process is at the core of epistemology, and it is always non-trivial, because goofy is in the eye of the beholder. Whatever your politics or religion, you can easily see these shibboleths in other tribes, but they are usually invisible in your own. To apply science to your own tribe's shibboleths is an act of distrust.
Scientists' job is to verify as much as possible (not to take the shortcut). Laymen can take the shortcut and trust the scientists.
If a layman wants not to trust the scientists, which is OK, then they should understand that trust is a BIG timesaver, and they have to put lot of effort into educating themselves about WHY scientists say what they say.
Too often, we see laymen questioning the scientific conclusions without putting up the work needed to educate themselves (at the very least, understanding the theories they disagree with). This has worse outcomes than lack of due diligence among scientists.
(And that's why argument from authority is a fallacy among scientists, but is not wrong to apply among general public, where it is a useful heuristic based on trust.)
As well as a BIG risk!
For example, I can rely that I won't get food poisoning in a restaurant. This is because we have rules of how to handle food (designed by expert consensus), and the restaurants are inspected from time to time if they follow these practices.
We don't live in one.
Person A approves Person B's manuscript/grant/etc. They do it because it's good for them and their careers, not because it's "good for science" (whatever that means nowadays).
Human psychology and social phenomenon are inherently hard to study well for myriad reasons and much of this article is about psychology.
The bits about outright fraud and problematic medical studies are more worthwhile things to be concerned about, but if your primary conclusion or concern is "human psychology is hard to study scientifically" (ie with exactness and ready replicability) then I'm going to be all "Well, duh!"
The way that I read the "inexact sciences" critique is one that takes aim at the certainty of their rhetoric. An uncertain and "hard to study" science should use words that reflect that rather than an inappropriate level of determinism which seems to be what the article is actually discussing.
They just have something of a tendency to not fall under the love that so many seem to have of treating people like lab rats.
Someone found that when men decide a female celebrity is hot, they google up nude photos. When women decide a male celebrity is hot, their first search is to determine "Is he currently married?"
So when someone wants to deal privately with their own feelings of attraction or sexual desire, men and women have different initial impetuses when no one is looking, when they have no expectation that anyone is judging them, etc.
This suggests a distinct gender difference.
Whether that's somehow socially influenced or biological, I don't know. But it seems significant.
And it's not the kind of thing you are likely to find in most so-called studies because people like to ask questions of people who volunteered for your study. So when they do studies that find that "everyone" is secretly having threesomes and orgies, that's probably selection bias. Because folks who actually value their privacy and don't casually sleep around probably aren't part of your pool of volunteers wanting to blab about their sex life to a total stranger. Duh.
Science is supposed to re-test assumptions and resist trust indefinitely. But questioning a group's assumptions is antithetical to group cohesion.
So we fudge the results. We say something is scientific fact if it's been replicated a bunch of times and has the same outcome. But we don't mention that the replication is subject to the group dynamics, ensuring it conforms to the group's assumptions.
Since human groups require trust, and all scientific results must be distrusted to function correctly, humans cannot practice science correctly. We need a new science that works with group dynamics, or we need something other than groups of humans to practice science.
The first time the headline was: "How trust undermines science" and I didn't care for it.
The second time, the headline was "Trust undermines science" and thát made me want to read the article.
There is such a thing as a mental clickbait filter.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bU7J5R...
That is a trust issue.
Do they know how volcanos work or not? Can they get that knowledge to the public or not?
The mathematics is high school level in many cases to disprove possible causes of the tsunami.
The reality is people do know how volcanoes work but the field is so full of charlatans that info can't get out.
This is every field of science now.
[And the idea the info doesn't need to get out quickly is BS, it shows structural problems in the field, on top of that in this case Tonga and aid orgs needs to know what might be possible in the next few weeks and the truth helps with that]