Research shows that people with the most education, highest mathematical abilities, and the strongest tendencies to be reflective about their beliefs are the most likely to resist information which should contradict their prejudices. This undermines the simplistic assumption that prejudices are the result of too much gut instinct and not enough deep thought. Rather, people who have the facility for deeper thought about an issue can use those cognitive powers to justify what they already believe and find reasons to dismiss apparently contrary evidence.
As I've said before, very intelligent people are able to come up with extremely complicated, elaborate reasons to justify their ideologies, i.e. anyone can be a fool, but only a really clever person can be monumentally stupid.
With the scientific knowledge scale the results were depressingly predictable. The left-wing participants – liberal Democrats – tended to judge issues such as global warming or fracking as significant risks to human health, safety or prosperity. The right-wing participants – conservative Republicans – were less likely to judge the issues as significant risks. What’s more, the liberals with more scientific background were most concerned about the risks, while the conservatives with more scientific background were least concerned. That’s right – higher levels of scientific education results in a greater polarisation between the groups, not less.
With the caveat that "scientific education" here means only "current scientific findings", not methodology or goals. It's clear in context though.
Scientific curiosity showed a different pattern. Differences between liberals and conservatives still remained – on average there was still a noticeable gap in their estimates of the risks – but their opinions were at least heading in the same direction. For fracking for example, more scientific curiosity was associated with more concern, for both liberals and conservatives.
The team confirmed this using an experiment which gave participants a choice of science stories, either in line with their existing beliefs, or surprising to them. Those participants who were high in scientific curiosity defied the predictions and selected stories which contradicted their existing beliefs – this held true whether they were liberal or conservative.
Dunno if I'd say that last point "confirms" anything - I'd have said that choosing to read things that contradict your existing beliefs is a good definition of curiosity.
So, curiosity might just save us from using science to confirm our identity as members of a political tribe. It also shows that to promote a greater understanding of public issues, it is as important for educators to try and convey their excitement about science and the pleasures of finding out stuff, as it is to teach people some basic curriculum of facts.
Yup.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160907-how-curiosity-can-protect-the-mind-from-bias
:D "anyone can be a fool, but only a really clever person can be monumentally stupid."
ReplyDeleteeveryone lives to build the monument of his own stupidity(rarely intentionally unless in specific areas). That same monument can be represented by a degree, position, salary, or in most of the cases a tomb stone.
The problem is not that one builds the monument(regardless of the type chosen), but that at some point one decides that the shadow it casts is big enough to provide comfortable existence. The latter of course is never a truth, neither absolute, nor contextual, so one begins to convince him/herself that resting in the shadow is better than going out in the sun. As we all know from personal experience there are plenty of ways to approach that ""convincing" existence, some are quite violent, some rather harmless. At the end it boils down to the person you actually are along with the ideal of the one who wish to be, all wrapped in the tick shadow of your convictions...Both meanings(of conviction) are perfect match both on their own, and taken together here :)
That is the reason being wise is far better than being intelligent.
ReplyDeleteR. M.A. I am not sure one can draw a line between those two. Even trying is often a monumental effort :P
ReplyDeleteTim Stoev the first thing, is to accept that even the most brilliant human mind can not understand everything. Second, to be humble enough that "I" can not understand everything....
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere recently - I forget where exactly - that a useful trick is to accept that everything you think is subject to some rate of errors. Everyone gets some things wrong. Once you accept that you have an error rate, it becomes easier to consider the possibility that you might be wrong about any specific issue.
ReplyDeleteR. M.A. of course everyone can understand everything, it is a matter of time and effort. Defining what everything is however is a completely different story.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor you are writing about self-assessment, a process where you try to "measure" your statements rather than define yourself with them. Most people never grow to that level because the statements they commit to are result of a push towards definition of (one)self in the context compared to growing a self in a broader context(scaling. flexibility).
It is the old (strive to be)acceptance thing. One generally gets pushed towards it during his/her early ages being forced to comply to various expectations and contexts(school, family, job etc). The latter is not bad on its own when the context is designed around the idea of interaction stimulating understanding, and not simply accepting.
The problem with the latter is that such approach is more complicated and time consuming so the mass-systematization of everything(the civilization basically) tends to go on the low side focusing a raising entropy(compliance) at low cost(over-simplification) where the time is considered a non-resource because it is literally impossible to manage on that scale.
Tim Stoev To be brutally honest...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.webpulp.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/5414660_8716bf615a.jpg
:) ok, maybe someday
ReplyDeleteTim Stoev about your answer to Rhys Taylor... You just overanalyzed it.
ReplyDeleteBut that is O.k., because... ¡¡we got a bunny for your work!!
R. M.A. the way I see it, I am not over-analysing but extrapolating- it is like throwing pebbles in a lake, the more splashes they make the more fun it is.
ReplyDeleteSo I am happy, and you have a bunny, it must be a good day for everybody :D
The equation for Stupid starts with a big Sigma. Though any one person can be stupid, Really Big Stupid requires more than any one person can bring to the job.
ReplyDeleteThis may well be true for technical - or mathematical - kind of intelligence. However, I would not expect similar results if the criterion was aligned with wisdom - for the lack of a better word. There is no label for the concept of insight, experience, and balance I am talking about, but you could attach a hundred labels to it and say it's all of them yet none really. It's the zen stuff, etc. The reason there is no word is that balance is not about any specific thing but abundance of views plus the realization that all of them are just views. If you chose the people based on this kind of maturity or whatever you want to call it, the more "enlightened" folks would not be more polarized.
ReplyDeleteWhatever wisdom is, it definitely isn't the same as mere intelligence.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor By my reckoning, wisdom is mostly scar tissue built up around the wounds of steady efforts.
ReplyDeleteI tell my clients "You're not actually paying me to do this stuff, you could certainly have it done cheaper. You're paying me for the mistakes I won't make, the people on your teams I won't annoy, the grand gestures I won't make about how you need to replace everything to do anything. It's like a surgeon, making the smallest possible incision, applying the proper amount of cure - and keeping the patient alive. In short, you're paying me for all the scars on my ass. "
This of course explains the old saying, "To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer". Computers have mountains of technical ability, even intelligence of a sort, but no curiosity and certainly no wisdom. A curious person wants to learn the truth. A poorly-educated person thinks they already do.
ReplyDeleteand a wise person knows that there is no truth, but reflections of ourselves as seen on the surface of the sea of possibilities.
ReplyDeletejust like pebbles in the lake we may touch the truth, but never know it, we may cover the distance but still loose it all to the depths.
Rhys Taylor Marcus Aurelius: Nihil enim tantam vim habet ad animi magnitudinem gignendam, quam posse singula, quae in vita occurrunt, via ac ratione explorare eaque semper sic intueri, ut simul tecum reputes, quali mundo qualem usum haec res praebeat,
ReplyDeleteNothing so improves the growth of the soul as the tendency to logically and accurately analyse everything which happens to us. We must consider a thing in such a way that we understand what need it fulfils, and in what kind of world. - translation mine
Early on in my consulting career, I was doing a gig for a paint manufacturer. I asked to work on the warehouse floor for two weeks. The foreman had a set of clipboards at the end of each gargantuan aisle. When a worker drove the forklift into the aisle, he signed in and wrote the order information on it. When he left, with his paint, he'd again sign the clipboard with what he'd withdrawn. Stocking paint, same story.
After two weeks, I'm sitting in the conference room with all my notes for the system. I opened the meeting by saying "You don't really need a computer system at all. Just don't fire the foreman who maintains the clipboards." They all had a good laff. The system I built replicated the clipboards, to the letter. And everyone was happy.
The essence of a good system, be it a computer system or any other sort - is how accurately it models the problem and how faithfully it serves those who must rely upon it.
Dan Weese I agree, but at the same time being too accurate may mean that there is no room for improvement. Serving too faithfully may mean that you are repeating existing mistakes. Reliability is definitely a must, no compromises there.
ReplyDelete'Liberals are more concerned than Republicans'
ReplyDeletePerhaps the republicans are equally concerned but are not so trusting of the data when it comes to climate change ,After all why is it not called global warming anymore ,what happened to the ozone layer depletion concerns ,why is there still a lot of snow at the poles and lots of trees in Brazil
cato macro I cannot tell if you are asking questions, or stating a hypothetical viewpoint.
ReplyDelete"why is it not called global warming anymore"
Because the effects are not simply that of a warmer world.
Climate change embraces the idea of rising temperatures, and other phenomena too.
",what happened to the ozone layer depletion concerns"
Still there.
The banning of CFCs helped stop the destruction - the holes are still there, but ozone is slowly reaccumulating.
"why is there still a lot of snow at the poles"
(?)
Because it hasn't all melted yet - but the North pole will probably be ice-free in Summer soon - and I expect that the period in which it is ice-free will grow.
If Antarctica ever is ice-free then we really have messed it all up.
"lots of trees in Brazil "
Fewer than there used to be.
James Garry
ReplyDeleteSorry didn't explain myself very clearly .I was using climate change (though didn't explain) as an example of left wing and right wing thinking .
Left wingers tend to accept what they are being told ,right wingers are not so quick to jump in with both feet
Global warming / climate change is a good example of this
cato macro Understood. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, calling myself 'left wing', I don't agree with your view re: left vs. right.
:)
(looks over at the large pile of skeptical salt I keep on hand for all things told to us By The Powers That Be)
Conclusion: damned if you do, damned if you don't.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the possibility that people are skeptical of a topic out of convenience, because it would contradict another belief in which they have total certainty. For example, a right leaning person may object to climate change because it would run against their belief in a free market, as accepting this issue would mean allowing greater government interference.
ReplyDeletePeople are remarkably good at spending their cognitive ability at defending their beliefs and attacking the opposition, it's rare for a person to actually try to defy their own world beliefs.
I too like to think that this is related to wisdom, to being able to see the data as it is, to recognize the biases involved when one draws a conclusion from it, to understand that any building of certainties requires removing probabilities, which means taking a slice of the potential realities and converting it to the whole.
Curiosity is most probably highly correlated to being wise, as a wise person understands their lack of knowledge and has a thirst for self improvement.
Granted, only a few people really try to follow this path, and society has to work with what we have, the masses of people who seem to only wield data to support pre-established beliefs. How do we actually work with what we have?
Always be weary of joint research by philosophers, film makers and psychologists.
ReplyDeleteWalther M.M. The question of how we work with what we have is something I have many thoughts on. First, we can improve things for the next generation through better education. We can reduce rote learning and increase the use of experiments where pupils find things out for themselves. I don't know if it's possible to encourage people to be more curious but it's certainly worth a damn good try. Learning has to be seen as a fundamentally enjoyable thing to do, not a chore to endure. That's going to need more investment for smaller class sizes, better teachers, etc. Probably not particularly difficult to do, but expensive.
ReplyDeleteAs for those of voting age and above, personally I don't see there as being too much of a problem within science itself, but there's certainly a problem when it comes to science communication. It's a question of trust. I wax lyrical on the subject here :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2016/09/would-i-lie-to-you.html
Summary :
- Change the way we do scientific press releases. Stop saying or implying that we're certain about every little thing, because we're not. This is incredibly simple to do and costs absolutely nothing.
- Clickbaiting needs to end. Most people only read the headlines, and those headlines are practically designed to foster mistrust - implying we're either incompetent fools or omniscient. I'm not sure how we stop this, but it's probably going to be expensive and difficult.
- Change the role of science activists. They need to become more like good journalists, searching out experts to present specialist topics rather than presenting themselves as experts in everything. As with press releases, they need to stress the uncertainties because that gives areas where there's a strong consensus much more power.
- Greater separation of science and politics in communication. Activists and experts alike should be very wary about discussing purely political issues in their professional capacities, because politicians aren't trusted. Under no circumstances should politicians be allowed to get involved with science outreach.
- Less tribalism. We need to debate the evidence with doubters when they want to discuss evidence, but we also need to understand why they're doubting. It's not enough to instantly dismiss everyone as "anti-science" - some are, but not all. We need to make a greater effort to appeal to emotions. While I despise, "you're being negative" as an argument - because I like to think that when I'm being negative it's for a very good reason - positive arguments tend to be better received. And the press (especially the left-wing press) need to stop dragging people over the coals for every minor mistake and misdemeanour.
good summary Rhys Taylor
ReplyDeleteEducation in the US is significantly lacking compared to other first world countries, and where it does not (universities), it is bankrupt-level expensive. In brief, the system is against educating its populace.
ReplyDeleteThe general belief around this phenomena is that the rich need a dumb populace that'll just be good enough to keep the profit machine churning, without ever questioning their required slavery to the system. If so, that means there are forces against positive change in this significant area. Forces which have most of the government on their side, further complicating the situation.
So, there's a specific obstacle against change in the most fundamental level. It may even be stated that the system has become corrupted and has fail-safes in place to stay that way.
This isn't to sound negative, the one thing that has become clear in this election cycle is that most people are charmed by the concept of being antiestablishment, so there's likely going to be some significant structural changes in the future. I can only hope that they are in the right direction and not towards anarchy. :)
Walther M.M. spot on, as always. Sad but true.
ReplyDeleteLike 'Dog Eats Dog'
ReplyDelete