Here’s my recommendation: Instead of telling people to form beliefs on the basis of evidence, encourage them to seek out something, anything, that could potentially undermine their confidence in a particular belief. (Not something that will, but something that could. Phrased this way it’s less threatening.) This makes thinking critical.
This strategy is effective because asking the question, “What evidence would it take to change your mind?” creates openings or spaces in someone’s belief where they challenge themselves to reflect upon whether or not their confidence in a belief is justified. You’re not telling them anything. You’re simply asking questions. And every time you ask it’s another opportunity for people to reevaluate and revise their beliefs. Every claim can be viewed as such, an opportunity to habituate people to seek disconfirming evidence.
During most school debates the teachers insisted on making us argue for the opposite position of what we believed at the start.
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/what-evidence-would-it-take-to-change-your-mind/
Evidence can support a claim. But facts can lead you claim free truths.
ReplyDeleteDeductions always trump (a word I now hate) inductions.
What would it take to change your mind about reading Skeptic?
ReplyDeleteJack Martinelli To know logic, one must know its limitations:
ReplyDeleteEven the weakest imaginable inductive argument (a single contrary observation) falsifies a deductive proof.
As Feynman put it, it doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, if it doesn't fit with the evidence, it's wrong.
Induction is how we learn things about the world. Period. You literally could not know anything at all without it.
A necessary but not sufficient condition to get me to read Skeptic would be to tell me who the author is. :P
ReplyDeleteI was more interested in the psychological aspect of this than the nature of logic. Telling people you're teaching them critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning leads them to thinking they're super rational, which results in them being more closed-minded. Whereas the subtler method of teaching them to directly challenge their own beliefs has a more beneficial outcome.
Rhys Taylor encouraging curiosity is also nice.
ReplyDeleteWell, I wonder if it does encourage curiosity and make people enthusiastic about it, or just make them feel insecure...
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor insecurity is terrible. I see people arguing for something that is easy to defend, but in their insecurity they dive straight into obvious rationalization, to the point where a nonsensical word-salad of bastardized logical terms is their end-all-be-all of reason.
ReplyDeleteBeing insecure means they are trying to fool themselves... and that is not difficult.
Indeed. The question is, how to replace insecurity with interest ?
ReplyDeleteAndreas Geisler, if one observation falsifies one or more deductions (e.g., calculus) I think I would suspect that there something wrong with the observation. For a start, "one" is not a very good sample size. And I could go on about methods, assumptions etc.
ReplyDeleteJack Martinelli You don't understand deduction.
ReplyDeleteAlso, calculus is not "a deduction", it is a logic in itself.
Seriously, how can it be that the people who claim the infallibility of logics always know next to nothing about it?
I mean, why do they care so much that they laud something they don't understand beyond its limitations?
Logic has limitations. Big whoop.
Induction is a far stronger method when the axioms are not known, and the axioms are not known in reality.
Not controversial at all among people with any actual competence.
Andreas Geisler Lol ... for me observations and objects are axioms. If I choose to represent my observations with my own notation, that's my choice. That you don't understand that the choice exists underlines, not only your incompetence but also that of the schooling you've had. Remember... Assumption begins with ASS.
ReplyDeleteIf one compares two objects one might find them to be identical or differ from each other. When they are similar, e.g., line-like, then one can follow the measuring procedure to assign a number to the difference. Then define perpendicular axis' and arrive at a basic Cartesian Coordinate system. And from this one can DERIVE tangents to curves (Calculus). Of course you can fortify this with formal logic. But... Math and logic can AND SHOULD BE derived and formalized from observation.
If I observe something and give it a name, you might call the act of assigning a name an "induction" (hopefully not). But I think "observation" and "name" are much more fundamental and clearer. If I define a method of labeling, I would call it "a method of labeling" . Not an induction. Then because, my methods depend my observations, they are derived from observation. I.e., NOT induction. And then I can further assign another label and call my set of observations, methods and labels a "context" and then use this context to derive and construct proofs of whatever I like. And since my context is based entirely on the methods of experimental verification my conclusions are self verifying.
If you observe something, you can't prove that you have observed it. An observation isn't "evidence". It's a fact.
You also can 't derive an observation. An observation is more "axiomatic" than any definition. The physical always takes precedence over the abstract.
Jack Martinelli Nobody cares that your misconceptions are so deep that you can never hope to understand what induction OR deduction means.
ReplyDeleteThat is all you're demonstrating here. You don't know what an axiom is ... worse, you have a completely incorrect idea of what an axiom is, and there is nothing simpler than an axiom.
You also don't know what facts are, or how they are different from observations, or how observations form data.
Your comment is one long litany of ignorance and misconception.
Unfortunately, with misconceptions so deep, there is literally no hope for anyone to fix it.
I am going to suggest you read (or re-read) Goedel-Escher-Bach. That at least gives some clarity on what an abstract system is.
en.wikipedia.org - Gödel, Escher, Bach - Wikipedia
Your ignorance about what observation is is much more troublesome, because without a good understanding of that, you have no tools with which to correct it.
You have what is called "a stupid prior", which prevents you from learning some things about how you learn things.
Andreas Geisler LMAO ... of course I've read GEB. The "eternal golden braid". He has his head up his ass. He might as well be a string theorist. He can't tell the difference between abstraction and what the abstraction refers to. And goes on to create a myth of ideas. And that you go on with insults rather than a competent counter argument tells me you are a technician ... not a scientist. That or a troll.
ReplyDeleteSo can you measure a speed with a reference speed? Give me a counter argument. If you go on with insults you might as well be saying "I have no idea how logic works but as long as I can deflect ... nobody will discover what an idiot I am".
Jack Martinelli Again, all you're doing is reveal the completeness of your ignorance, which is exactly as deep and irreperable as I predicted.
ReplyDeleteThere simply is no overcoming a "stupid prior".
Rhys Taylor I will refrain from further interaction with the unfortunate Mr. Martinelli. Sorry about hijacking the thread.
ReplyDelete