When people passionately a opposing stance
on topics. Especially testable and observable topics. Just expressing that they’re right and other
people are idiots. Something’s gone wrong somewhere. Somewhere there’s been a break down in gather
ideas, comparing ideas and/or communication. It’s probably as a lack of understanding
in how science operates. But let’s not go through that it sounds
like a lot of work. You know maybe the problem isn’t a lack
of understand of how science operates. Maybe the problem is that we always want a
shortcut. Let’s say you’re presented with two buttons. The one on the right makes everybody believe
the things that you think. Whether you’re correct or not. The one of the left makes everybody including
yourself belief the correct ideas. Believe things for the way they actually are. All your old ideas could have ended up being
wrong who knows. Which button would you push? Shutup nobody can hear you. I’m pretty sure everybody would push the
left button. This seems to be the ideal that we aim for,
that we don’t care about sides, we just want everybody to be correct. Although maybe we’re only really on board
with something like that on paper. Because in the absence of a magical button…. Humans are an odd contradiction of smart and
dumb. On the dumb hand, we seem to suck at learning. We suck at remembering, perceiving, reasoning
and arguing. We suck so often and predictably that we’ve
been able to catalogue the ways that we suck. You’ve probably heard of some of them. There’s confirmation bias, the tendency
to only look for, notice and remember ideas that match what we sort of already thought. We’re not out in the world judging every
idea on its rational plausibility or being thorough to make sure each one we’re holding
is the correct one. Instead we’re only really interested in
ideas that make us feel correct. Which ends up making it really difficult for
us to change our minds. As a flaw in the way that we argue, there’s
ad hominem arguments. Like: “this person is idiot”, “look
at this other time they were wrong”, or “this person used to work for this specific
company” so this idea that they’ve got is incorrect. Sometimes this does seem like a useful shortcut. If we can’t trust the person then how can
we trust what they say or think. But ultimately the validity of a claim isn’t
proved one way or the other based on our perceptions of the person communicating it. Anyway, people have catalogued all sorts of
these tendencies. I’m not going to go over them all because
there’s a lot and they’d probably add 3 before we finish. But they do sort of all take root in the same
general cognitive tendency or property and they can all be summarized pretty simply. We’re just idiots. Our ancestors only needed to be smart enough
to make sure they were sexing the right species. That’s basically what working with. The human brain thinks knowing for sure is
really easy, and then the face hole flaps about. So, that’s pretty dumb. By the way, I don’t have these sorts of
problems. You don’t have to be a total genius to figure
this stuff out. Even though I am a genius. So don’t worry about not being able to trust
the things I say. I’ve got all the best facts. Like, did you know there’s no such thing
as long necked dinosaurs. It’s always just been short necked dinosaurs
dying next to snakes. The contradiction is, yes human’s buy lottery
tickets. But we also build space stations. When we go slowing and carefully we are fully
capable of learning. And we demonstrate that ability with all the
crazy stuff we do. But we have had to develop systems of steps
and rules to allow us learn properly like this
For example with science. One of the rules that a lot of people often
have trouble with when starting out, is that every idea or claim, must link to a study
that directly demonstrates that claim. So for example you can’t just say “frogs
are cold blooded” assuming it’s common knowledge, that “it is known”. The human brain believes things far too easily
to rely on “common knowledge” as a source. You mean like the common knowledge that women’s
menstrual cycles synchronize with the moon? Or Twinkies have a nearly unlimited shelf
life? With science, it has to be, here’s is the
study that demonstrates what we’re saying. Like here are the guys who measured frogs
body temperature within a changing environment. And it has to be a primary source. A primary source is a study that demonstrates
the claim. The secondary study is just somebody reporting
on the primary study. It doesn’t demonstrate the claim itself. Getting the idea from them is trusting that
they’ve reported on the primary study honestly and accurately. At best that’s a game of broken telephone. The idea is basically be being treated as
common knowledge. That it’s true because someone said it’s
true. Not because we’ve found it demonstrated
somewhere. There may be good reasons to not use a primary
study and just go with an expert witness in a criminal trial or something. But not in science where we’re trying to
build a really solid foundation of ideas. Anyway everybody likes science. Science is just whatever our best systems
are for discovering truth. We like truth! I think we all recognize the wisdom in having
what Socrates is said to have claimed to have “that which I do not know, I do not think
I know either”. Which seems like a really low bar to set,
but you don’t see it a lot. Instead of trying to figure out what we and
other people do and do not know. The natural human tendency seems to be to
treat those with contrary positions as opponents. Let’s look at the public debate on climate
change as a as a as an example. One side consists of who we’ll call the
alarmists, people who thinks climate change requires doing something about because humans
release gasses that are trapping heat on the planet like a blanket and increasing the acidity
of water. This is leading to environment changes that
occur faster than the planets organisms can adapt to it. Resulting in a harsher and more expensive
world such that prevention is worthwhile. On the other side is who we’ll the call
the skeptics/deniers. People who don’t think anything needs to
be done. Because any combination of: it’s not happening,
it is happening but it’s not that bad or even good, and/or it is happening but it’s
not cause by us. All in all action is not required. And I hate them so they don’t get their
own summarizing animation. These names are basically what they like to
call each other. The deniers like to self-identify as skeptics,
the alarmists don’t like that though. Partly because “skeptic” doesn’t quite
capture the wrong and/or lying thing that makes them easy to deal with. But also partly because: well to quote Rene
Decartes the metaphorical father of skepticism: “I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt
only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole
intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I
reached the rock or the clay beneath.” Alarmists feel that deniers haven’t done
this. That they’re bringing up the same old ideas
of warming pauses and adjusted numbers, not so they can find the rock and clay beneath,
but so they can disengage from the topic. Personally regarding this nomenclature I would
argue whooooooooooooo cares. Sometimes when a person holds wrong ideas,
it’s not because they’re lying or they’ve weighed all the options and have decided the
wrong ones are best because their brains are broken. They do so because those are the only ideas
they’ve interacted with. Like many people who hold correct ideas do
so because those ideas are the only ones they’ve interacted with. Then we all just get locked in with confirmation
bias. We sort of don’t put a whole lot of extra
work in. Because we just had triplets… we’ve only
got 2 nipples… life is busy. We’re not special when we think we have
right on your side. We all always feel that way. And especially for an issue like climate change,
whatever position we take, we’re in it together. Ostensibly the goal is to have ourselves and
our opposition be correct. We’re not enemies, the debate isn’t a
fight with winners and losers or something. Haha I’m high roading you you bastards. While being right is the goal, being wrong
is often the first step. Calling someone a denier, or alarmist, or
shill. Calling it propaganda, calling it bad science,
junk science, there’s ways of unnecessarily drawing lines in the sand. And saying someone is fundamentally wrong
without demonstrating it, to ourselves or other people. Yes surely all these things exist, and yes
who is making or communicating a claim can offer some context and insights into their
motives. But I mean, even with something like the Heartland
Institute, an entity whose credibility is so high, on their own website they’re able
to brag about their talent for asking if they can send the “best available research”. It’s only the very best. And that a whopping “43% of [politicians
who read their documents] consider the Heartland Institute to be a “very” or “somewhat”
valuable source of information”. I wonder which of those boxes had more ticks. But surely we have the confidence to demonstrate
that they’re wrong because they’re wrong. And the courage to face the possibility of
being wrong ourselves. If not for ourselves then for the people watching. Writing them off automatically wrong can just
look like blind devotion or confirmation bias. Holy crap, I take it all back. Look how many Facebook fans they have. Anyway in summary, everybody thinks they’re
right. But everybody’s also just an asshole. Which is... which is my point I guess. We learn a little and think we know it all,
we don’t change our minds very easily, and then we can’t imagine how they believe their
ideas so we think they’re wrong because of who they are. They’re liars and retards or something. We separate the warmers from the deniers,
the left from the right, the socialists from the capitalists. When in reality ideas are either correct or
incorrect for better or worse reasons…. And that’s about it. Myself I’m excluded from all this of course. I am actually always right, on account of
my brilliance. Like I bet you didn’t know the Earth IS
actually flat. I mean just look at it. We did go to the moon of course. It turned out the was is flat too. Anyway this video isn’t going to solve any
problems. Not a lot of facts here and I’m pretty sure
if calling people assholes made them believe the correct ideas I’m pretty sure we would
be Star trek or something by now. If we want to fix these problems we have to
make changes. Like the real solution to a push door that
people keep pulling is not to call people idiots and feel superior. It’s to change the handle. Foe example when we want learn stuff but we’ve
recognize humans are dumb. We do this whole science thing. We make a bunch of structures and rules so
that idiots can go in and useful information can come out. While science still has some flaws it works
pretty well. By far the biggest information problems we’re
having in our societies are coming from outside that system. For example science is often publically funded. Which is fine but politicians can end up having
control over which areas get funding and how a scientist’s work is communicated. Depending on the information politicians are
also going to have a stake in how the information is used. This is obviously a bad combination. For example if a study discovered that the
chemical this company releases has been making the straight frogs gay, and the gay frogs
dead, we don’t want politicians hiding that message or protecting that company for their
own biases. Whether they don’t understand the work,
they’ve made promises to the company or they’ve made promises to the public about
jobs and the economy or whatnot, doesn’t mean those ideas aren’t true. But this is the way it’s often setup. Let’s keep this party going by looking at
climate change as an example again. For example in the united states, new politicians
were elected in that do not believe global warming requires attention. So, among other things, they’re cutting
funding to climate research. Ironically, they claimed this was a move against
politicized science. The politicians have intervened to save the
scientists from the biases of politicians. They didn’t go like, “OK, those guys are
gone now. Since the other guys were getting in the way. Let’s use this opportunity and change the
relationship between politicians and scientists. One where you’re free to build the most
accurate picture of the atmosphere and climate anyone ever has. And answer these questions once and for all. Demonstrate to the world how strong science
can be. “
Nope it’s just, “you guys, no more money for you guys. That takes care of that. You NASA pricks, stop looking at Earth, what
do ya think yer gonna learn. Take us back to the moon. Not because it is easy, but because maybe
they’ve added a golf course or something since last time.” If the public benefits, then there is an incentive
for there to be public funding. But just because someone’s in charge of
the money, or higher up on some sort of human hierarchy, it doesn’t mean that they’re
better at being right. How would they able to see through the mist
and the haze of uncertainty in such a way that our most robust truth seeking system
can’t? To decide an entire branch of research isn’t
true? It’s one reason scientists use peer review
and not boss review. And why the solutions to the flaws in peer
review involve having more eyes going through it, having more discussion, having more open
discussion. The solution to politicized science is less
power to politicians over science. A top down decision of what areas counts as
truth, is not a solution. It’s literally the problem. Anyway, that justification is pretty unbelievable,
so the other claim they like to use is that it was a move against politically correct
science. The insinuation being that it’s wrong science. Because if it was politically correct, and
actually correct, then that’s twice the correctness, they would just look like assholes.Basically
by associating the research that supports the idea that climate change requires action,
with the concept of political correctness, which pretty much everybody dislikes, it’s
a term that draws up images of weakness and uncritical follow the leader mentality, they
can then present the tiny fraction of research, no matter how weak, that supports the idea
that climate change does not require action. And write off any replies from the other side
as biased oppressive and faggy with demonstrating that it’s wrong. They don’t even have to demonstrate that
the phenomena exists. Or that it doesn’t apply to their own work. That’s how much we hate the concept of political
correctness. To most of us the concept goes against the
idea of free speech. We like free speech. The heartland Institute has sent a copy of
a book called Why Scientist’s Disagree about Global Warming to elementary and high school
teacher in the United States. The book is a clever mix of logical fallacies,
like trying to discredit anyone who doesn’t take their stance and crediting those who
do. In a move so that they can rely on secondary
sources, referencing what people say, rather than what studies demonstrate. They don’t even cite studies for important
claims. They blatantly misapply statistics terms that
they suspect the public won’t understand. They take things out of context, they ignore
and cherry pick observations, and mix it together with some genuine skeptical points on the
issue, to weave this story of politicized and politically correct science, that has
basically no basis in reality. And it has such nuggets of gold like: “if
CO2 and temperature are such problems for the ecosystems, then how did food output increase
over the last few decades?” Bruh broh what a mystery. The danger of course is that if someone isn’t
looking for this stuff and they havn’t learned anything about climate change yet, these may
be the most sophisticated ideas they interact with on the topic. While they try to weave a story about how
the system of science is flawed and corrupt they didn’t send a copy of this to all the
scientists in the country, using their flawless arguments in a move to gather allies and improve
science for posterity. Nope they’ve just targeted school teachers. On top of just the difficulties in learning
and communicating, we have people trying to manipulate us. It wouldn’t be so bad, but we’re not taught
how to deal with this stuff in school. At least not in Canada and the US here. We don’t learn logic, argument, debate cognitive
biases. We don’t go through having to construct
a case like a lawyer does. And we don’t learn the history or philosophy
of idea systems like science. We don’t learn any philosophy really. Teaching science the way we do now, is like
teaching journalism by only having people read the news. We don’t practice being wrong and learning
what it takes to be right. We’ve sort of left ourselves defenseless. Huh. I guess have now gotten to the age where I
blame societies problems on schools. Without knowing the realities in or out of
the classroom or what it takes to make changes. But I’m probably only like this because
the education system failed me. I know I’m not the first person to suggest
this stuff, ever take a class that touted critical thinking skills? I’m pretty sure all mine did. I seem to remember almost all of mine doing
that. We’ve always recognized that this is the
most useful skill we can have leaving school. It’s just that it takes years and years
of directly practicing it. Maybe more like physical education than learning
biology facts. Like when we first learn what confirmation
bias is, I feel like we haven’t learn to see it in ourselves. We only see and call it out in other people. Because we’re assholes. Anyway thanks for watching. Subscribe for more. Please support me on Patreon. Here’s an inspiring quote from carl sagan:
“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements…profoundly
depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that no one
understands science and technology… If we don’t practice these tough habits
of thought. We cannot hope to solve the truly serious
problems that face us, and we risk becoming a nation of suckers. A world of suckers. Up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters
along.”
Things like confirmation bias happen because people are unable to admit they are wrong or don't understand something. This whole issue is not just about stupidity, but ego, fear and other instincts that dictate people's actions when they fail to comprehend what they know.
For example; religion is so widespread because people learn it from someone they trust. They assume the information is correct and make life altering decisions based on it. If you tell them that information is wrong, and even provide logical discourse to support that assertion, they will deny your claims using any method that supports their assumption.
This is because admitting to having such bad judgment is psychologically damning. When people feel they can make such huge mistakes, they start to doubt everything they do and have ever done. Such a crisis is to be avoided at all costs, so religion remains prevalent.
Except we can't do science to answer the debate between the alarmists and the deniers.
What are we gonna do, run the next century over and over again and see which outcome is best empirically?
It would seem the scientific method is incapable of answering the question "Should we do something about global warming?"
Links
memory biases
cognitive biases
Anyone know of any other similar lists?