Alas, it's not that easy, however. Each side has the "scientists" or "doctors" who they listen to; both sides are pretty convinced that science is on their side. How can we teach people the skills and proclivity to fairly successfully evaluate which alleged science to believe? How can we instill a…
Alas, it's not that easy, however. Each side has the "scientists" or "doctors" who they listen to; both sides are pretty convinced that science is on their side. How can we teach people the skills and proclivity to fairly successfully evaluate which alleged science to believe? How can we instill an aesthetic of valuing accuracy over reinforcement of what one already believes? The former is a much more challenging acquired taste, compared to the easy payoffs of the latter.
I used to be a "question authority" person. Well, I still am, but now I'd insert "intelligently" rather than "belligerantly" as so many people now do. What used to make people willing to trust even authorities who tell you something you'd rather not hear - and why is that breaking down now?
Some of it is kind like the Dunning-Kruger effect - we've empowered the common folks to trust their own authority, to take on complex evaluations of truth which are above their pay grade. There are lots of roots to this disdain for outside authority - conflicting health stories in the paper every day, revelations of corrupted science by corporations (tobacco, pharmaceutical), the Tuskegee experiment, even things like mocking the "lab leak hypothesis" of Covid as a wild conspiracy theory only to later find out it was more credible (and from released Fauci emails, something his own advisors found credible at the time he was publicly dismissing it). There are many factors behind these confusing inputs - like people not realizing that wine might have good health effects in one area and bad in another, rather than "scientists can't make up their minds and keep switching". And it all gets too confusing and requires knowledge and skills and considerable effort to do a good job of sorting through.
So let's throw our hands in the air, make some cynical comments, and find some source which will confirm what we want to believe.
Is there any way to foster an iconoclastic democratic technological culture, composed of the normal range of humans in regard to intelligence and temperaments, without falling into this sand trap of overloaded rationality being swamped by irrationality? I don't know, but sometimes I wonder.
And alas, "trust the science" is having an ever weaker constructive influence.
"Journalism' hasn't helped, for sure, and maybe some courses in critical thinking and fact-checking are in order as required before one graduates school. Journalists have, with a few specially trained exceptions (like actual scientists), been properly schooled in how to write about scientific matters, or explain to the reader what 'peer reviewed' or means or how this is an early study for this question so there will be many more to come, so the jury will be out on its meaning for awhile. Of course for many, that level of detail would be too haaaaard to handle, when, oh look! Kim K's got a new ass photo on Twitter! Is that her real ass? Really?
The problem with 'two sciences' is that one of them is clearly faulty and not real science and the other is not. Science will always, for all of us, be a little bit of a matter of faith...especially with science that's too complex for most of us to understand fully (like physics, which is so bizarre it's almost indistinguishable from magic for many of us, and I mean that in the intellectual sense). But the 'science' for, say, Creationism is clearly false and only critical thinking can discern the truth, and that's a skill that's fallen into disfavour and outright hostility. Parents have been fighting it in the schools of years; when I was in college, it was 'Christian' fundamentalists who fought it, now it's the far left and its religious devotion to critical theory who fight it. Thou shalt believe what we teach you, heretic!
I don't know what the answer is, but often I'm glad I'll be dead in another twenty or thirty years. I don't want to stick around to see how badly the left and right have fucked up America, if Putin and Trump don't destroy us first.
I too am an advocate for good science.
Alas, it's not that easy, however. Each side has the "scientists" or "doctors" who they listen to; both sides are pretty convinced that science is on their side. How can we teach people the skills and proclivity to fairly successfully evaluate which alleged science to believe? How can we instill an aesthetic of valuing accuracy over reinforcement of what one already believes? The former is a much more challenging acquired taste, compared to the easy payoffs of the latter.
I used to be a "question authority" person. Well, I still am, but now I'd insert "intelligently" rather than "belligerantly" as so many people now do. What used to make people willing to trust even authorities who tell you something you'd rather not hear - and why is that breaking down now?
Some of it is kind like the Dunning-Kruger effect - we've empowered the common folks to trust their own authority, to take on complex evaluations of truth which are above their pay grade. There are lots of roots to this disdain for outside authority - conflicting health stories in the paper every day, revelations of corrupted science by corporations (tobacco, pharmaceutical), the Tuskegee experiment, even things like mocking the "lab leak hypothesis" of Covid as a wild conspiracy theory only to later find out it was more credible (and from released Fauci emails, something his own advisors found credible at the time he was publicly dismissing it). There are many factors behind these confusing inputs - like people not realizing that wine might have good health effects in one area and bad in another, rather than "scientists can't make up their minds and keep switching". And it all gets too confusing and requires knowledge and skills and considerable effort to do a good job of sorting through.
So let's throw our hands in the air, make some cynical comments, and find some source which will confirm what we want to believe.
Is there any way to foster an iconoclastic democratic technological culture, composed of the normal range of humans in regard to intelligence and temperaments, without falling into this sand trap of overloaded rationality being swamped by irrationality? I don't know, but sometimes I wonder.
And alas, "trust the science" is having an ever weaker constructive influence.
"Journalism' hasn't helped, for sure, and maybe some courses in critical thinking and fact-checking are in order as required before one graduates school. Journalists have, with a few specially trained exceptions (like actual scientists), been properly schooled in how to write about scientific matters, or explain to the reader what 'peer reviewed' or means or how this is an early study for this question so there will be many more to come, so the jury will be out on its meaning for awhile. Of course for many, that level of detail would be too haaaaard to handle, when, oh look! Kim K's got a new ass photo on Twitter! Is that her real ass? Really?
The problem with 'two sciences' is that one of them is clearly faulty and not real science and the other is not. Science will always, for all of us, be a little bit of a matter of faith...especially with science that's too complex for most of us to understand fully (like physics, which is so bizarre it's almost indistinguishable from magic for many of us, and I mean that in the intellectual sense). But the 'science' for, say, Creationism is clearly false and only critical thinking can discern the truth, and that's a skill that's fallen into disfavour and outright hostility. Parents have been fighting it in the schools of years; when I was in college, it was 'Christian' fundamentalists who fought it, now it's the far left and its religious devotion to critical theory who fight it. Thou shalt believe what we teach you, heretic!
I don't know what the answer is, but often I'm glad I'll be dead in another twenty or thirty years. I don't want to stick around to see how badly the left and right have fucked up America, if Putin and Trump don't destroy us first.