The "Scientific Impotence" Excuse 892
chichilalescu writes "I've had the feeling for a long time that people refuse to listen to scientists. The following is from an article on Ars Technica: 'It's hardly a secret that large segments of the population choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs: economic, political, religious, or otherwise. But many studies have indicated that these same people aren't happy with viewing themselves as anti-science, which can create a state of cognitive dissonance. That has left psychologists pondering the methods that these people use to rationalize the conflict. A study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology [abstract here] takes a look at one of these methods, which the authors term "scientific impotence" — the decision that science can't actually address the issue at hand properly.' The study found that 'regardless of whether the information presented confirmed or contradicted [the subjects'] existing beliefs, all of them came away from the reading with their beliefs strengthened."
Also a pretty well known fact... (Score:1, Interesting)
...that challenging someone who has cognitive dissonance strengthens their will. We're stubborn people, our heads are full of tangled webs of experiences from childhood to the present that forges what we want to believe and what we'll accept and how we'll view it. Most people have their minds made up on a subject well before they see any actual data. It all explains why so many really stupid things happen.
Re:Religion (Score:1, Interesting)
But seriously. You're absolutely right. I won't even make any arguments here I will simply refer everyone to Richard Dawkins wonderful book on the subject "The God Delusion". I especially like his Darwinian explanation of why religion is so successful within our species. The next step in human evolution is realizing that there is no god and being OK with that. Really, we don't need him/her.
not really new (Score:1, Interesting)
This is actually not new (although the name is new to me at least). Back in the 90s they did studies on various hot button political issues like the death penalty. They gave the same sheet of facts to death penalty supporters and opponents and told them to read them. When they came out, both sides claimed their views had been strengthened.
We are conditioned to disagree with "science" (Score:1, Interesting)
Not All Science (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't need a psychology degree to tell you right now what the problem is: religion.
I think religion is a factor, but there's something else going on because while most *Americans* identify with Christianity, actual Bible Thumpers and indeed regular church goers are a minority.
First, distrust of science is primarily in the softer sciences like psychology, environmental sciences, and such; no one really questions the atom smashers, the "high-tech" scientists. I think that many people believe that these "soft scientists" are not actually objective, and let "wishy-washy" environmentalism and other perceived leftyism influence their findings; that they set out with an subjective objective and mold their science to fit their personal views.
Clearly, in many cases, this is true, and it has tainted all "soft science".
Cargo Cult Science (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem is with everybody, including "scientists" themselves, as Richard Feynman pointed out,
... I never pay any attention to anything by "experts." I calculate everything myself... I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions.
And he elaborates more in his lecture (and an adapted chapter in his book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman [gorgorat.com]):
Re:Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
What if that ideology is rationalism?
Re:Blind Faith != Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
find me one that hasn't been modified to suit a political end? Christanity has had whole swaths of books removed from their bible because it didnt agree with the pope at the time, in fact, all of the big three have gone throug massive revisions over the centuries.
I am not aware of a single recognised religion that has not either been changed from within, or forced changes from outside to suit a political agenda. I would be more than interested if you could list some...
Re:Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
You seem to assume that "science" gives mankind an escape from presuppositions. But that's easily demonstrated not to be true. There are no such thing as "brute facts", whose Truth somehow transcends interpretation. There are only interpreted facts.
Everyone has faith. Even a non-religious person presupposes certain things. For instance:
etc. Such things are necessary in order to even begin thinking. Like the religious person who grounds their beliefs on the scientifically-unprovable faith in a deity, the non-religious scientist grounds his beliefs on his own scientifically-unprovable presuppositions.
Everyone does it. Your argument can't be "I have science while you have only faith." It has to be "My unprovable presuppositions are more valid than your unprovable presuppositions for the following reasons..."
Re:Religion (Score:0, Interesting)
I think it's more basic than that. Any ideology followed closely and long enough leads to unthinking behavior and beliefs.
Including... science.
Re:Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
"[T]ake the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged." - Terry Pratchett, Death, The Hogfather
There is nothing stupid about believing in something larger than yourself. As Pratchett says, ideals like justice and mercy can not be detected scientifically, but even the staunchest atheist may believe in such things. It is not religion per se that is the problem. The problem is holding on to anachronistic ideologies because they are more comfortable than the truth. But even the non-religious have been known to do that from time to time.
Re:Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree.
I think the open and obvious manipulation of scientific data to market and sell products is what has empowered the modern evangelical idiocy in the United States. If you want to see the credibility of science rendered impotent, read some patent drug marketing materials. Another great example is baby rearing advice. Compare the scientifically derived advice given by doctors for infant care today. Then talk to someone with a 10 year old. Then talk to your mom.
Even science is vulnerable (Score:3, Interesting)
Science like many other things has it's own internal politics. Unfortunately this can mean that whilst the ideal of science is great, real world science is as vulnerable to the same level of establishment dogma as politics and religion. For example if your beliefs (e.g. not agreeing with string theory) doesn't match up with those who are leading your department the chances of you getting tenure are slim to none. Similarly with funding and access to resources, if you have a hypothesis that the majority of your peers disagree with, you're going to have a hard time getting the funding or access to the equipment you need.
We should always aspire to the ideals of science but remember why the Royal Academy has a motto of "Nullius in Verba". Otherwise, we become as dogmatic as those we sneer at.
You say there are two sides. That's the problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
People's understanding of issues is heavily determined by how they are framed. The frame sets the questions, which in turn point to the answers. Answering "Which side of the issue are you on?" means choosing one of exactly two sides.
Once an issue is politicized like this it ceases to be a question of truth and becomes a matter of identity. You may ask, "Do you believe in evolution?" But that is not the question many people will answer. What they really hear is, "Do you believe in evolution, or are a God-fearing person like us?" Then their answer is not so much a negative rejection of evolution as a positive affirmation of who they are and their membership in a community.
How did evolution become incompatible with being part of a community? This happened not by explicit argument, but by subtle framing of politics. You say that there are two sides to an issue. But that division into two is exactly the moment of politicization. Which side are you on? Are you with us or against us? Do you believe in evolution or do you believe in God?
Would you sacrifice your friends and your community and your sense of who you are in order to believe in an abstract theory that has no bearing on your day-to-day life? I think it is perfectly rational to say no regardless of the evidence. We need community to give life meaning. It's in our blood as human beings. But community life is impoverished in our lonely society. We cling to it when we find it.
Nor does this apply only to religious folk. Say you had a revelatory experience of God that showed evolution to be false. Imagine the social and personal implications of denying evolution. Would you believe, or would you imagine it was a hallucination? As an atheist, I can imagine the former would require a wrenching reconstruction of my identity and relationships to other people.
What you say is true in general: people tend to choose the evidence that suits them (though this is not symmetrical: some people, groups and arguments are more honest than others). My point, however, is that the logic you are criticizing is embedded in the very language of your post. Your acceptance that there are two sides - not one, not three - is where the slippery slope begins.
Re:Religion (Score:2, Interesting)
Good god, then it's even WORSE!
For an example, check out these numnuts. [overcomingbias.com]
There is no "rationalism," there are only imaginations of rationalism -- and those imaginations are generally pretty poor stuff for the soul.
The idea is that if you look and act like a smug selfish conniving snivling jerk that spends his (and it's generally his) time coming up with mathematical theologies of social networks and bayesian systems, that you're somehow more "rational." Dios, it's gross.
Seriously here, though:
The problem is the ends. Rationality can never be for just itself; Rationality is always towards some purpose. And what purpose would one orient their rationality to? Well, a lot of people think that money and power are the ultimate purposes, so they judge themselves and others by how far they get in this "rational" persuit. Then there are other people who say, "Well, actually, the goal is some equitable distribution of power and influence (and what have you,)" and so there you end up with liberal philosophies or efforts to make the middle class swell or what have you.
Would-be "Rationalists" need to identify what they live for, which will not in-itself be a "rational" thing. It won't defy reason or logic or what have you, but it won't be derivable or even based in reason or logic. It'll be an imaginary thing, or an imaginary society, or an imaginary world, or an imaginary person, most likely -- but an imaginary thing worth loving.
The athiests I know all have comic books in their back pockets. They should just fess up where their hearts are, rather than hiding behind the facad of "rationality."
Re:Religion (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps accounting isn't the best example for your point -> ever hear of GAAP? Accounting, deciding what is and isn't an asset or liability, or how to depreciate specific things, or what buckets to put certain expenses, is very very much an ideology.
I'd also make the assertion that engineering, in specific cases, often ends up being ideology, particularly in the realm of computer engineering, and all the various flavors of metrics and measurements and process that your freshly minted MBA will want to try out on his next programming team.
In the end, you're right, science is a tool, but many people who claim to be "following the science" are only doing so out of convenience, not because they've applied any of the methodology. Science is about falsifiability, and unless someone can tell you what kinds of observations they would accept as refutations of their theories, they're not doing science.
Re:Religion (Score:4, Interesting)
Similarly, arithmetic is the ideology of two-column accounting, and mechanics is the ideology of, say, mechanical engineering.
Science as an ideology (Score:3, Interesting)
It didn't begin that way, but it is becoming one.
Please explain your position. I am not rejecting your idea, but I am not inclined to fill in the blanks in your argument, either.
Re:Most people... (Score:2, Interesting)
Some people just can't handle the idea that Pluto's original classification as a "planet" was a mistake, after having been taught that it was a planet for their entire lives.
This is the kind of bogus bullshit that makes people discount "science". Calling Pluto a planet or not is simply a matter of nomenclature, not some deep scientific secret knowledge of which those who call it a planet are unaware. When any idiot can come along and change the definition of words, that doesn't mean people using the more established definition are now "wrong".
The fact is that, by the "new" definition of a planet, Neptune isn't a planet either, because it hasn't cleared its orbit of Pluto which crosses it. Does this mean that Neptune isn't a planet? No, it just means the new definition is stupid and wrong. At least the old definition was arbitrary, which is better than being wrong. If a new definition for the word was needed, those creating the definition should have at least done a better job than the old one.
What you "wise" people don't seem to grasp is that in many cases the reason you have disagreements with others is that they have information or logic systems of which you are either unaware of simply don't comprehend. "Planet" simply means (or at least used to mean) wanderer (vs. the "fixed" stars in the night sky). By that definition, Pluto was a planet (and so was Ceres for that matter). When you can change the definitions of the words other people are using, of course you can make it look like they are simpletons with no grasp of the subject matter.
Re:Most people... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no polite way to tell someone that the science directly conflicts with the religious/political/social tenets that they've been taught were sacred since they were a child. It's not the understanding that's the problem. It's the *implications* that people have a hard time accepting.
I also think there's another side of that problem that people fail to consider: It's often not the bare fact of "what something is" that people are afraid of losing, but the "how do I lead my life" implications that go along with it. Religious people aren't just upset because you're telling them that their imaginary friend isn't real, but because you're simultaneously telling them that they can't rely on any of their beliefs or any of their existing moral/ethical views. It occurs to them that you're saying, "Every single thing that you think is wrong, and the life you're living is bad."
In a religious person's mind, arguing that God doesn't exist is essentially arguing that their entire community and social support network is stupid and meaningless. The 10 commandments mean nothing, so it's fine to murder and steal. Jesus was just some guy, so when he instructs you to be humble, there's no real reason for listening to him. You're turning that person's world upside-down, and it's no wonder that they argue back.
And I know, dear atheist reader, you think the whole thing is silly. After all, you an have morality without God, right? Well, part of the problem is to a lot of religious people, they don't know how far the questioning needs to go. It's kind of like if I built a house out of wood, and you said, "wood is no good, you should use steel." That may be true, but I'd need to tear the whole house down and rebuild to rectify it. And it's possible that I could tear my house down and rebuild it with steel, only to find that the wood house was better.
A lot of people aren't ready or willing to tear their own religious lives down in the hopes that rebuilding their lives with "science" will be better.
Re:Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you this up in arms when it comes to attempting to use religion as a hammer to force another ideology upon a skeptical populace that will result in worsened economic conditions and reduced freedoms for that populace?
Not trolling; I'm genuinely curious.
--Jeremy
Re:Religion (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's more basic than that. Any ideology followed closely and long enough leads to unthinking behavior and beliefs.
Including... science.
Except science isn't an ideology.
Except that many DO make "science" an ideology, particularly when attempting to use science as a hammer to force another ideology upon a skeptical populace that will result in worsened economic conditions and reduced freedoms for that populace.
Strat
Why is this modded "Troll"?? I'm genuinely curious.
It's not like this hasn't happened many times in the past, and will most likely continue in the future.
Is it now heresy to suggest that politicians politicize science and so do ideologically-driven scientists?
Strat
Because it's a transparent shot at climate change science, implying that it's all a conspiracy. Apparently practically everyone who is qualified to interpret the data have conspired to deceive the entire world about the subject. I can't think of a single scientific organization in the world that has researched the subject that doesn't agree with the IPCC findings. Yet some folks with no background in the relevant subjects, who haven't done any actual research, feel that they can dispute the findings and allege all sorts of malfeasance. THAT is not science. That's just people with vested interests or ideological loyalties defending their turf and trying to spread FUD in order to prevent any action being taken.
They don't have scientific evidence to back up their claims, they just want to sow doubt. Do they really care if they're wrong? No. They'll simply blame the government for not acting to prevent whatever problems arise, just as the "drill baby drill" folks are now blaming the government for not doing more to prevent the gulf spill and for not fixing it faster now. This, despite the fact that they would vehemently oppose regulations on industry that might affect their bottom line, and that they always claim that government is generally incompetent and industry knows best how to do their jobs. It's all quite self-serving.
Re:Blind Faith != Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you misunderstood the intent of the phrase "political influences" - the goal of people who think this way isn't to add modifications based on the influence of modern politics, it's to try and subtract inferred old modifications based on the influence of older politics.
I sympathize with the fear of constructing "piecemeal" religion. If your epistemology leads you to twenty tenets, and you later discover that three of those were wrong, simply cutting back to seventeen tenets is only reasonable if you've also figured out what the flaw in your epistemology was. However:
In order to criticize people who don't treat their whole religion literally, you reference a parable, a religious story which is literally fictional and is intended to be interpreted metaphorically? I hope you see the irony.
Re:Religion (Score:3, Interesting)
What if that ideology is rationalism?
Having rationalism as an ideology often leads to an irrational belief in the power of rational thought. That is, that rational thought can and should be used to solve every problem.
A perfect example of this is socialism. Today, many think of socialism as a movement towards social justice (irregardless of the means), but if we go back a hundred years, the core of socialism was social planning, that is, the idea that a society can be engineered from the ground up, using the power of the rational mind. The most important arguments for socialism were rational (like "production can be made much more efficient with central planning than the chaotic market can ever hope to achieve"), and the most important arguments against socialism were arational ("people have a right to freedom and their own lives regardless of the common good"). It wasn't until socialism had been tried in practice under a few decades it began to dawn on intellectuals that the chaotic, arational market was actually more effiecient than a rational, planned society.
That is not to say that rationalism leads to socialism. Depending on what assumptions you start out with, an exaggerated belief in the rational mind can lead to the opposite conclusion. Quite a few libertarians believe that it is possible to re-engineer society from the ground up without taking into account the arationality of man - that we are all guided by arational traditions, beliefs and morals, many of which are essential to the function of society.
A third example of the exaggerated belief in rational thought is the artificial intelligence research of the 1950's and 1960's. Leading AI researchers assumed that the essence of the human mind was rational thought, so they tried to model AI with formal logic and linguistics. It failed miserably, since so much of how we work is based on arational processes. For example, decision-making involves so much emotion, that if the centre of the brain that assesses the emotional impact of a situation is damaged, people become severely hampered in their ability to make decisions - even though they can rationally weigh the different alternatives for and against each other, they don't know when one alternative outweighs the others sufficiently to decide in its favour.
Re:Most people... (Score:3, Interesting)
This assumes that "planet" refers to any entity that fulfils certain qualifications. However, we can just as easily define "planet" to refer to a particular set of entities.
Basically, it's "planet is an object that's spherical due to self-gravitation, orbits Sun, and has cleared its orbit" vs. "planet is Mars, Mercurius Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptunus or Pluto". Both are perfectly valid definitions; one is more general than other, but that doesn't mean that the other couldn't be used.
What "greater understanding of the universe" is gained by redefining words in common usage? If I insist that it's incorrect to refer to both spiders and houseflies as "bugs" because houseflies are insects and spiders are not, is it a mark of stupidity that people ignore me?
Regular people aren't getting worked up over change of nomenclature. Some of the scientists are getting worked up because regular people are ignoring their change of nomenclature and continue referring to Pluto as a planet. And you are getting worked up for nothing.