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Smart People, Dumb Beliefs
Fark linked up this Scientific American editorial by Michael Schermer that attempts to explain why otherwise smart people believe dumb things:
Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational explanation, regardless of what we previously believed. Most of us, most of the time, come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning.
Extra-snarky comments from the yellow-dog peanut gallery to follow.
I especially liked this though:
The key here is teaching how science works, not just what science has discovered ... Students are taught what to think but not how to think.
I often knew more about science than any of my High School teachers, but I didn't learn how science actually worked until I was a junior in college. I only stumbled on it, by myself, because it helped me fight with fundies and Jesus freaks over evolution. Science fairs would've been a breeze if we'd been taught how science works instead of what it has discovered. Thanks to our hidebound and ineffective education system, we have tons of otherwise intelligent people believing in things like ghosts, astrology, and alien abduction.
I was about to say, "no wonder the world is afraid of us", but then I thought about what the rest of the world believes in, and realized we may be one of the more rational groups in this monkey pit. If that doesn't scare you you're not paying attention.
Wow - I hadn't ever put it in such a context. The most interesting part there wasn't that we don't learn the scientific method fully enough, it was that smart people just use their brains to defend normally unteneble beliefs.
Posted by: Ron on April 7, 2004 06:19 PMScience makes the assumption that we can only believe anything we can physically/mathematically prove/verify. Some things just do not fit this criteria for testing and proving (God, ghosts, telepathy as of yet).
That does not mean that the initial assumption is correct, only that other things do not fit within its framework. If you draw a box around an object, you can assume nothing exists outside of it, but that assumption is quite faulty.
Posted by: Sherri on April 7, 2004 10:46 PM"You draw a box around an object, you can assume nothing exists outside of it, but that assumption is quite faulty."
It is also scientifically invalid, as well.
The only assumption in science is that there are no assumptions.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian on April 8, 2004 08:04 AMThat's pretty much the assumption that is made in statistical thermodynamics when you study a system. It gives us a lot of general guidelines that are used far beyond that situation.
Conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, superposition... there are all sorts of things we assume b/c it makes the problem easier yet haven't necessarially been proven.
And relying on assumptions to tell others that they are wrong is huey. It's about as silly some view Creationist theory to be. That was my main point, anyway.
Posted by: Sherri on April 8, 2004 11:18 AMyes - I get the whole problem with assumptions thing, however, if you don't start with things you can reliably repeat, you can't make things work. For instance, all of the scientific 'laws' that you mentioned are used because they are useful. Sure, there are scientists/professors/teachers who'll say that you can't break them - but they may have been the same people in the 40's who said you couldn't go faster than the speed of sound.
As for using these assumptions to prove things, if they fit the model and your end result works, then the assumption may be valid. There's a chance it might not be, however (again, planes that tried to break the speed of sound ended up crashing - thusly 'proving' an incorrect assumption. After that, we had delta winged aircraft that could reliably break the limit). However - when you prove something, you do also prove something else wrong. Thesis and antithesis. Therefore, you have to use assumptions to prove people wrong. However, you should use correct assumptions...
Posted by: Ron on April 8, 2004 05:39 PM