[HN Gopher] How trust undermines science
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How trust undermines science
Author : bschne
Score : 35 points
Date : 2022-01-22 20:53 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.worksinprogress.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.worksinprogress.co)
| gumby wrote:
| Part of the problem is how people learn what science is. Science,
| despite the name, is really all about doubt. Unfortunately in
| school it's taught as certainty.
|
| In school you do "experiments" and if the answer doesn't match
| what is in the book you are marked down. Often you have to
| memorize a bunch of assertions or even simply names, without any
| epistemological context.
|
| Then in the real world you discover that scientists contradict
| each other or even themselves. They don't say things straight out
| but are always hedging ("high probability") or even admitting
| they don't know!
| einpoklum wrote:
| The "science" derived from ultra-skewed samples collected by grad
| students or even tenured academics for social scenario
| experimentation is inherently shaky and does not merit much
| trust.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| "Trust", when applied in general, is just a label for the
| cohesion aspect of group dynamics. Group dynamics in humans lead
| them to think and act in a cohesive way. Critical thinking
| questions the foundations of group cohesion, so thoughts critical
| of the group are shunned.
|
| Science is a system led by humans, hence group dynamics apply.
| But science is supposed to re-test assumptions and resist
| inherent trust. Yet science is also about building on top of
| trusted assumptions. Science is therefore an inherently flawed
| process that will always lead to over-dependence on the
| antithesis of its aims.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| We should respect people questioning science as long as they are
| doing it in good faith and are showing willingness to learn. We
| should even respect flat earthers and climate change deniers.
| They improve rigour and identify blindspots.
| amelius wrote:
| I would respect flat earthers if they published in peer-
| reviewed journals.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| > We should even respect flat earthers
|
| No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very
| debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.
| golergka wrote:
| Those people are obviously less smart and educated than any
| rational man who seriously pondered whether the Earth's flat
| and could be bothered to do a couple of simple experiments.
|
| But at the same time they're step ahead of majority of the
| population that just believed what they were told as kids and
| never, once in their life, expressed any doubt in it, or
| thought about how it was proven, or how they would be able to
| check that proof themselves.
| tempestn wrote:
| Strongly disagree. Rational people do not feel the need to
| prove every fact independently for themselves. Instead,
| they develop a rational system of qualified trust. You
| don't blindly trust expert consensus, but you do weigh
| likelihood based on the source. Flat Earthers would be
| better off if they simply accepted the consensus rather
| than being mislead into believing they're coming to their
| own conclusions based on evidence.
| DarylZero wrote:
| But most people aren't rational and don't prove any fact
| independently for themselves, or have the capability to
| do so. They believe in what they're told. They were told
| god and heaven are real so they believe it. Their
| scientific beliefs are similarly founded.
| tempestn wrote:
| My point is that the solution is not to teach people to
| come to their own conclusions, but rather to determine
| how much trust is due to various sources of information.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I think this is closer to the truth.
|
| I'm struggling to find it, but an article I read and found
| enlightening explained how there was seemingly a uniform
| struggle with education in every story the author was told by
| the people she talked to at a flat earther's convention.
|
| They all had some profoundly negative encounter with the
| education establishment, and usually as a result of a
| learning disability that they had.
|
| It's anecdotal and not a complete view, but a mistrust of
| academia seems requisite for many of these conspiracies to
| take root in a person's mind, and that seems pathologic to
| me.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I'm with the other poster, I don't see how flat Earth is
| inherently crazier to believe than any of the large number of
| religions that people identify with.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| People believing in a flat earth has no impact on you and how
| you live your life. Focus not on what you think they need,
| but on your own needs.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I find it hard to believe most flat earthers are perfectly
| normal people living well balanced lives, when you believe
| that literally every government, institution, physicist,
| airplane pilot, airline, map maker, etc etc is all on some
| big great conspiracy that the globe is roughly spherical.
| daenz wrote:
| >debilitating
|
| What about believing a bizarre idea is debilitating enough to
| require mental health intervention?
| YEwSdObPQT wrote:
| bnamx wrote:
| DarylZero wrote:
| > What percentage of people can prove from first principles
| that the earth is a sphere
|
| There are photographs of Earth from space.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Should we respect people who market medical solutions as long
| as they exercise the purest of good faith and the most open of
| minds? The main difference between medicine and other
| professions is merely that the sakes are higher.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Climate Change "deniers" like Richard Mueller was, are useful,
| flat earthers and climate change grifters solely confuse the
| public and distract (usually extremely overworked and
| underpaid) scientists.
| mmastrac wrote:
| > We should even respect flat earthers
|
| You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any
| fruitful debate
| YEwSdObPQT wrote:
| ravenstine wrote:
| To many, though perhaps not most, organized religion is seen
| as equally ridiculous as flat-earth theory. Are religious
| people illiterate or not worth debating or worthy of some
| basic respect?
| thethirdone wrote:
| Literacy does not imply believing in the round earth. Proving
| the earth is round to yourself without trusting outside
| influences is not a trivial pursuit.
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| Fairly trivial: https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dns/teache
| rsguide/MeasECAct...
| thethirdone wrote:
| Unfortunately, atmospheric effects make it hard to
| completely remove doubt. This is definitely evidence that
| round earth is true, but not conclusive.
|
| It also requires you being able to derive those equations
| which is more than many people would be comfortable with.
|
| Especially if you think that "they" are lying to you,
| this could be a repeatable but cherry-picked piece of
| evidence that has a requires a more complicated
| explanation.
| mhh__ wrote:
| These days all you need is someone with a phone and a stick
| in another country to perform Erastosthenes's experiment,
| right?
| 0x7E3 wrote:
| Doesn't Erastosthenes's experiment merely allow you to
| calculate the size of the earth if you already accept
| that it is spherical? As I understand the experiment it
| does not (nor was it meant to) prove that the earth is a
| sphere.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| The thing is that functionally speaking, the flat Earth
| movement isn't about proving whether the Earth is round or
| flat. It's about camaraderie in the quest for the hidden
| knowledge that "they" don't want you to have.
| pintxo wrote:
| Take your next vacation at the sea, watch ships approaching
| the Harbour not just growing in size but also appearing to
| rise up from the water. Voila
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If you drop water onto a flat sheet of glass, surface
| tension will give its surface a lenticular shape.
| 0x7E3 wrote:
| If that's all it takes to prove the earth is round it
| seems consistent to accept Fata Morgana as proof that
| gravity can fail once you get far enough away from the
| coast.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| It's much harder to prove the Earth is flat. You run into
| really basic questions like, where is the edge, and why
| does no one find it?
|
| The theory only "holds together", with the assumption that
| everyone that works in any field even vaguely related to
| travel or communication is part of a conspiracy to hide the
| truth.
| nimish wrote:
| It's a rather enlightening exercise to work out how and why
| the earth is curved purely from the perspective of a human
| able to see maybe a small patch.
|
| This is directly analogous to how general relativity models
| spacetime as being intrinsically curved, and you need to be
| able to do the same sort of thinking without being able to
| immerse the manifold in a higher dimensional space.
|
| So it's not exactly stupid to pretend to be naive.
|
| Also, why and by how much is the sun bigger than the moon?
| How far are they away from earth? We've known for thousands
| of years. It's not exactly obvious to derive this purely from
| geometry.
| version_five wrote:
| It's an interesting thought exercise to take some belief and
| ask yourself how you know, and asking until you get to some
| first principles or axioms or articles of faith. Part of that
| exercise could include coming up with plausible alternate
| explanations for what you perceive.
|
| Flat earth is just a ridiculous version of such a thought
| experiment. It's a good exercise to make sure your
| understanding of the world around you is based on some
| consistent logic and not faith. Those who reject the idea of
| the earth being flat just because "science tells us" have no
| intellectual high ground over devout flat earthers, if they
| exist
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Exactly. Believing in narrated science is no different than
| believing the mumbo jumbo they throw at you in scifi
| movies. For me the halting problem seems like common sense
| / basic science but it's not for everybody. That's where we
| need to recognise that what's obvious or basic to us isn't
| so for others. And that is a good thing!
| jltsiren wrote:
| Most of the time, "science tells us" means "this question
| is not sufficiently interesting or relevant, and human life
| is several orders of magnitude too short to question
| everything". We all resort to "trusting the experts" in
| almost every action we take, because there are no feasible
| alternatives.
|
| Believing in flat earth is basically a result of poorly
| calibrated trust heuristics. People may believe in it due
| to lack of education, for social/political/ideological
| reasons, or because they are contrarians. Or due to a
| random chance because the question is not particularly
| relevant to them.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I actually love flat earthers BECAUSE it forces me to
| actually think about how "I Know" the world is round.
|
| I bet a majority of people who are anti-flat earthers could
| not actually "prove" the earth is round without immediately
| appealing to authority.
|
| I've talked to flat earthers, (both probably real and some
| probably trolling), and it can be a fun intellectual
| exercise to debate.
| dools wrote:
| You are allowed to appeal to authority. The "Argument
| from Authority" fallacy only applies when you appeal to a
| false authority, such as listening to your yoga
| instructor's opinions on vaccination.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
| GolangProject wrote:
| There are clear cases where "true authorities", however
| defined, have been wrong about all kinds of subjects, so
| the fallacy still applies. If you can only justify a
| belief by appealing to the assumed superior knowledge of
| experts and specialists, you cannot justify that belief
| as strongly as someone who can argue from first
| principles or a clear chain of evidence. The appeal to
| authority is not necessarily fallacious, but it's _more
| likely_ to be so.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| People on HN tend to hate appeals to scientific
| authority, but you are right. Our resources for obtaining
| out own knowledge and expertise are limited, and trusting
| other experts is a useful heuristic that, while
| imperfect, is more effective than alternatives.
|
| Anyone who claims they have the requisite expertise and
| resources to verify most scientific facts on their own is
| lying.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Faith and trust are subtly different things, and trust is
| both a skill and talent. When a poker player makes bets,
| one of the things they do is ask how much they trust a
| reading of the situation, and often times that's the best
| they've got. A poker player also does not rely on axioms
| because almost all propositions they could come up with
| would have no answer.
|
| For most people, life is more like poker than math.
| DarylZero wrote:
| That's not really how high level poker is played -- it
| actually is all about the math. That's why top poker
| players are ALSO top players online where you can't see
| the other players.
| threatofrain wrote:
| No, it's not all about math, and there is a disparity
| between online play and real life tournament play.
|
| It's not all about math and hence only heads-up play is
| truly mastered by poker bots. If the only thing you have
| in your pocket is math, then you are missing out on
| advantages. In online play people also purchase large
| databases of player histories.
| tarboreus wrote:
| You're saying you should only respect literate people. I say
| all people are fundamentally worthy of respect.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Why? Why shouldn't respect be earned?
| tremon wrote:
| Are you saying there's nothing anybody can do to lose your
| respect?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The problem with the flat earthers, and the more conspiratorial
| portion of the climate deniers, is it's not clear even the
| people making the claims believe it. They don't seem to mind
| ideas that contradict theirs, so long as the central belief
| that there is some sort of vast conspiracy is upheld.
|
| You can't really engage with people who aren't all that
| interested in what's actually true.
| hhs wrote:
| Maybe, but many times media groups take advantage of this to
| create a false balance:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
| kodah wrote:
| I think the major hurdle to that statement is that false
| balances are hard to quantify in the moment. Worse, when
| "false balance" is claimed and it turns out that the popular
| belief at the time was both wrong and influenced in some way
| it damages public trust even further.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| aaron695 wrote:
| paulsutter wrote:
| Cached from Google:
|
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bU7J5R...
| pphysch wrote:
| Is it a matter of "trust" or a matter of misaligned interests &
| incentives?
|
| Person A approves Person B's manuscript/grant/etc. They do it
| because it's good for them and their careers, not because it's
| "good for science" (whatever that means nowadays).
| CivBase wrote:
| It's not just replication that's the problem. It's poorly
| designed studies, intended from the start to support a narrative,
| whose results are poorly interpreted by members of the media for
| their own benefit.
| hirundo wrote:
| "To me, the phenomenon of widespread trust in goofy claims is
| much more interesting than the fact of goofy claims not being
| real. What does it mean to trust science?"
|
| Science is a system to distinguish between a fact and a
| shibboleth. That process is at the core of epistemology, and it
| is always non-trivial, because goofy is in the eye of the
| beholder. Whatever your politics or religion, you can easily see
| these shibboleths in other tribes, but they are usually invisible
| in your own. To apply science to your own tribe's shibboleths is
| an act of distrust.
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