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.
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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.”