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Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

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Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#51

Post by ghaff »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #38
ghaff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are misrepresenting the parent which explicitly mentions tradeoffs. Science can help inform those tradeoffs but cannot make them for you. At the risk of reopening a rather heated discussion from yesterday, "science" cannot answer the question of whether it is reasonable to have a policy allowing outdoor dining in, say, NYC. ADDED: Science can (probably and imperfectly) help you estimate how risky a given…

What science can do is provide estimates with error bounds. Sometimes the error bounds are extremely large during a developing situation, and people should absolutely be aware of that. There's a major discussion to be had about risk/reward tradeoffs in the face of high uncertainty. (E.g., the relative cost of mandating face coverings is pretty low, even if the science is temporarily uncertain.) However it becomes imp…

I don't disagree with any of that. Indeed, there are many policies and behaviors that probably fall into the "better safe than sorry" category--given how much noise and uncertainty there is in the data--although even possibly reasonable people will vehemently disagree about what precise policies/behaviors that applies to. (As you see from voting patterns and discussions here.) And, yes, I also agree that face coverings under at least many circumstances fall into that category.

At the same time, there are different tradeoffs because different people (and governments) are approaching risks and rewards differently even if the facts were known with high certainty.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#52

Post by ghaff »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #44
ChefboyOG wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're saying, but I think there's some "both sides"-ism at play here. Yes, there is a level of scientific ignorance displayed when people hand wave and claim "the science" is on their side without actually understanding the science. However, there is a huge qualitative difference here, illustrated even by your example of quarantine recommendations. If we approximate an answer to "What is the optima…

> outright ignoring recommendations Have you ever wondered why it's not terribly controversial to "recommend" seat belts and airbags? But when your "recommendation" is to join a large organization and funnel millions of dollars into it, or to levy massive taxes to prevent "the end of the world as we know it"? Pardon me, but I'm deeply skeptical. Do you remember Solyndra? $500 million loan from the government. Went ba…

>why it's not terribly controversial to "recommend" seat belts

Yet this was not always the case. Growing up wearing seatbelts was the exception, not the norm. Much less the law in some places.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#53

Post by sleepysysadmin »

"Topic" illiteracy is acceptable because people can only know so much. Nobody ever talks about the illiteracy in terms of 'trees are air.' or 'lasers are focused light' both of which are not common knowledge. Most people think Trees come from the ground and lasers are focused sound.

"Scientific Illiteracy" is almost always not about knowledge but rather political policy. Or in his words "scientific facts people may remember."

That's why Amy Coney Barrett's vague non-answer is being construed as science illiteracy. While Kamala Harris is being portrayed as the winner. ACB is not giving any answer, she outright says she's keeping her nose out of the political issue. There's no answer whether or not she believes in climate change.

>Inappropriate claims like this by politicians who want to be on the right side of science but who can’t be bothered to think about what it implies don’t help.

I think this illustrates the problem. This isn't about scientific literacy, it's about politics. This has nothing to do with science.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#54

Post by ghaff »

zaarn wrote: post #36
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #11

Some of the most scientifically illiterate people I've encountered are the people who say things like, "We listen to the science when it comes to COVID-19". Let us be perfectly real. When it comes to political decisions based on forecasts, you are not "listening to science". Science can answer many questions. I can ask it, "How long do I need to fire the engines to achieve this particular orbit", or perhaps "How much…

>"How long should we quarantine to minimize health impact, and maximize economic recovery?" You're not asking a scientific question, you're asking a political one, because you also want the economy to do well, which is political. There are two conflicting questions there, in reality; "How long can we quarantine without affecting the economy?" (Answer is like 0 days) And "How long must we quarantine to eradicate the v…

Apparently on HN, you're not allowed to admit there are tradeoffs in the current situation especially to do things that some consider to be unnecessary.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#55

Post by zaarn »

ghaff wrote: post #54
zaarn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"How long should we quarantine to minimize health impact, and maximize economic recovery?" You're not asking a scientific question, you're asking a political one, because you also want the economy to do well, which is political. There are two conflicting questions there, in reality; "How long can we quarantine without affecting the economy?" (Answer is like 0 days) And "How long must we quarantine to eradicate the v…

Apparently on HN, you're not allowed to admit there are tradeoffs in the current situation especially to do things that some consider to be unnecessary.

You can have tradeoffs but then you're no longer answering scientific questions but either a political question or a question of personal belief (ie, "which you think is better").

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#56

Post by gibspaulding »

gus_massa wrote: post #48
matthewdgreen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Asimov once said: "It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong." Right now there are people running around saying that COVID is as deadly as the flu, that the pandemic was faked, that masks are a conspiracy. You don't have to believe that epidemiologists are 100% correct about every recommendation during a fast-developing emergency in ord…

> Right now there are people running around saying that COVID is as deadly as the flu, ... Which is the current best estimation of the risk of getting covid-19 and dying? Which is the current best estimation of the risk of getting flu and dying?

I actually would have guessed they were pretty close. Apparently I was wrong:

The following claims 5% vs .2%

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-death-rate-us-co...

Then again this chart seems to indicate something closer to 2% of confirmed cases are fatal for Covid:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-deaths-and-cases-co...

I imagine more non-fatal Covid cases go unreported than fatal ones so perhaps even that's high, but it's still close to an order of magnitude worse than the flu.

Edit:

That first source isn't great, and is outdated anyways. This one seems to verify the ~2% for Covid in the US.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#57

Post by mistermann »

ChefboyOG wrote: post #26
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #11

Some of the most scientifically illiterate people I've encountered are the people who say things like, "We listen to the science when it comes to COVID-19". Let us be perfectly real. When it comes to political decisions based on forecasts, you are not "listening to science". Science can answer many questions. I can ask it, "How long do I need to fire the engines to achieve this particular orbit", or perhaps "How much…

I understand what you're saying, but I think there's some "both sides"-ism at play here. Yes, there is a level of scientific ignorance displayed when people hand wave and claim "the science" is on their side without actually understanding the science. However, there is a huge qualitative difference here, illustrated even by your example of quarantine recommendations. If we approximate an answer to "What is the optima…

> I understand what you're saying, but I think there's some "both sides"-ism at play here.

Why do these conversations "always" go like this, even on a site as rational as HN? If we can't even discuss these very real issues here without rhetoric, how do we expect politicians and the masses (and here I include literal deniers) to do so? Because that is what we are asking of them, is it not? To stop being stupid (which they are doing, to a very large degree), and to start being rational?

Also: why is an article as reasonable as this [flagged] (and therefore removed from the public discourse here)? We ask others to stop living in an information bubble, yet are we willing to do so ourselves?

Might this flagging (of which this is but one of who knows how many instances - HN users shall not know such things) hint at some underlying human characteristic that is a root cause of why we cannot have nice things? Obviously speculative, but it seems reasonable to me.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#58

Post by dan-robertson »

Why is literature illiteracy so acceptable?

There’s two levels of scientific illiteracy. One is in the general population, but the general population also has, for example, literature illiteracy too. The other is the topic of C.P. Snow’s famous Two Cultures essay, where the generally well educated members of society are separated into those who know about science but not the humanities and the opposite. It certainly used to be the case that those educated members of society could discuss both topics. I’ve heard a claim that one thing is the replacement of any kind of ontology for science with mathematics (ie you don’t have a theory for why the world is but merely that some equations hold), and this mathematics isn’t easy—you need a lot more than school mathematics to understand Maxwell’s equations for example.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#59

Post by erdos4d »

I think this whole topic misses the elephant in the room: STEM is a genetic lottery that our current economic and social system rewards with a better life and more resources. About 90% of the population are the losers in that game and they damn well know it. When humans get excluded like that, they often resent those who got the better deal and will work to nullify their advantage. With science, you can't really say "oh, that doesn't matter", so about the only realistic option is to not care about it, or proudly proclaim you don't know much about it, hence the behavior the author has witnessed. If society would even out the system, I would bet much of the impetus for this anti-science backlash would disappear.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#60

Post by ghaff »

zaarn wrote: post #55
ghaff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently on HN, you're not allowed to admit there are tradeoffs in the current situation especially to do things that some consider to be unnecessary.

You can have tradeoffs but then you're no longer answering scientific questions but either a political question or a question of personal belief (ie, "which you think is better").

Of course. Science can help you e.g. estimate risk. But balancing that risk against other factors has to be a political and/or personal tradeoff. There's no way it could be otherwise. Science, even if it could provide perfect information, doesn't have the tools to make policy decisions. Whether schools should be wide-open, hybrid, or remote only is not a scientific decision although, of course, whatever scientific data is known or thought to be known should of course factor into any decision.
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