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Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

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Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#81

Post by Izkata »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #37
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…

> 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". This feels like a straw man to me. First, let's be very clear: There is absolutely a cohort of people out there who are objectively denying th…

> Further, "the science" is very clear: lockdowns are effective, masks help, social distancing helps, contact tracing helps, and so on.

Of your list of things, masks and lockdowns aren't very clear - they don't seem to be helping given the resurgence this fall. Lockdowns might even have made it worse, pushing people indoors where it spreads easier and there's less sunlight, instead of encouraging social distancing in wide-open outdoor areas.

If anything, it seems COVID-19 is seasonal, and introduction of lockdowns and masks in the spring just coincided with when it was waning anyway.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#82

Post by thu2111 »

gibspaulding wrote: post #56
gus_massa wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ev…

I think you're mixing up IFR with CFR.

Current best estimate of COVID IFR is 0.27%, which is basically the same as flu.

https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

However the CI is extremely wide.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#83

Post by Tainnor »

thu2111 wrote: post #79
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…

Conversely, outright ignoring recommendations about COVID or climate or something similar, simply because "science isn't always right" or because you "aren't a scientist" is a different thing altogether. Isn't that a strawman though? How many people actually give an answer like "science isn't always right" when choosing to ignore recommendations about COVID? Perhaps it's the circles I move in, but most people who thi…

This is not my experience at all.

I've seen many people opposing masks and lockdowns due to dangerous half-knowledge and appealing to "that one doctor is also saying that the recommendations are junk (but they are shunned by the mainstream press)".

Of course, we usually find our own reasoning valid and logical and tend to think that the other side can't give "reasoned and deep explanations". I can't claim to be unbiased here.

I'll just note that, from a Bayesian perspective, "trusting experts" is usually not the worst idea and something we're basically forced to do every day anyway. I listen to quite a lot of what some of the experts way, but of course, I am completely unable to independently verify that what they say is valid - without decades of experience in the field, this is simply impossible.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#84

Post by bjt2n3904 »

dang wrote: post #78
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #17

As an addendum. Many people (quite frankly) worship "Science" like it is a benevolent deity. You just have to "listen" to it, and good results will come out, bettering society. But terrible things happen when you try to apply science to a field that it should not apply to. Science can tell you how to do something effectively. It will not tell you whether or not it is good or beneficial to do a certain thing. There wa…

What you've done in this subthread breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to them, no matter how right you are or feel you are about a topic? Note these: " Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. " " Comments should get more thoughtfu…

With all due respect, I think you have read something I did not intend in this comment. Abortion is not necessarily genocide, but Iceland's specific application of it to those with Down's Syndrome is the textbook definition of eugenics.

I can clearly see how an unqualified "abortion is genocide" would be an unrelated controversy, but within the context, my point was to illustrate that a naive understanding of science as something that consumes data and produces a better society is also scientific illiteracy.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#85

Post by dang »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #84
dang wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've done in this subthread breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to them, no matter how right you are or feel you are about a topic? Note these: " Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. " " Comments should get more thoughtfu…

With all due respect, I think you have read something I did not intend in this comment. Abortion is not necessarily genocide, but Iceland's specific application of it to those with Down's Syndrome is the textbook definition of eugenics. I can clearly see how an unqualified "abortion is genocide" would be an unrelated controversy, but within the context, my point was to illustrate that a naive understanding of science…

I was making more superficial points: (1) changing the subject to abortion already breaks the site guideline against generic flamewar tangents, and (2) a bomb-throwing word like 'genocide' is a flame multiplier that breaks the guidelines even further. Nothing good can come of this in an internet thread.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#86

Post by 0xfeba »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #66
0xfeba wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a news article recently published, that claimed that Iceland had eradicated Down's Syndrome. The mother runs through a battery of tests to determine if her baby has a genetic abnormality -- and if so, can choose an abortion. Unequivocally, this is genocide! Genocide! I'm really interested in how you can categorize abortion of unwanted babies as genocide. I mean, I get it, they prevented DS babies from bei…

> I'm really interested in how you can categorize abortion of unwanted babies as genocide. Sanger, 1924: "How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds." Sanger, 1939: "The minister’s work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideal…

Sanger was objectively a terrible person. That doesn't mean that abortion is a automatically immoral.

So you can equate terminating a pregnancy with that of murdering adults and children but unfortunately in reality it's a grey area. The older the fetus gets, the less grey it gets but there's no solid line to make it easy as much as conservatives would like to believe. Especially in cases of rape, or high-risk pregnancies.

It's a terrible decision to have to make, so I'm all for reducing the number of abortions. But you can't do that by outlawing abortion. And the side that wants to do that, outlaw abortion, also wants to pretend teenagers can "just not have sex" and that there's no need to teach them about safe sex, contraceptives, etc.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#87

Post by Tainnor »

DobryMorozov wrote: post #15
madaxe_again wrote: post #6

Specific illiteracy is positively omnipresent. Try talking to an accountant about Renaissance art. Try talking to a butcher about linguistic theory. To a neurosurgeon about Egyptian architecture. Specialisation is what our society mandates, and you don’t improve your lot by having knowledge which is extraneous to your specialisation - unless you have a lot of extraneous knowledge, in which case, congratulations, you’…

But having niche knowledge of art, architecture and linguistics is much different than than understanding the scientific method, basic statistics, how to interpret studies and critical thinking. Those fundamental skills are essential to making informed decisions

you're just proving his point.

knowing much about linguistics teaches you much about culture and/or the human cognition. knowing much about arts (including things like literature, music, etc.) teaches you things about the human condition, about history, about philosophy, ...

I see those as equally fundamental as scientific knowledge.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#88

Post by everdrive »

gibspaulding wrote: post #50
everdrive wrote: post #9

Math is much more binary. I can describe a problem quite well, and describe it well enough that I could be said to understand it. But I really can't put many problems into math. I've seen others do it, and it seems like a wonder to me. I'm not a dumb guy either, but my english and math scores on my SAT were off by more than 130 points. Some people in this thread are claiming that it's foolish to think that some peopl…

There's a difference between "it's unlikely I could ever be an engineer" and "I can't pass Algebra 1". High level math and things like number theory do require a certain creative intuition that is harder for some people to learn than others, but if you can follow a recipe, figure out who has the right of way at a stop sign, or follow the rules while playing a card or board game, then you can get through Calc I. I use…

I think you make a good point. From my standpoint, I could pass algebra for sure. (I actually did really well in my college-level statistics course!) But what I can't do is take a real-world problem, and turn it into an algebra equation. I understand the math fine, but I can't "visualize" how it aligns to things in the real world.

In this way, a word problem on a test because a matching game: because they phrase the problem in a certain way, and I know we covered X problem recently, I know the following equation must fit into the words. Without the guardrails of the test, this whole process falls apart completely.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#89

Post by SilkStocking »

thu2111 wrote: post #80
EForEndeavour wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "How much material do I need in this region of the bridge to sustain the load of traffic going across it?" To nitpick a bit: anyone who answers that question for a living will be practicing engineering, not science. Just as an excellent physician can espouse wildly unscientific beliefs, so too can someone become quite good at the craft of engineering without actually doing much science at all. > I can't come to sci…

Science is the modeling of reality by formulating and testing hypotheses through observation and/or experiment. Does epidemiology not fall squarely within this definition? This is really the heart of the issue, in 2020 at least (I hope people will go back to arguing about climatology soon!). In theory epidemiology does fall squarely within that definition. In practice if you read their papers you'll quickly discover…

Your experience and comment history during the Covid-19 crisis merits authoring a book possibly? You have, over time, contributed much insight but this forum is not the best one for an excellent writer.

Re: Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?

#90

Post by thu2111 »

SilkStocking wrote: post #89
thu2111 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is the modeling of reality by formulating and testing hypotheses through observation and/or experiment. Does epidemiology not fall squarely within this definition? This is really the heart of the issue, in 2020 at least (I hope people will go back to arguing about climatology soon!). In theory epidemiology does fall squarely within that definition. In practice if you read their papers you'll quickly discover…

Your experience and comment history during the Covid-19 crisis merits authoring a book possibly? You have, over time, contributed much insight but this forum is not the best one for an excellent writer.

Thanks! I'm not sure why your post was dead but seeing as you're so nice to me, I vouched for it to bring it back.
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