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How trust undermines science

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Re: How trust undermines science

#31

Post by ravenstine »

mmastrac wrote: post #6
jimsimmons wrote: post #2

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.

> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate

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?

Re: How trust undermines science

#32

Post by edgyquant »

raziel2701 wrote: post #15
jimsimmons wrote: post #2

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.

> We should even respect flat earthers No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.

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.

Re: How trust undermines science

#33

Post by 0x7E3 »

pintxo wrote: post #21
thethirdone wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. Voilà

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.

Re: How trust undermines science

#34

Post by jltsiren »

version_five wrote: post #10
mmastrac wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate

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…

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.

Re: How trust undermines science

#35

Post by PeterWhittaker »

thethirdone wrote: post #7
mmastrac wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should even respect flat earthers You lost me here. Basic literacy is a requirement for any fruitful debate

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.

Fairly trivial: https://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dns/teachersguide/MeasECAct...

Re: How trust undermines science

#36

Post by aaron695 »

We've just had a far reaching tsunami from the Hunga Tonga eruption and no one will explain why.

That is a trust issue.

Do they know how volcanos work or not? Can they get that knowledge to the public or not?

The mathematics is high school level in many cases to disprove possible causes of the tsunami.

The reality is people do know how volcanoes work but the field is so full of charlatans that info can't get out.

This is every field of science now.

[And the idea the info doesn't need to get out quickly is BS, it shows structural problems in the field, on top of that in this case Tonga and aid orgs needs to know what might be possible in the next few weeks and the truth helps with that]

Re: How trust undermines science

#37

Post by 0x7E3 »

mhh__ wrote: post #18
thethirdone wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These days all you need is someone with a phone and a stick in another country to perform Erastosthenes's experiment, right?

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.

Re: How trust undermines science

#38

Post by VoodooJuJu »

raziel2701 wrote: post #15
jimsimmons wrote: post #2

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.

> We should even respect flat earthers No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.

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.

Re: How trust undermines science

#39

Post by tempestn »

golergka wrote: post #29
raziel2701 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should even respect flat earthers No those people need mental healthcare. They have a very debilitating dysfunction, an inability to see reality.

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…

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.

Re: How trust undermines science

#40

Post by GolangProject »

dools wrote: post #24
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.
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