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Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

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Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#51

> Consuming foods with ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming foods modified by conventional plant improvement techniques. In surveys, everything hinges on how you phrase your question. In this case, I'm compelled to agree: I don't believe there's a health risk from eating GM crops. I do think GM crops are bad, though, because they are associated with strain patenting and seedless plants; beca…

Agree. People on both sides seem to misunderstand the issue. Informed GM opponents will talk about the systemic problems caused by introduction of GM crops in to our ecosystems, farming practices, and economies, and GM proponents will misunderstand those complaints and say "no you don't understand, they're still healthy". It's like people are talking past each other. Sure, some GM opponents are afraid of how the foods affect them, and perhaps misinformed, but that does not mean that all arguments against GM foods are invalid!

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#52
post #29

What the study is describing is a psychological trait known as dogmatism. You might be familiar with the words "dogma" or "dogmatic" in their religious sense: a set of beliefs that members of a religion are expected to accept as true. But there is another, broader way that "dogmatic" is used that does not necessarily have to do with religious dogma. In psychology, dogmatism is a defined as exhibiting great certainty…

The interesting finding isn't that they're dogmatic about their anti-conensus views.

It's that they are willing to bet more that they'll perform well on tests of objective scientific knowledge of related fields... and then don't.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#53
post #21

This is an extremely smug and tone-deaf take on the deterioration of trust in public health institutions and messaging. They reference covid in their abstract, so it's fair game to discuss here: where was the scientific objective-truth-machine when the Noble Lies[0] where being told? It was silent and complicit. The general public is not as knowledgeable as experts, but they can sense when they're being lied to, or w…

You mischaracterize the study. The interesting finding is not that people who hold anti-consensus beliefs have lower scores on objective tests about related fields. It's that they are willing to bet more on their performance on those objective tests despite ultimately scoring worse.

That is, there's a much larger difference between their subjective assessment performance and objective performance on the test metric (of both that field and other fields) than in people who don't hold the anti-consensus belief.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#54

It is my experience that listening to experts normally is a good idea, but the idea of a scientific journal publishing research that we should all listen to scientists and not hold anti-consensus views, has more than a little possibility for bias on the part of the researchers. Moreover, would it not be odd if those who held anti-consensus views were not overconfident? People of average or lower-than-average confiden…

Another part to this, listening to the experts in a particular field tends to disregard competing priorities from other fields.

We saw this all through the pandemic, but it's common in everyday life too.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#55
This kind of research just looks like political maneuvering to attack dissenters. Part of me thinks that researchers should instead work on figuring out how to better convince and educate people. But maybe a lot of really smart people have already investigated that problem and figured out that writing research papers which undermine their opponents is the most effective tactic.

The core problem is that most of the division is rarely about any object-level beliefs, it's almost entirely about tribal politics and power. What a boring game.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#56

> Consuming foods with ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming foods modified by conventional plant improvement techniques. In surveys, everything hinges on how you phrase your question. In this case, I'm compelled to agree: I don't believe there's a health risk from eating GM crops. I do think GM crops are bad, though, because they are associated with strain patenting and seedless plants; beca…

Yes.

Sometimes one also hears that "free-range chicken don't taste better" -- but that's not the point!

(In the case of free-range chicken, the problem is that most of the time they aren't, in fact, "free-range" at all, for a variety of reasons. But the point remains.)

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#57
post #14

Isn’t this tautologically true when consensus views are assumed correct? (then the consensus view will be judged as appropriately confident while the non-consensus views will be judged as inappropriately confident) It’s also interesting to consider the human psychological factor that the stronger the consensus, the more effort it takes to hold a dissonant view — and plausibly one must project greater confidence in or…

They divide questions into "objective" and "subjective" to solve this. They are testing "objective knowledge" using simple science quizzes with questions that are indeed pretty much factual and not under any dispute. I downloaded the questions to check that. For example: "All radioactivity is man-made: true/false", "Venus is the closest planet to the sun" etc. They call this objective knowledge and it seems mostly sound.

There was only one question I noticed where they appear to be asking for agreement with an (incorrect) consensus. They included in their "objective knowledge":

COVID-19 is transmitted mainly via small respiratory droplets through sneezing, coughing, or when people interact in close proximity. True

But this isn't right (in my opinion). Although they made the question ambiguous by adding the word "mainly", the data seems inconsistent with SARS-CoV-2 mostly spreading this way, and over time opinion shifted towards a much greater emphasis on aerosols that may be created even by people who are apparently asymptomatic. Nor was this unknowable at the time: SARS-1 apparently could spread through drainpipes in apartment blocks, so if SARS-2 is indeed similar to SARS-1 it makes sense it could spread in similar ways.

At any rate there are much bigger problems with the study than how they determine people's levels of scientific knowledge. The whole study is based on the idea that a bunch of highly controversial ideas are in reality "consensus", e.g. they consider that masks being highly effective is a consensus. But it certainly wasn't just before COVID, the consensus was the exact opposite. What is the point of even caring about a consensus of people who will change that consensus overnight without any new research findings?

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#58

The risk of bias in this research seems rather high. Of the form of "our believes are correct and everybody who disagrees is underinformed".

> The risk of bias in this research seems rather high. Of the form of "our believes are correct and everybody who disagrees is underinformed".

It's not circular reasoning like this. They asked a bunch of middle-school science level questions in related fields.

The interesting bit isn't that people who disagrees are misinformed. It's that they assess they will do better on the test, and bet more that they will do better, than people who don't.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#59
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's saying that people who hold anti-(scientific)consensus views generally believe themselves to be more well-educated than they actually are. That's a far cry from merely being disagreeable. It doesn't seem to say anything about actually knowledgeable scientists holding anti-consensus views, except insofar as to reiterate the thesis.

Idk, anecdotally I don’t think I’m right about my heterodox nutrition views because I’m more educated, I just observe the consensus view of eating 12 servings of grain per day is wrong because I feel worse listening to their advice than eating what I naturally prefer. I don’t think education comes into play at all?

Education must come into play. Your own case illustrates this, as there is no such consensus view.

And even granting the possibility that you are exaggerating for effect, it's hard to find a field of knowledge with more contention than dietary nutrition, so one has to be even more diligent about acquiring expertise and not fooling oneself.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#60
post #45

It is my experience that listening to experts normally is a good idea, but the idea of a scientific journal publishing research that we should all listen to scientists and not hold anti-consensus views, has more than a little possibility for bias on the part of the researchers. Moreover, would it not be odd if those who held anti-consensus views were not overconfident? People of average or lower-than-average confiden…

So you think it’s obviously true, but also obviously the result of biased research?

It seems true in a trivial sense, so remarking upon it seems less revelatory, and possibly backed by some ulterior motive.
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