The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science • Hacker News Board

Re: The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science

#11

Post by protonfish » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

caryfitzhugh wrote: post #5

I think the bigger question this points to is the fact that all human perceptions are a mix of emotion and reason. As humans we seem to keep wanting to live in black and white - in a place where we can name and label the cause and effect of things. As people who build software, we know how complexity explodes with each option - and people are complex in millions of facets. Combine a few people together, and you have…

I think throwing the term "emotion" around closes discussion because it is such an ambiguous term. A better model would be reason versus obedience - do we believe our own senses or what we are told? Non-science is rooted in charlatans and manipulative "leaders". We should be examining how people choose who they believe to be authoritative. Then again, appeal to authority is a known logical fallacy so any conclusion based on an "expert" is suspect.

Re: The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science

#12

Post by dsego » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 6:04 PM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #10

dsego wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please enlighten me.

As per the article: You are not in anyway immune to the same processes that you are complaining your parents are beholden to. Your views and experiences are reinforcing your own beliefs that your parents are not accepting the "facts" you know. Seeing one side as "unreasonable" to logic while your view is "obvious" is exactly the type of behaviour the article is attempting to underline. The article also answers your q…

Maybe I should re-read the article, but I have a need to further explain my line of thought. I myself have no need to hold strong beliefs. I tend to accept overwhelming evidence from sources that seem credible and I will often juggle opposing views, perhaps even never forming a firm opinion on a subject. But I see a lot of people struggling with that, like never choosing a side or forming a conclusion will kill them or something. It's the same when people think never changing opinions (e.g. political) is a sign of good character.

Also, I am more interested in technology, science, nature etc. than other people and their lives. It seems that my parents', but maybe even the majority of "ordinary" folk's lives, revolves around what other people say, think or do. So much so, they interpret everybody's actions as intentional and try to explain a person's motives and will paint somebody's character based on some trivial event. For example, if I forget to call them, they'll perhaps discuss for hours how ungrateful and selfish I am and fabricate detailed explanations for my actions, e.g. how maybe my girlfriend's mother is pulling me away from them or something like that (I heard such stories from my brother).

In short, people try to find a (hidden) motive behind every action and think there always has to be one. I think it is this way of thinking and functioning that creates a fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.

Re: The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science

#13

Post by stirbot » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 6:22 PM UTC

glenra wrote: post #7

An article with that title should have mentioned the possibility of an error cascade . Occasionally - not often, but sometimes - the "consensus scientific view" on a subject happens to be wrong . Wrong views can persist for quite a while, and are more likely to do so when the subject is politically charged. Preference falsification even among scientists can lead them to a false belief regarding what their peers belie…

I don't believe error cascade is happening in the field of climate science. A multitude of accepted methodologies using scores of independent datasets from various fields overwhelmingly produce results consistent with anthropogenic global warming.

Additionally there are well funded groups who would love nothing more than to uncover such an error cascade. Yet even a study funded by the same people who run the Heartland Institute produced results consistent with AGW. Visit a website like WattsUpWithThat to witness intelligent people trying their very best to twist data or methods to fit their worldview. If something like this is there to be found, it would have been found by now. The first order science is truly simple. All that is being debated now is when and how severe the effect will be. Sadly by the time we can scientifically confirm the 'Welcome to AGW' sign, we may be 30 years inside the border.

Using the term denier does make convincing those people more difficult. Politically, however, it may be useful to label this small but vocal group as misinformed and stubborn, and get on with transitioning to a sustainable and stable future.

Re: The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science

#14

Post by gizmo686 » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 8:02 PM UTC

protonfish wrote: post #11

caryfitzhugh wrote: post #5

I think the bigger question this points to is the fact that all human perceptions are a mix of emotion and reason. As humans we seem to keep wanting to live in black and white - in a place where we can name and label the cause and effect of things. As people who build software, we know how complexity explodes with each option - and people are complex in millions of facets. Combine a few people together, and you have…

I think throwing the term "emotion" around closes discussion because it is such an ambiguous term. A better model would be reason versus obedience - do we believe our own senses or what we are told? Non-science is rooted in charlatans and manipulative "leaders". We should be examining how people choose who they believe to be authoritative. Then again, appeal to authority is a known logical fallacy so any conclusion b…

Obedience refers to a specific type of emotion, loyalty/obligations.

The term I try to use when thinking (and explaining) my own thought process is intuition. Often times when I try to issolate the source of my intution I come up with something that would gennerally be considered emotion.

Re: The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science

#15

Post by glenra » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 12:55 AM UTC

stirbot wrote: post #13

glenra wrote: post #7

An article with that title should have mentioned the possibility of an error cascade . Occasionally - not often, but sometimes - the "consensus scientific view" on a subject happens to be wrong . Wrong views can persist for quite a while, and are more likely to do so when the subject is politically charged. Preference falsification even among scientists can lead them to a false belief regarding what their peers belie…

I don't believe error cascade is happening in the field of climate science. A multitude of accepted methodologies using scores of independent datasets from various fields overwhelmingly produce results consistent with anthropogenic global warming. Additionally there are well funded groups who would love nothing more than to uncover such an error cascade. Yet even a study funded by the same people who run the Heartlan…

> A multitude of accepted methodologies using scores of independent datasets from various fields overwhelmingly produce results consistent with anthropogenic global warming.

Of course they do. That doesn't mean there's no error cascade surrounding our understanding of what this means.

That past human activity has produced some amount of warming is a pretty uninteresting factoid. In fact, it's trivially true in that land-use patterns alone can have a measurable impact on temperature - you don't even need a theory relating to CO2 to establish that there has been some "anthropogenic global warming" (still less to find that data is merely "not inconsistent with" this notion).

But when alarmists raise alarm, they have something very different in mind. They believe that the warming rate and/or level is unprecedented in human history, that warming has been a bad thing and is likely to produce net negative impacts in the near term. They tend to think it is sensible to talk about "climate sensitivity" having a single value and that this value is high - at least 3 degrees per doubling. All of those are debatable points, and it's wrong to assume scientists agree on them based on their agreement with a much more vaguely defined "consensus view" that humans have caused some undefined amount of warming.

> If something like this is there to be found, it would have been found by now.

Several such things have been found. The post I linked to mentioned a few. The ongoing efforts to hide or minimize the MWP (and thereby show recent temperatures to be "unprecedented") is the usual example, perhaps best documented on ClimateAudit.org .