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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

#81

Post by clairity »

landemva wrote: post #76
clairity wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to tease out the nuance, the mechanism of mainstreaming isn't an extension of stupidity (ignorance is certainly a more accurate term), but of limited focus and stress. most people don't spend much time thinking about the wider world and how it should work very deeply, so they follow the herd on most things, because it's a decent heuristic and it has a social benefit. it's a literal luxury to have enough time and ment…

> a literal luxury to have enough time and mental space to think for more than a few minutes Yet I observe people reaching for their phone-distractor device when confronted with a moment of free time.

yah, often those moments are too short for deep thinking anyway, which really requires contiguous, distraction-free hours. the more pertinent issue is that devices tend to themselves fragment potential contiguous blocks of time and condition our brain for shorter attention spans (just like what happened to me right now, as i was in the middle of doing something else, but stopped to respond!).

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#82

Post by somenameforme »

I always find looking at methodology for surveys like this far more interesting than reading the papers. Two things immediately stand out. First, the study selected participants from place such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk + Prolific Academic. Both are services which pay participants peanuts to engage in various menial tasks.

But perhaps more interesting are the questions they chose to ask to determine "objective knowledge of scientific facts." Among the questions used to deem this was one which asked whether "The novel coronavirus was unleashed in a laboratory in Wuhan and spread from there." I can't, for the life of me, understand why people's truth in science is on the decline.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#83

Post by ogurechny »

mlyle wrote: post #43
hirundo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> settled for decades in knowledgeable circles. Which also describes phrenology, the static universe, and phlogiston theory. A nice collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_theories_in_science

The people who debunked these theories were quite familiar with these existing models and how to build rigorous tests to differentiate these cases from new ideas. The study tells us that most detractors are not people like this, but instead people with below-average understanding of the field and related fields-- and who are willing to bet more on their performance of objective tests of those fields than the non-detr…

Sadly, the spherical “scientists” in a vacuum rigorously and unselfishly digging to get closer to the “truth” is only a fantasy found in school textbooks. What is called “science” has nothing on “truth” or “reality”, it's a specific method of creating virtual models that are many many degrees less complex than the “real thing”, and then treating real thing as if it was its model to achieve some outcome. In some way, that's how humans adapt to environment, and change it. Even a commoner can read 18th and 19th century works that spread those stereotypes on “Reason”, “seeking the truth”, etc., and see how rosy the initial reasoning was. Despite the fact those sources are long forgotten by the public, the status quo of everyone's education has been formed by them.

Phrenology was not an “error”, “bad page”, yada yada on the Glorius Path of Progress. It was The Science. (Well, maybe some “overconfident” scientists disagreed with it for personal reasons, but they were “not representative”.) It was evident that all those unfamiliar people from far away lands, and all those lower class social parasites were less developed than the Educated Man armed with Scientific Knowledge, and if was perfectly reasonable to try finding the source of such a pitiful condition inside their skulls.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that multiple generations taught to think like that resulted in people casually talking about races and signs of degradation at dinners or, well, political rallies. They were given that model as truth.

By the way, archaeologists and biologists still use observations and concepts from phrenologists without ever “cancelling” them. Squint your eyes one way, and it's “pseudoscience”, squint them the other way, and it's “science”.

Or the idea that makes any pop-sci nerd twitch and giggle in anticipation: so there is no success in finding the material soul, but maybe we can study what that soul thing does by looking at its interactions with material world, and using scientific method? Let's call that… right, psychology.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#84

Post by oceanplexian »

sidlls wrote: post #10
rossdavidh wrote: post #4

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…

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.

Maybe I’m one of the disagreeable people this article is referring to, but what is a scientific “consensus” exactly? A consensus in your country? A consensus in your region of the world?

Fact is we live in a post modernist society. There is no such thing as consensus, only what particular bubble and social framework your frame of reference is operating from.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#85

Post by ogurechny »

> controversial scientific issues

All scientific issues are controversial by definition. What is obvious is not called science. Even prehistoric men could throw rocks, and knew where they would fall.

> The consequences of these anti-consensus views are dire, including… death.

Hmm, so this is what makes people die. Interesting.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#86

Post by locutous »

noslenwerdna wrote: post #3
snapcaster wrote: post #2

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone what the downsides of people being ignorant are, I would be more interested in seeing some work trying to measure or quantify the damage done by people blindly following mainstream consensus that turns out to be incorrect

This article is not about ignorance per se. It is about views in opposition to well-established consensus, e.g. "rejection of vaccines or opposition to climate change mitigation policies." These views are highly damaging to society and individuals.

Creating or joining a bandwagon to vilify people who reject well established consensus is highly damaging to individuals and society.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#87

Post by somenameforme »

snapcaster wrote: post #2

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone what the downsides of people being ignorant are, I would be more interested in seeing some work trying to measure or quantify the damage done by people blindly following mainstream consensus that turns out to be incorrect

This is always going to reflect, in large part, who is in power in a society, since the mainstream consensus is so heavily influenced by the top. And in societies where people, by inches or by miles, become unable to speak freely - the top can effectively dictate consensus.

In a society where those in power are are not only primarily motivated to achieve a healthier society and nation, but also have the intelligence and wisdom to achieve it - then following the mainstream consensus could achieve something quite remarkable.

In a society where those in power are primarily motivated by their own interests, or lack the wisdom or intelligence to positively lead society forward, then of course everybody following the mainstream consensus means you're, vice versa, headed towards something quite awful.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#88

Post by somenameforme »

mlyle wrote: post #52
jawns wrote: 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.

The paper seems to have largely equated "objective scientific knowledge" with liminal consensus. For instance, among their "objective scientific knowledge" questions asked whether, "The novel coronavirus was unleashed in a laboratory in Wuhan and spread from there." Another was "The numbers of people that have died from COVID-19 are artificially inflated."

The latter was at least removed from the results, but emphasizes the point nonetheless that they found it appropriate to include questions that had nothing to do with science. So you end up with results that affirm that people who disagree with consensus disagree with consensus.

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#89

Post by joshuamorton »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #74
joshuamorton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern consensus (or perhaps official, since consensus may be different) is that you should be eating more vegetables than grains. So you appear to agree with the consensus of experts that grains should not be the basis of your diet. This has been the us governments recommendation for over a decade ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate )

They probably weren't in primary schooling in the last 11 years. They were probably taught the food pyramid over my plate, and disagreed with it.

Sure but "my personal experiences match up with the expert consensus from the past decade" (and really longer, the 2005 food pyramid was for slightly more grains than veggies, not double) isn't a particularly strong argument for disagreeing with the expert consensus.

If what you're saying is "I disagree with expert consensus from the 80s", well then sure, but so does the expert consensus! That's how the scientific process works (slowly).

Re: Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views

#90

Post by 7402 »

Obligatory Feynman quote:

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?”

It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.”

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