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How do we decide things?
Posted by
thughes
,
05 March 2008
·
872 views
Random Philosophical Meandering
With increasing education levels, increasing scientific knowledge, increasing availability of information, and the media, its apparently become more difficult for a large population to decide things. You'd think things would have gotten better, but all this information seems to be confusing the issues as much as being enlightening.
If we wanted to be strictly logical and make the best possible decisions, we'd have experts weigh the facts, advise us the probabilities that X will cause Y based on the current level of scientific knowledge, and from there make informed policies (including, 'more study needed').
However, the current situation seems to be this:
- We're all too smart to think that we need experts to decide on the facts.
- The science is in reality too complicated for non experts, so common sense easily trips us up, but we can't see this because its, well, common sense...
- Its easy for non experts or marginal scientific opinions to market themselves nowadays, on the internet or in books, and make their case (often presented in isolation) seem much better than it actually is, especially to non experts.
- The media confuses the issue by frequently presenting both sides for balance. While balance is good, it tricks our brains into thinking the situation is 50/50 whereas the scientific evidence on one side may heavily outweigh the evidence on the other.
So what does that leave us? Things like this (I don't intend to get political here, just an example I came across this morning):
via http://blogs.abcnews...mccain-ent.html
There isn't of course. How do we know? Experts have extensively evaluated it and found not only no link, but counterevidence against the idea of a link. But the meme spreads because those who believe it can easily market it in ways that can fool non experts. Our brains are going to weigh their evidence (if it sounds reasonable, even if it isn't) equally with the evidence on the other side, and come to what is most likely the wrong conclusion, that there is a large amount of scientific debate on the subject. Since there seems to be a large amount of debate, we have to 'make up our own minds', the very last thing we should be doing, because to be honest we aren't well equipped to do so.
And then we get to situations where you can't even state the current scientific knowledge on the internet without hoards of believers in the alternative hypothesis descending upon you. There are probably not a whole lot of them for any given meme, but their impact makes them appear more common than they are, and unfortunately we tend to weigh what to believe based on what other people believe, so we're tricked into giving these ideas more time than they deserve.
Even worse, we all know experts are corruptible, even subconsciously. This can confuse the issue even more, by adding a higher level of distrust than necessary into the situation. We all know that, get money involved, and its easy for your subconscious to see the same evidence a little more positively for your side. Science is fortunately aggressive and self correcting, but the distrust this tends to foster is more widespread than any actual damage it does to the scientific debate. Instead of a limited amount of scientists being suspect, instead of studies where money is involved being replicated, carefully peer reviewed, and treated with caution, suddenly everyone on either side of the debate is suspect, especially if we don't like their conclusions. How many times have you heard the word "agenda" to explain a large body of results from a large body of scientists who disagree with some position? So again we're left with 'making up our own minds', which we are not very well equipped to do.
The key point there is, the problems with science are not as bad as they are made to seem. The media, and the free availability of knowledge (neither of which I'd ever want to do without btw) can make the occasional bias issues seem so much more prevalent than they are.
So, how do we get to a point where we can make intelligent policy decisions? I'm not sure. Media bias, overly harsh perceptions of scientific bias, the free availability of knowledge, marketing of papers to the public that haven't passed peer review, things appealing to common sense that contradict the actual science, its all not going to go away. I guess a good way to start would be improved education, to teach us where our minds may slip up. Maybe mandatory classes in logical and scientific thinking, and basic decision making psychology, starting in junior high. If we are going to be making up our own minds, we should at least know how to do it right. Right now school seems to be lots of knowledge, but not a lot of learning how to apply knowledge or make decisions.
If we could hammer into kids things like:
- How to evaluate things logically
- The scientific method
- How science works in reality, including peer review, duplication of results, etc.
- The bias mistakes your brain can trick you into, such as looking for evidence to confirm your opinion instead of at all the evidence.
maybe we'd be a little safer.
Or we could just invent superintelligent AI's to make our decisions for us. Sometimes I think thats the only thing that will save us. But I suspect we'd find ways of accusing even them of bias if they didn't agree with us...
I'm no more immune than anyone else of course. I love conspiracy theories (even if I don't believe most of them any more). I've been sold on non-peer reviewed research before (I'm a fan of Otto Muck's version of what happened to Atlantis). And, for the record, I believe there should always be a small set of experts testing alternative theories, even if weird. Reality is sometimes stranger than we realize. But we shouldn't be weighting the research of these experts as heavily as we are until they have the evidence to convince a good fraction of their peers. This may delay some real knowledge advances a bit, but hey it beats wasting so much time on the 999 other weird theories that didn't pan out.
Strange theories are fun. They may open the mind to alternate ways of thinking. But we shouldn't buy into them wholeheartedly until the evidence is in.
- Mey
If we wanted to be strictly logical and make the best possible decisions, we'd have experts weigh the facts, advise us the probabilities that X will cause Y based on the current level of scientific knowledge, and from there make informed policies (including, 'more study needed').
However, the current situation seems to be this:
- We're all too smart to think that we need experts to decide on the facts.
- The science is in reality too complicated for non experts, so common sense easily trips us up, but we can't see this because its, well, common sense...
- Its easy for non experts or marginal scientific opinions to market themselves nowadays, on the internet or in books, and make their case (often presented in isolation) seem much better than it actually is, especially to non experts.
- The media confuses the issue by frequently presenting both sides for balance. While balance is good, it tricks our brains into thinking the situation is 50/50 whereas the scientific evidence on one side may heavily outweigh the evidence on the other.
So what does that leave us? Things like this (I don't intend to get political here, just an example I came across this morning):
At a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that "there’s strong evidence" that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the increased diagnoses of autism in the U.S. -- a position in stark contrast with the view of the medical establishment.
via http://blogs.abcnews...mccain-ent.html
There isn't of course. How do we know? Experts have extensively evaluated it and found not only no link, but counterevidence against the idea of a link. But the meme spreads because those who believe it can easily market it in ways that can fool non experts. Our brains are going to weigh their evidence (if it sounds reasonable, even if it isn't) equally with the evidence on the other side, and come to what is most likely the wrong conclusion, that there is a large amount of scientific debate on the subject. Since there seems to be a large amount of debate, we have to 'make up our own minds', the very last thing we should be doing, because to be honest we aren't well equipped to do so.
And then we get to situations where you can't even state the current scientific knowledge on the internet without hoards of believers in the alternative hypothesis descending upon you. There are probably not a whole lot of them for any given meme, but their impact makes them appear more common than they are, and unfortunately we tend to weigh what to believe based on what other people believe, so we're tricked into giving these ideas more time than they deserve.
Even worse, we all know experts are corruptible, even subconsciously. This can confuse the issue even more, by adding a higher level of distrust than necessary into the situation. We all know that, get money involved, and its easy for your subconscious to see the same evidence a little more positively for your side. Science is fortunately aggressive and self correcting, but the distrust this tends to foster is more widespread than any actual damage it does to the scientific debate. Instead of a limited amount of scientists being suspect, instead of studies where money is involved being replicated, carefully peer reviewed, and treated with caution, suddenly everyone on either side of the debate is suspect, especially if we don't like their conclusions. How many times have you heard the word "agenda" to explain a large body of results from a large body of scientists who disagree with some position? So again we're left with 'making up our own minds', which we are not very well equipped to do.
The key point there is, the problems with science are not as bad as they are made to seem. The media, and the free availability of knowledge (neither of which I'd ever want to do without btw) can make the occasional bias issues seem so much more prevalent than they are.
So, how do we get to a point where we can make intelligent policy decisions? I'm not sure. Media bias, overly harsh perceptions of scientific bias, the free availability of knowledge, marketing of papers to the public that haven't passed peer review, things appealing to common sense that contradict the actual science, its all not going to go away. I guess a good way to start would be improved education, to teach us where our minds may slip up. Maybe mandatory classes in logical and scientific thinking, and basic decision making psychology, starting in junior high. If we are going to be making up our own minds, we should at least know how to do it right. Right now school seems to be lots of knowledge, but not a lot of learning how to apply knowledge or make decisions.
If we could hammer into kids things like:
- How to evaluate things logically
- The scientific method
- How science works in reality, including peer review, duplication of results, etc.
- The bias mistakes your brain can trick you into, such as looking for evidence to confirm your opinion instead of at all the evidence.
maybe we'd be a little safer.
Or we could just invent superintelligent AI's to make our decisions for us. Sometimes I think thats the only thing that will save us. But I suspect we'd find ways of accusing even them of bias if they didn't agree with us...
I'm no more immune than anyone else of course. I love conspiracy theories (even if I don't believe most of them any more). I've been sold on non-peer reviewed research before (I'm a fan of Otto Muck's version of what happened to Atlantis). And, for the record, I believe there should always be a small set of experts testing alternative theories, even if weird. Reality is sometimes stranger than we realize. But we shouldn't be weighting the research of these experts as heavily as we are until they have the evidence to convince a good fraction of their peers. This may delay some real knowledge advances a bit, but hey it beats wasting so much time on the 999 other weird theories that didn't pan out.
Strange theories are fun. They may open the mind to alternate ways of thinking. But we shouldn't buy into them wholeheartedly until the evidence is in.
- Mey
