2mo ago

Lying increases trust in science, study finds

phys.org

8 comments

Hyde says that the problem is that, although scientific facts are taught at school, the facts "about" science are not taught well enough.
Bingo. They do a poor job teaching people:
That failures are not only expected, but welcome; they'll guide future successes.
That conflicts of interest do happen, and peer reviewing is a way to address them.
That the current leading theory on something is simply the current best explanation, not some immutable truth.
That science doesn't say "trust me"; it shows you the data, and asks you to find a better way to explain it.
We (people all around the world, I think?) also do a poor job at teaching ourselves basic rationality:
That you should get suspicious of any institution or group that only shows the good parts - they're likely hiding shit.
Why "trust me" is an insult towards the hearer's intelligence.
Why people shouldn't vomit certainty on things they cannot reliably know.
- Vomiting certainty... I like that turn of phrase!
The problem is that average people don't know what significance to attach to the "negative transparency". Which is why this is necessary:
Hyde is calling for a renewed effort to teach the public about scientific norms, which would be done through science education and communication to eliminate the "naïve" view of science as infallible.
Which is a different way of saying that the society suffers from the value of "obedience to authority" and the bad habit of cognitive offloading (having others think for you). This is the source of a lot of problems...
- "Conflict-of-interest is the root of all corruption." a paraphrase of the now-disgraced Dan Ariely, which I have found consistently to be true..
  The teacher-lobby won't tolerate any displacement of their authority, or centrality, from "education".
  I have read the words of teachers who rail against institutional-policies which sabotage learning for sake of institutional-position, too:
  apparently some schools now have a "it isn't POSSIBLE to fail any test" policy, such that students handing-in blank sheets of paper, in their tests, gets them 51% passing-grade.
  In order to make the institution have a higher ranking in the set-of-institutions grading, of course..
  UNTIL learning & certification are segregated-from each-other ( like segregation of church from state: required in government ), THEN corruption will continue ruling "education".
  Teachers have to be accountable to objective-standard, re their competence in autonomizing & empowering the learners.
  Why would they tolerate such a threat, though?
  etc..
  It's a whole huge discussion, & since humankind has decided that socio-political-consensus outranks evidence, & I'm including Scientism in that, .. I see zero reason why humankind would change-course, in this, The Great Filter ( this century, when combined-arms conflict-manufacturing forces ALL force humankind into either growing-up or self-extinguishing ).
  Escalation, but not changing-course, if you see what I mean..
  The alteration of education would have to be sooo fundamental, that many kids got Mission Command style education, & that won't happen, while I'm alive, that's fersure..
  ( Mission Command meant that Nordbat 2, in the Balkans, was ordered, their mission, was to prevent the murdering of Muslims within the population..
  & when political-sabotage, meant to protect the "helplessness" of the intervention, to enable the genociding, happened, they directly disobeyed orders, in order to hold-to their original mission.
  They rightly were deemed heroes, when all was said & done.
  Education would have to orient to that degree of autonomizing, for all who were responsible-enough to earn it, & then surviving this century's heap-of-compounding-tests would be possible. )
  _ /\ _
dont you mean entrust in pseudoscience. telling stem research for what it is, often dont reach laypersons expectation, so some of them fall for pseudoscience that seems to have an answer for everything.
an example would chronic lyme, which is a real disease, many people believe it solely because they have unexplained symptoms that may resemble some some symptoms of lyme disease. Also snakesoilman MDs, and industry around lyme reinforces these beliefs.
Oh yeah? We've got a lot of anti-vaxxers now, due in part to the lies told during the pandemic. I'm not seeing a lot of trust these days.
- They trust the lies
Nothing pushes the pursuit of Truth more than being lied to.

8 comments