"According to polling performed by the Pew Research Center, Republicans who are college graduates are considerably less likely to accept the scientific consensus on climate change than those who have less education. These better-educated Republicans probably aren't ignorant; a more likely explanation is that they are politically driven consumers of climate science information. Among Democrats and independents, the relationship between education and beliefs about global warming is precisely the opposite -- more education leads to greater acceptance of the consensus climate science."
I object to the terminology. Just because someone is cherry-picking information to support their chosen ideology doesn't make them "not ignorant". It makes them willfully ignorant.
Part of the problem with American political discourse is that we don't do enough to marginalize non-factual arguments -- from both sides of the political spectrum. Pretending that people aren't "ignorant" if they're filtering facts through a political sieve doesn't address this problem. Everyone has freedom of expression in the US, but we should all be doing more to make it plainly clear that some types of content are inferior to others.
The best terminology for this phenomena would probably be (neo-)Lysenkoism, where you have a field of science under attack for conflicting with political orthodoxy.
I agree completely with your point that a college degree has limited impact on your scientific literacy. Taking baby-bio or physics for poets isn't going to give you the tools necessary to churn through scientific papers, nor will it give you perfect objectivity when evaluating scientific arguments, particularly volatile ones that challenge your own core beliefs.
Or maybe these Republicans went to college, saw how politicized the science departments were on their campuses, and instead of shrugging it off, realized that scientists are prone to mistakes and misleading just like everyone else, and so their claims should be taken with a grain of salt, just like those of everyone else.
I fall into that camp. My time in college impressed upon me how human and fallible the academy is. I went in thinking "professors" had all the answers. Then I met enough people who were stealing funds, sleeping with students, lazily grading papers, exploiting free labor and jealously hording grant money, that I realized these were just people, prone to the same errors in judgment that everyone else deals with.
Or maybe these Republicans are personally invested in a particular ideology, and anything which threatens that ideology triggers the monkey brain's fear-of-other and must be destroyed.
Much like you're trying to do by insinuating that all scientists/professors are lazy, greedy, exploitative thieves who shag their students.
I realized these were just people, prone to the same errors in judgment that everyone else deals with.
I don't understand how this is relevant to the discussion. No one has ever claimed that scientists are all-knowing or super-human or somehow not subject to the cognitive defects endemic to all human brains.
But just because scientists are human and make mistakes does not mean that their claims about scientific matters are wrong. I mean, my attorney is a human guy who makes typical human mistakes, but when it comes to giving me legal advice, he's a hell of a lot better than the average person. His expertise is beneficial even though he sometimes forgets things or gets confused or gets angry or suffers from status quo bias. All those problems mean that I should exercise some judgment while considering his advice, but statistically, his advice is still much better than what I could come up with on my own.
Does it really matter? Most people can believe in witches, intelligent design and what not while doing their jobs good enough. Europe, Far East, Russia trust science way more, but it doesn't seem to lead to any significant advantage.
I'm not so sure. If we are talking about the advantage in terms of the advantage in enhancing scientific knowledge, then certainly things have changed since WWII but pre-WWII, if my knowledge of history is correct, the majority of advances in theoretical science and mathematics happened in Europe. Even today a large number of scientists working in America are foreign-born. Now I don't know how much people trusted science and the scientific consensus in Europe vs America back then but I wouldn't be surprised if Europe was more progressive back then either.
I've never really understood why anyone cares about who believes what when it comes to topics in science. You can't advance in a career in the sciences without accepting on some terms evolution by means of natural selection so who cares if a bunch of people don't agree?
I'm sort of amazed at the arrogance on display by those who seem bent on making sure everyone agrees with them. It seems like we would be served well by some degree of skepticism of the bishops and the scientific establishment (in all areas). It seems like the more we know the more we lose sight of what we still don't know and don't proceed with much humility.
For my part I'm skeptical of the claims of biologists, mainstream economists, climatologists, and those who offer financial advice. I don't take a strong position on evolution one way or another because the outcome doesn't affect me in any way. I might get made fun of behind my back for doubting these people but that's fine by me.
I also didn't take any losses in the latest stock market crash because I saw it coming three years ahead of time and was safely in cash waiting for the market to figure out what I already knew. I take strong positions on economics because the outcome can really affect me and my family. I might be wrong of course but at least I'm going in with my eyes open.
Seems like the argument here is that because this person can't mind his own business I need to hear about it. Not sure about anyone else but my life is complicated enough without me taking on the problems of other people who aren't asking for my help in the first place.
> You can't advance in a career in the sciences without accepting on some terms evolution by means of natural selection so who cares if a bunch of people don't agree?
I don't think this is arrogance, no one is lacking in humility and skepticism. It is more a matter that any and every claim need not be treated with the same sort of gravity as a rigorously investigated subject. The scientists in question are most likely dismissive of people purposefully ignoring evidence that does not fit into their world/political views rather than view points rooted in scientific data.
It is absolutely important to care what others' think when it comes to topics in science. We live in a society, and others' views and ideas unfortunately will most likely impact people other than themselves. People are free to be as ignorant as they want in isolation, but the moment they start affecting policy, we should care.
I don't take a strong position on evolution one way or another because the outcome doesn't affect me in any way.
You're just fine with having the next generation of schoolkids taught that "God Did It (or maybe aliens)" is the only acceptable explanation for the origin of life, then? Because this fight started with religious zealots trying to prosecute teachers for going against scripture, and it's hard to have any doubt that the clowns pushing Intelligent Design would do something similar if people stopped smacking them down. It might not matter to you whether evolution is right or not, but that's not what the fight is about - the fight is about whether or not scientists should have to poll the idiocracy and make sure they won't offend them before reporting their findings.
And yes, I'm arguing slippery slope, maybe - but the argument in favor of worry is a lot more compelling when we've just finished clawing our way up from the bottom.
It seems like the more we know the more we lose sight of what we still don't know and don't proceed with much humility.
Absolutely. And with climate science, I'd tend to agree with you, we don't know all that much and might want to be careful about how much we trust the preliminary findings - the data appears to be messy, incomplete, and difficult to work with, and the field started out so highly politicized that it's hard to know who to trust.
Evolution, on the other hand, is not even in the same ballpark - evidence is plentiful, it all agrees with the theory, and consensus is overwhelming (and one big difference between bio and climate science is that biologists don't tend to go into biology because of political leanings, so there's far less selection bias amongst researchers).
I think that I am fine with that because I'm not sure it matters. The truth is the truth and it has a nasty habit of winning out even if it takes hundreds of years. Theories and ideas go into and out of favor over time. The battle between rationalism and empiricism has raged basically nonstop since Aristotle and continues today with each side gaining and losing ground with each generation of thinkers.
I'm amazed by the continuing influence of Marx and other socialist philosophers even though we have theories rooted in Platonic arguments and empirical observation that are fairly one sided in their analysis of the subject. It disturbs me greatly that schools teach Keynesian economics and that Paul Krugman has more distribution than what a blog would provide him. I'm disturbed by the success of the Neocons and their apparent love for war.
All that being said I move on with my life. I realize that the best I can is argue my case and if I fail then that's fine. Ideas aren't as important as life and the people in it.
For one: Scientific illiteracy →
Biblical literalism & religious fundamentalism →
Prop 8, the Texas school board, citizens voting as proxies for religious leaders
Relevant to the article, herd immunity is compromised by those misinformed about vaccine safety.
Do you believe that there are public policy questions whose answers depend on science AND are very important? If so, then it should matter a very great deal.
In other words, if you're the kind of person who believes that either climate change is no big deal or that there is nothing that humans can do about it, then it doesn't matter at all. Alternatively, if you think climate change is a big deal and that humans can do something about it, then public understanding of science matters because altering it might kill/save a few hundred million people. Do you think the lives of a few hundred million human beings matter?
If there's something everyone needs to do, no amount of education will saturate the population to the point that everyone required to do it, does it. Some people just don't care outside of the here and now, unless they're made to care with a carrot or a stick. You need to have a law either punishing them for not doing it, or rewarding them for doing it (i.e. carbon-neutral business tax credits) for them to pay attention. (And even then, some people still won't care, or will willfully skirt the law. Hopefully this number will be negligible enough to allow the law to still have its intended effect.)
Don't think of it as a big, scary, nebulous concept like "justice", though. Call it what it is: game design. The body of law is the game that every citizen of a country is always playing, and like any game, you can encourage paths to be followed, and choices to be made, by putting variable-scheduled rewards and increasing "justified" challenges along those paths.
The only people who need to understand the "public policy questions", in a world where public policy is set up as law, are the legislators (the "game designers"). This is simply an argument for better-educated legislators, not a better-educated populace.
Except that we live in a democracy, where people vote for the legislators who they think will do the better job. When the populace believe in stupid things, you'll get legislators who pander to that, while ignoring the important stuff.
Sort of. We don't vote for legislators based on their beliefs or knowledge-bases, we vote for legislators based on a combination of status moves, group affiliations, and physical characteristics that have more in common with mate selection than anything else. What legislators pander to while looking to get elected, has little to do with what laws they end up actually passing.
There's no real correlation between what the populace believes, and what its elected representatives believe. (Well, there would be if we were all purely rational beings who hadn't invented lying and adhered to Aumann's agreement theorem...) In algorithmic terms—this isn't a hill-climbing heuristic, where you'll eventually optimize toward politicians that believe something in particular; it's a random search.
Not true. Here in Australia, our Prime Minister just got the boot, in part because he backed down over an emissions trading scheme and lost popular support. So it's not entirely random, although there's also internal power-broking and lobbying from third parties like the mining sector to blame.
There's no real correlation between what the populace believes, and what its elected representatives believe.
Maybe, maybe not. But there is a very real correlation between what the populace believes and what laws legislators can vote for without ruining their chances for reelection. Legislators who vote for things that the majority of their constituents find to be completely absurd tend not to be reelected.
I don't think this is something that "everyone needs to do"...I mean, there will always be substantial numbers of people who believe the earth is flat, the stars control our destinies, etc. Talk of reaching everyone seems like a distraction.
The real issue is that if 30-60% of the population thinks climate change is bunk, there's no way to make them care with carrots and sticks because opposing them becomes politically difficult.
The only people who need to understand the "public policy questions", in a world where public policy is set up as law, are the legislators (the "game designers"). This is simply an argument for better-educated legislators, not a better-educated populace.
I don't think this is true at all. Legislators do not have absolute freedom to legislate, even on topics for which the public is ignorant. Such topics can be demagogued which means that they're politically toxic to legislators, even for legislators that understand the issues completely.
If I'm a legislator who is convinced that climate change is a huge problem but I also know that most of my constituents don't believe that, then I'd better not vote for a carbon tax or else I'll lose the next election. Those incentives remain true no matter how much I understand the public policy. It is true that we don't need everyone to fully understand all public policy, but we do need a decent fraction of the population to understand the big issues well enough to make addressing them politically feasible.
First, we have a more educated populace globally (not just in the US) - this leads to more confidence in our own opinions, and when combined with "the university of Google" and trusting everything one reads on the internet you'll get echo-chambers of likemindedness repeatedly referring to each other. We tend to believe things that we hear over and over. Add in the lack of accountability within the media to appropriately question all claims from all sides in a scientific manner and you can easily become highly insular in your views and opinions.
Secondly - science has moved on in ways unfathomable a century ago - a time where the wealthy could afford an education and those without could not (and hence trusted those with an education more, although you can also claim that corporations have also lessened the trust in anyone too). The sciences today are so incredibly complex that the scientific community has the option to either:
a) dumb it down; or
b) dumb it down.
The problem there is that when you simplify science, you lose some of the details and open yourself up for cherry-picking critique. Add in the issue that most science is now not black-or-white (something that the conservative in everyone prefers) but rather is based on probability (yes, I know all about the black swan events that through out prior observations, however scientific method requires repeatability) - irrespective of whether or not the lifestyle that they currently live is based on such approaches. Add in the proud to be innumerate and scientifically illiterate and you've got some major problems. Mix in that science now looks like religion to the lay person, due to the complexity and lack of comprehension, and you're going to have big problems.
What is the scientific community to do? I'm not sure. We need to change the perception of science in the community. We need to educate people on the scientific method (even though there are many in the hardcore religious groups who oppose it). Then we need to build a better grounding in science for the next generation and make it valued in the same way that the financial and legal sectors are. After all - they're all dependent on the discoveries for their own operations.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 37.7 ms ] threadI object to the terminology. Just because someone is cherry-picking information to support their chosen ideology doesn't make them "not ignorant". It makes them willfully ignorant.
Part of the problem with American political discourse is that we don't do enough to marginalize non-factual arguments -- from both sides of the political spectrum. Pretending that people aren't "ignorant" if they're filtering facts through a political sieve doesn't address this problem. Everyone has freedom of expression in the US, but we should all be doing more to make it plainly clear that some types of content are inferior to others.
I agree completely with your point that a college degree has limited impact on your scientific literacy. Taking baby-bio or physics for poets isn't going to give you the tools necessary to churn through scientific papers, nor will it give you perfect objectivity when evaluating scientific arguments, particularly volatile ones that challenge your own core beliefs.
I fall into that camp. My time in college impressed upon me how human and fallible the academy is. I went in thinking "professors" had all the answers. Then I met enough people who were stealing funds, sleeping with students, lazily grading papers, exploiting free labor and jealously hording grant money, that I realized these were just people, prone to the same errors in judgment that everyone else deals with.
Much like you're trying to do by insinuating that all scientists/professors are lazy, greedy, exploitative thieves who shag their students.
I don't understand how this is relevant to the discussion. No one has ever claimed that scientists are all-knowing or super-human or somehow not subject to the cognitive defects endemic to all human brains.
But just because scientists are human and make mistakes does not mean that their claims about scientific matters are wrong. I mean, my attorney is a human guy who makes typical human mistakes, but when it comes to giving me legal advice, he's a hell of a lot better than the average person. His expertise is beneficial even though he sometimes forgets things or gets confused or gets angry or suffers from status quo bias. All those problems mean that I should exercise some judgment while considering his advice, but statistically, his advice is still much better than what I could come up with on my own.
I've never really understood why anyone cares about who believes what when it comes to topics in science. You can't advance in a career in the sciences without accepting on some terms evolution by means of natural selection so who cares if a bunch of people don't agree?
I'm sort of amazed at the arrogance on display by those who seem bent on making sure everyone agrees with them. It seems like we would be served well by some degree of skepticism of the bishops and the scientific establishment (in all areas). It seems like the more we know the more we lose sight of what we still don't know and don't proceed with much humility.
For my part I'm skeptical of the claims of biologists, mainstream economists, climatologists, and those who offer financial advice. I don't take a strong position on evolution one way or another because the outcome doesn't affect me in any way. I might get made fun of behind my back for doubting these people but that's fine by me.
I also didn't take any losses in the latest stock market crash because I saw it coming three years ahead of time and was safely in cash waiting for the market to figure out what I already knew. I take strong positions on economics because the outcome can really affect me and my family. I might be wrong of course but at least I'm going in with my eyes open.
Because we're afraid that that could change.
It is absolutely important to care what others' think when it comes to topics in science. We live in a society, and others' views and ideas unfortunately will most likely impact people other than themselves. People are free to be as ignorant as they want in isolation, but the moment they start affecting policy, we should care.
You're just fine with having the next generation of schoolkids taught that "God Did It (or maybe aliens)" is the only acceptable explanation for the origin of life, then? Because this fight started with religious zealots trying to prosecute teachers for going against scripture, and it's hard to have any doubt that the clowns pushing Intelligent Design would do something similar if people stopped smacking them down. It might not matter to you whether evolution is right or not, but that's not what the fight is about - the fight is about whether or not scientists should have to poll the idiocracy and make sure they won't offend them before reporting their findings.
And yes, I'm arguing slippery slope, maybe - but the argument in favor of worry is a lot more compelling when we've just finished clawing our way up from the bottom.
It seems like the more we know the more we lose sight of what we still don't know and don't proceed with much humility.
Absolutely. And with climate science, I'd tend to agree with you, we don't know all that much and might want to be careful about how much we trust the preliminary findings - the data appears to be messy, incomplete, and difficult to work with, and the field started out so highly politicized that it's hard to know who to trust.
Evolution, on the other hand, is not even in the same ballpark - evidence is plentiful, it all agrees with the theory, and consensus is overwhelming (and one big difference between bio and climate science is that biologists don't tend to go into biology because of political leanings, so there's far less selection bias amongst researchers).
I'm amazed by the continuing influence of Marx and other socialist philosophers even though we have theories rooted in Platonic arguments and empirical observation that are fairly one sided in their analysis of the subject. It disturbs me greatly that schools teach Keynesian economics and that Paul Krugman has more distribution than what a blog would provide him. I'm disturbed by the success of the Neocons and their apparent love for war.
All that being said I move on with my life. I realize that the best I can is argue my case and if I fail then that's fine. Ideas aren't as important as life and the people in it.
Relevant to the article, herd immunity is compromised by those misinformed about vaccine safety.
In other words, if you're the kind of person who believes that either climate change is no big deal or that there is nothing that humans can do about it, then it doesn't matter at all. Alternatively, if you think climate change is a big deal and that humans can do something about it, then public understanding of science matters because altering it might kill/save a few hundred million people. Do you think the lives of a few hundred million human beings matter?
Don't think of it as a big, scary, nebulous concept like "justice", though. Call it what it is: game design. The body of law is the game that every citizen of a country is always playing, and like any game, you can encourage paths to be followed, and choices to be made, by putting variable-scheduled rewards and increasing "justified" challenges along those paths.
The only people who need to understand the "public policy questions", in a world where public policy is set up as law, are the legislators (the "game designers"). This is simply an argument for better-educated legislators, not a better-educated populace.
There's no real correlation between what the populace believes, and what its elected representatives believe. (Well, there would be if we were all purely rational beings who hadn't invented lying and adhered to Aumann's agreement theorem...) In algorithmic terms—this isn't a hill-climbing heuristic, where you'll eventually optimize toward politicians that believe something in particular; it's a random search.
Maybe, maybe not. But there is a very real correlation between what the populace believes and what laws legislators can vote for without ruining their chances for reelection. Legislators who vote for things that the majority of their constituents find to be completely absurd tend not to be reelected.
The real issue is that if 30-60% of the population thinks climate change is bunk, there's no way to make them care with carrots and sticks because opposing them becomes politically difficult.
The only people who need to understand the "public policy questions", in a world where public policy is set up as law, are the legislators (the "game designers"). This is simply an argument for better-educated legislators, not a better-educated populace.
I don't think this is true at all. Legislators do not have absolute freedom to legislate, even on topics for which the public is ignorant. Such topics can be demagogued which means that they're politically toxic to legislators, even for legislators that understand the issues completely.
If I'm a legislator who is convinced that climate change is a huge problem but I also know that most of my constituents don't believe that, then I'd better not vote for a carbon tax or else I'll lose the next election. Those incentives remain true no matter how much I understand the public policy. It is true that we don't need everyone to fully understand all public policy, but we do need a decent fraction of the population to understand the big issues well enough to make addressing them politically feasible.
They do?
First, we have a more educated populace globally (not just in the US) - this leads to more confidence in our own opinions, and when combined with "the university of Google" and trusting everything one reads on the internet you'll get echo-chambers of likemindedness repeatedly referring to each other. We tend to believe things that we hear over and over. Add in the lack of accountability within the media to appropriately question all claims from all sides in a scientific manner and you can easily become highly insular in your views and opinions.
Secondly - science has moved on in ways unfathomable a century ago - a time where the wealthy could afford an education and those without could not (and hence trusted those with an education more, although you can also claim that corporations have also lessened the trust in anyone too). The sciences today are so incredibly complex that the scientific community has the option to either: a) dumb it down; or b) dumb it down. The problem there is that when you simplify science, you lose some of the details and open yourself up for cherry-picking critique. Add in the issue that most science is now not black-or-white (something that the conservative in everyone prefers) but rather is based on probability (yes, I know all about the black swan events that through out prior observations, however scientific method requires repeatability) - irrespective of whether or not the lifestyle that they currently live is based on such approaches. Add in the proud to be innumerate and scientifically illiterate and you've got some major problems. Mix in that science now looks like religion to the lay person, due to the complexity and lack of comprehension, and you're going to have big problems.
What is the scientific community to do? I'm not sure. We need to change the perception of science in the community. We need to educate people on the scientific method (even though there are many in the hardcore religious groups who oppose it). Then we need to build a better grounding in science for the next generation and make it valued in the same way that the financial and legal sectors are. After all - they're all dependent on the discoveries for their own operations.