Bad Ideas That Won't Go Away

[blackshoe]

I often walk on the (springy surface) race track at the high school or the marked out naturally giving dirt surfacecross-country trail. I sometimes walk on the pavement. I can definitely tell the difference. Walking is a great exercise, but older knees need a little consideration.

I hear ya about the knees. B-)

 

I have heard this quote before. In fact it occurred to me that astrology would indeed be a "touchstone". My thoughts on astrology are roughly the same as a view I saw attributed to Asimov about the existence of God. Something along the lines of "I can't prove that it is false but it seems so unlikely that I don't plan on wasting time thinking about it". I don't know if Heinlein would have approved. I also don't waste tiem worrying about whether Heinlein would have approved. Or Asimov.

I don't know either if Heinlein approved. I'm pretty sure he knew about it, and I suspect he did approve. As for caring about their approval, I don't waste time on that either.

[FM75]

A successful colleague (electrical engineer and MBA) once told me that everything that he was taught in business school was obvious, false, or both! He was not joking. :)

 

I appreciate the Santa Claus stuff. I had not thought about that. I had an interesting hypothesis:

 

Indoctrination of "bias" while young is sufficient, but not necessary, for the persistence of bias.

 

Santa introduces a "testability" element - and refutes my hypothesis.

 

The Monkey, Banana, and Firehose. Community learning.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place

 

More fun reading:

http://www.parentingscience.com/cognitive-development.html

 

Can you understand what other people think given their experience, or do you tend to use your own experience to predict what others will think?

[Codo]

Isn't this whole stuff quite simple psycology?

 

We life in a very complex world, but we like to understand what we are doing and why something works the way it does. And usually, if we understand something, it tends to work better for us. And it does not matter, whether we really understand what is happening or whether we just think, that we have a reasonable explanation.

 

Sometimes it is usefull to know all details, sometimes it is not. F.e. it is VERY helpful to know which pedal to use if you want to stop your car. It is quite useful to know which factors make your breaks work better or worse, so that you will reduce your speed in winter. It is not very useful to know how the pressure on the pedal will force your car to stop.

 

So, what do we all do, if the situation is too complex to understand? We search for easy explanations, for a quite easy picture of our life. And we search for easy solutions. And: If an authority tells us "the truth" we want to belive them, because it makes life much simpler. This authority can be your political or religious leader, maybe big companies, your old aunt, your father or the neighborhood bully. And of course we believe that anybody else must come to the same conclusion then we do.

 

So, if someone gives us some homoepathic medicine, we believe that this well help- and so it does. Placebos rate to help in 40 % of all cases.

 

But maybe there is even more to it. Nowadays, the science is not able to check that homeopathic or acupuncture will help in double blind tests- it can just proofe their failure. I do believe in double blind tests. But can we be sure that they are always right? Maybe there is something more in the world and we just had not been able to develop measurements for these vibrations? Maybe there are some vibrations which let acupunture et all just work in special enviroments, but not in double blind tests?

Yes unlikely, for sure.

OTOH: Just a little more then 100 years ago,the idea that time is not stready had been silly. That nothing is faster then light had been a brand new idea...

Nowadays, we still do not know whether light is a wave, a parttical or both. Maybe our grandchildren will laught about this missing knowledge.

 

Times do change, but all of us want an easy life with easy explanations. So if we have one, we tend to stick to it. There are already so many changes in our life, we like to stick to at least some traditional ideas, so that we do not have to change anything.

[onoway]

<snip>

 

Times do change, but all of us want an easy life with easy explanations. So if we have one, we tend to stick to it. There are already so many changes in our life, we like to stick to at least some traditional ideas, so that we do not have to change anything.

Times not only change but they are changing quicker than ever before. People have to decide where they are going to put their energies to keep up. I think often it's a matter of people not even thinking about a lot of stuff that they were brought up with, they are so busy trying to keep up with the changes they have to keep up with. If someone is worried about their job or if they are in constant pain then they are unlikely to be spending a lot of time pondering whether or not everything they believe is "true".(presumably as decided by science.)

 

Also, science has a bit of a bad rap right now as with such things as climate change and GMOs it's very clear that science is often as divided (publicly at least) as any religious group touting their own version of the "truth". As a minor example, there are even arguments about whether or not a honey locust tree is nitrogen fixing, with scientists firmly on both sides of the argument. That would SEEM to be a fairly simple matter to resolve.

 

Also, it often appears ,correctly or not, that whatever result someone wants to pay for, science can justify. As an example we get some of the drugs which have been released supposedly after rigid scientific study only to be withdrawn after causing a lot of damage. Science most decidedly does NOT have the reputation of knowledge for knowledge's sake anymore - if it ever did -, everything seems to be geared to some agenda, and thus is suspect. I think that many if not most people now regard science with jaundiced eyes just as any agnostic regards religion.

 

Psychology suggests that you cannot take away a belief without offering something to replace it. People are not comfortable with a vacuum (that they are aware of, on some level) in their lives and depending on the cumulative circumstances of how they experienced their environment - from the time they were born onward - they fill it with something which is usually synchronistic with their experience and their needs. To change their beliefs, you have to offer something which will also resonate at least with one or the other.

 

I also think that some of your "bad ideas" examples are highly arguable, but you specify you don't want any discussion about that.

[dwar0123]

Maybe there are some vibrations which let acupunture et all just work in special enviroments, but not in double blind tests?

Yes unlikely, for sure.

Shi, er stuff like this falls so far down the list of things so unlikely as to be not worth thinking about. It is just as likely that everyone in the world can fly by their minds power alone but they are all successfully hiding it from me. Planes are just part of a really elaborate hoax to convince me I'm not the only sad sac that can't fly.

 

You can always invent some wild implausible scenario to rationalize the irrational, but to what end. What does it gain you.

 

Science on the other hand...

 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/science.jpg

Source: http://xkcd.com/54/

[onoway]

Shi, er stuff like this falls so far down the list of things so unlikely as to be not worth thinking about. It is just as likely that everyone in the world can fly by their minds power alone but they are all successfully hiding it from me. Planes are just part of a really elaborate hoax to convince me I'm not the only sad sac that can't fly.

 

You can always invent some wild implausible scenario to rationalize the irrational, but to what end. What does it gain you.

 

Science on the other hand...

 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/science.jpg

Source: http://xkcd.com/54/

Ah t'ís a good thing to have faith. Are you familiar with this site? http://www.badscience.net/

[dwar0123]

Ah t'ís a good thing to have faith. Are you familiar with this site? http://www.badscience.net/

The definition of faith is to believe without proof which proves* you don't understand how science works.

 

*Ok it only suggests it, we should devise an experiment to test this hypothesis.

[jeffford76]

It is just as likely that everyone in the world can fly by their minds power alone but they are all successfully hiding it from me. Planes are just part of a really elaborate hoax to convince me I'm not the only sad sac that can't fly.

 

I did tell everyone you would catch on eventually.

[Antrax]

Are we seriously doing this discussion? I don't want to be offensive, but Descartes pretty much cornered the market on that one, and Hume took what little was left. Yes, logic is a faith like any other, yes you can't really prove much, no it's not a very interesting discussion unless you want to troll an Ayn Rand fan.

[Codo]

Shi, er stuff like this falls so far down the list of things so unlikely as to be not worth thinking about. It is just as likely that everyone in the world can fly by their minds power alone but they are all successfully hiding it from me. Planes are just part of a really elaborate hoax to convince me I'm not the only sad sac that can't fly.

 

You can always invent some wild implausible scenario to rationalize the irrational, but to what end. What does it gain you.

 

Science on the other hand...

 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/science.jpg

Source: http://xkcd.com/54/

 

So sciences works?

Do you really believe that?

 

You may compare all the errors made in science work, all the truth which had been told.

Think about medicines which had caused worse problems then they healed.

Think about truths which had been true for centuries but are abandoned now.

Think about all the tests which had been made and which had undoubtly show that kids have or don't have this or that ability at the age of 3 or 4....

Sciences does develop and our knowledge will continue to explode in the future. Many things which we take as given today will be remote in the future...

 

And you believe that our current knowledge will stand the test of time?

 

You are a real true believer.

[blackshoe]

It is the essence of science that what we believe to be true today may will turn out to be false tomorrow, no matter how much we wish to cling to our current belief.

 

"Si, il mouve." -- Galileo Galilei

[gwnn]

So sciences works?

Do you really believe that?

 

You may compare all the errors made in science work, all the truth which had been told.

Think about medicines which had caused worse problems then they healed.

Think about truths which had been true for centuries but are abandoned now.

Think about all the tests which had been made and which had undoubtly show that kids have or don't have this or that ability at the age of 3 or 4....

Sciences does develop and our knowledge will continue to explode in the future. Many things which we take as given today will be remote in the future...

 

And you believe that our current knowledge will stand the test of time?

 

You are a real true believer.

I think someone already linked this essay when you made this point before, but maybe they didn't, or you didn't have a chance to read it.

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

[helene_t]

Ah t'ís a good thing to have faith. Are you familiar with this site? http://www.badscience.net/

There is science and there is science. On a scale where astrology is zero and relativity theory is 98, maybe many clinical trials are between 20 and 30 (just two numbers i pulled out of the sleeve).

 

Also, there is a difference between saying that science holds the absolute truth, and saying that science "works".

[Fluffy]

I have one, but since I am the only one who thinks its wrong maybe it is me who is wrong, let's see what you think:

 

In my country between 1000 and 2000 people die every day. Yesterday 80 people died on a train accident, 80 people means really nothing, so people and media grossly overreact to it updating info several times/hour and feeling very concerned, etc.

[helene_t]

well, the 80 people are largely people who could have lived for decades otherwise so it's a bigger loss than many of the 1000 other people whose life couldn't have been extended more than a few years even with optimal care and prevention.

 

The government could do something to make trains safer. It can't do much to prevent people from getting older.

 

People who watch the news may decide to avoid risky travel (although I admit that if the news make them take the motorbike instead of the train it has had an adverse effect). People can't decide not to get older.

 

So I can see why the 80 people are more newsworthy than the 1000 or 2000.

[Codo]

I think someone already linked this essay when you made this point before, but maybe they didn't, or you didn't have a chance to read it.

http://chem.tufts.ed...vityofwrong.htm

 

Thanks for the quote, I really love Asimov, he was one of my favourite science fiction writers and this was a really nice and well written essay and I like the way he thinks.

 

But I have no clue, why you put this link as a response to what I wrote. Maybe you can elaborate?

 

I believe in progress and I am very sure that we are now less wrong then we had been 50/500/5000 years before and that we will know much more in 50/500/5000 years.

 

I just had the feeling (rightly or wrongly) that t Dwar has a more religious view on science, while I see it as a tool, which worked well quite often, but had been abused too often.

But maybe I understood him wrong.

[billw55]

So sciences works?

Do you really believe that?

 

You may compare all the errors made in science work, all the truth which had been told.

Think about medicines which had caused worse problems then they healed.

Think about truths which had been true for centuries but are abandoned now.

Think about all the tests which had been made and which had undoubtly show that kids have or don't have this or that ability at the age of 3 or 4....

Sciences does develop and our knowledge will continue to explode in the future. Many things which we take as given today will be remote in the future...

 

And you believe that our current knowledge will stand the test of time?

 

You are a real true believer.

I don't think you understand what science is very well.

 

Science is not a belief system that says "this is true, that is false". The fundamental point of science is that it can discover new and better information and cast aside its own errors along the way. In this sense, science does work very well, although sometimes more slowly than it could due to human tendencies.

[gwnn]

Thanks for the quote, I really love Asimov, he was one of my favourite science fiction writers and this was a really nice and well written essay and I like the way he thinks.

 

But I have no clue, why you put this link as a response to what I wrote. Maybe you can elaborate?

 

I believe in progress and I am very sure that we are now less wrong then we had been 50/500/5000 years before and that we will know much more in 50/500/5000 years.

 

I just had the feeling (rightly or wrongly) that t Dwar has a more religious view on science, while I see it as a tool, which worked well quite often, but had been abused too often.

But maybe I understood him wrong.

You asked "you believe our current knowledge will stand the test of time?" and the answer is "it depends what you mean it will stand the test of time." In fields like physics we will likely discover new effects and principles but none that would cause a huge uproar or disprove what we have done before. Einstein was amazing but none of his theories significantly affect the inner workings of a car or a wind turbine (bleh, the wind turbine uses Maxwell's equations which only ever got in harmony with Newton thanks to Einstein, but anyway, I'm going to leave it here). Quantum mechanics is very important in nanoscience but not so much in making Coca-Cola. Any new principles we find will only slightly revise QM or SR/GR. None of current science is logically true. All of its predictions (like the measurements themselves) have uncertainties. These error bars are likely to be reduced in time. Sometimes not, but you don't have to be a "true believer" to observe the obvious: we are making progress. And you yourself admit to all of this, so what are we talking about? Whether or not science works? Of course it does (witness all the stuff that we can make today that we couldn't do 100 years ago). And it works better every day.

Edited July 25, 2013 by gwnn

[barmar]

So sciences works?

Do you really believe that?

We wouldn't be having this conversation if it weren't for science.

 

Is it perfect? No, of course not. It's done by people, and people make mistakes.

[kenberg]

I had not seen that Asimov essay before. very nice.

 

 

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

 

Yes, exactly.

 

I would add that a society or a nation that chooses to regard science as irrelevant is a society that is headed for deep trouble.

[dwar0123]

So sciences works?

Do you really believe that?

 

You may compare all the errors made in science work, all the truth which had been told.

Think about medicines which had caused worse problems then they healed.

Think about truths which had been true for centuries but are abandoned now.

Think about all the tests which had been made and which had undoubtly show that kids have or don't have this or that ability at the age of 3 or 4....

Sciences does develop and our knowledge will continue to explode in the future. Many things which we take as given today will be remote in the future...

 

And you believe that our current knowledge will stand the test of time?

 

You are a real true believer.

Do I really believe that science works?

 

Absolutely. Do you really believe it doesn't?

 

Does science answer questions as inerrant absolute truths? Only someone who doesn't understand science could make the mistake of thinking that is a mistake that science could make.

 

Science is a process of arriving to a better truth through incremental improvements. Improvements that are made when errors are discovered, and errors will be discovered.

 

Which makes the question of do I believe our current knowledge will stand the test of time laughable. The only way our current knowledge could stand the test of time is if we abandoned science.

[PassedOut]

The news media perpetuates bad ideas by giving sensational publicity to preposterous claims, then burying the retractions: The case of ‘zombie’ voters in South Carolina

 

“We just recently learned that there are over 900 individuals who had died before the election (and had voted) and at least 600 of those individuals had died way outside the window that an absentee ballot could have been sent, so we know for a fact that there are deceased people whose identities are being used in elections in South Carolina.”

 

— South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson ®, on Fox News, Jan. 21, 2012

But there followed an investigation, proving Wilson wrong.

 

More than anyone, [Wilson] hyped these charges into certified “facts,” even before any real investigation had taken place. Indeed, the miniscule percentage of alleged dead votes, out of the number cast, should have urged caution.

 

Instead, he went straight to the television cameras—and then his office for months bottled up the report that revealed not a single claim was true.

 

Apparently, officials were hoping the whole thing would remain dead and buried. But zombies have a way of coming back to life.

But to many folks this foolishness is not -- and never will be -- dead and buried.

[akwoo]

My viewpoint is as follows:

 

Truth is relative to a context or a system.

 

We see this all the time in bridge. When someone asks on this forums what the right bid is for a hand, we ask them 'What system are you playing?'

 

Sometimes the context is implied. In a post-mortem at my local club, I'm going to assume a version of SAYC or 2/1 appropriate for the level and experience of the player. If it's my partner, I'm assuming the system we agreed to play. Similarly, if it's a science classroom or conference, I'm going to assume that only naturalistic explanations of a fairly precise and at least theoretically empirically testable form are permitted, and that explanations should be be backed up by empirical explanations having the requisite level (which varies depending on the field of science) of statistical certainty. But if it's a math, I expect that statements are backed up by logical proofs, whereas for history, I expect some reasonable narrative drawn from evidence from primary sources, or for theology, some chain of reasonable interpretations of sacred texts.

 

Note that not all systems are created equal. If your system has you opening 4♠ on any hand with 5-8 hcp, I'm going to laugh at you.

 

Good systems that people play tend to be improved over time. For example, there was a question recently about what to bid holding something like ♠ Kx ♥ KQxxx ♦ Qxx ♣ Qxx after 1♣ 1♥ 2♣ (opponents silent). Believing the Earth is flat is like bidding 4♣. Believing the Earth is spherical is like bidding 3N. Nowadays we have new minor forcing, so 2♦ is available, but 50 years ago, practically no one would have thought of that as a reasonable bid.

 

Meanwhile, there are people playing, for example, strong club systems, for which this whole conversation is pointless. They're like people who simply don't care what science will tell them about the shape of the world.

 

And on the freakish end, like people playing 4♠ openers show 5-8 hcp any, there are people who believe that no matter what your empirical observations tell you, believing that the Earth is flat and supported on the back of an elephant wearing a green necklace is part of what will get you into Elysia when you die, but believing the elephant wears a blue necklace will get you sent to Hell.

[onoway]

There is science and there is science. On a scale where astrology is zero and relativity theory is 98, maybe many clinical trials are between 20 and 30 (just two numbers i pulled out of the sleeve).

 

Also, there is a difference between saying that science holds the absolute truth, and saying that science "works".

Absolutely agree with you BUT I also think that lots of people tend to present science AS absolute truth. Teachers in school said, "the atom is the smallest particle there is." and never ever modified it to add, "as far as we now know". I'm sure I am dating myself with that comment but I'm also sure that much of what is being taught in at least most schools now is equally dogmatic.

 

So what happens when science turns out to be as riddled with errors, charlatans and snakeoil salesmen as any other enterprise? It isn't surprising that people who don't have the expertise or interest or time to distinguish between the real thing and the fake simply say, "a pox on all of it" and stick with whatever they feel comfortable with. When people who "believe" in science then mock such people it will only turn the mistrust into hostility.

 

Outside of what normally come to mind when someone says "science" much the same thing is beginning to happen with the medical community. Very few people seem to trust their doctors as people used to do and even fewer don't have concerns about big pharma. It's a little scary where that can lead sometimes, I just tried to bring some sense into a thread in another forum where someone was - apparently seriously - suggesting using some herb written about in 1887 to treat rattlesnake and other poisonous snakebites. OTOH when a modern prescription for a mild infection has as possible potential side effects permanent liver damage or even death can you really blame people for looking at alternatives?

 

Just to be clear, I don't think science ought to be regarded with the disdain that it often is, but I do think that the scientific community has brought it on themselves. (Helped along by cynical politicians and predatory businessmen in some cases.)

 

I found the title of this thread mildly offensive and arrogant and that's brought out my devil's advocate side.

[mike777]

One can easily see the trap of having epiphenomena fuel action, then justify it retrospectively.

 

Clive Granger suggests a method to dig out epiphenomena in the cultural discourse and consciousness by looking at the sequence of events and checking out whether one always precedes the other. Also to study differences, that is changes in A and B, not just levels of A and B.

 

----------------------------

 

An epiphenomenon (plural - epiphenomena) is a secondary phenomenon that occurs alongside or in parallel to a primary phenomenon

 

In medicine, an epiphenomenon is a secondary symptom seemingly unrelated to the original disease or disorder. For example, having an increased risk of breast cancer concurrent with taking an antibiotic is an epiphenomenon. It is not the antibiotic that is causing the increased risk, but the increased inflammation associated with bacterial infection.

 

In the more general use of the word a causal relationship between the phenomena is implied: the epiphenomenon is a consequence of the primary phenomenon; however, in medicine this relationship is typically not implied: an epiphenomenon may occur independently, and is merely called an epiphenomenon because it is not the primary phenomenon under study. (A side-effect is a specific kind of epiphenomenon that does occur as a direct consequence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenon

---------------------------------------------------

 

Sir Clive William John Granger /ˈɡreɪndʒər/ (September 4, 1934 – May 27, 2009) was a British economist, who taught in Britain at the University of Nottingham and in the United States at the University of California, San Diego. In 2003, Granger was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, in recognition that he and his co-winner, Robert F. Engle, had made discoveries in the analysis of time series data that had changed fundamentally the way in which economists analyse financial and macroeconomic data

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Granger