Dunning-Kruger effect - about how to think

[sonia]

A young woman, 20-something, bright, said more people get cancer recently because evolution tends toward entropy. I said, uh, no, bad mutations get eliminated over time, and she said well, the Bible says we used to live so much longer, and I said, I like my woo and science kept separate, and also the Bible and science. The Bible is not historical! And she said we'll have to agree to disagree on that, and I was sputtering internally for a good half hour.

She attended public schools in a small town in Oregon, not religious school as I would have guessed. I've run into this wall with her before, where she thought she could assert something as fact because she felt like it, or change the meaning of a word, and now I see the underpinnings. I can see that I know so much more than she does (about how to *think*!), and she can't, and she's asserting her view as valid. Microcosm of our political situation. Reality bats last...

I did mention the dinosaur feathers in amber. (So cool!)

I wonder if in twenty years or so she'll be sadder and wiser, or if she'll continue to be hermetically sealed against actual thought. She can't *learn* with her current framework!

Comments

[suncat]

I saw those dinosaur feathers too! Coolest thing this week.

Your acquaintance? Just proffering a guess here, based on people I've observed over the years.

If she can find her ways to live her life, especially support herself, in a manner that doesn't require acceptance of scientific fact, then she has no impetus to discard her current framework. I say "way to support oneself" because however you do it, it has a major impact on one's life, and if you don't do it "right" by the external criteria of the activity, you don't get paid.

I'm being pretty abstract, let me give a concrete example. My profession is in computer science. A couple decades ago, I met a colleague who was quite sufficiently skilled in computer science. I found out they were also a Creationist and Bible literalist. I kept poking at "how can you be a scientist and hold these beliefs at the same time?" It finally hit me that they didn't have to know a darn thing about biology, geology, paleontology or any of the other scientific disciplines or areas of documented knowledge that have contributed to debunking Creationism. Or more precisely, they were quite aware that these areas of thought exist, but nothing in their daily life required them to accept any of it as valid or real.

I'm sure you can see the corollary -- a person who holds this kind of mental framework is also going to self-select out of studying or working in any area that challenges the worldview. So I really don't hold out much hope for your acquaintance.

[sonia]

That makes sense about choosing professions that aren't reality-based.

Regarding your colleague, though - I find that computer programs are especially unforgiving about what's really in front of me vs. what I think is in front of me. I'm guessing your colleague wasn't so good at debugging. At least if they were as poor at clear *thinking* as the person I was discussing.

[tim]

I think being good at programming and debugging -- which is to say, symbol manipulation -- doesn't save you from having bad axioms.

[sonia]

Yes.

In the case of my friend, it's the "assert something as fact because she felt like it" and not being open to new information that I found jarring. Computer programs don't play that game.

[suncat]

Yup, yup.

Exactly what Tim and you have now said. My colleagues reasoning faculties were just fine.

But by rejecting some of the base premises and evidence of the sciences, because they didn't intersect their daily life, they were free to hare off in their own favored lines of thought.

[sonia]

What I'm trying to say is that rejecting evidence is not a useful practice when debugging computer programs. It's not all about reasoning. It's about noticing and questioning assumptions about what is and isn't happening, what does and doesn't matter.

I find that tracking down difficult bugs in complex software is classically scientific. Formulate a theory, run experiments, take notes, keep updating the theory according to the evidence. Also, come to think of it, doing web searches for other people's experiences, which parallels reading scientific research papers.

[suncat]

Ah, yes. I see your point.

I will say that in all of my years of debugging, I have yet to run across evidence in the code that I find personally or morally repugnant ^_^. So I haven't found need to reject it.

[silveradept]

These days, she won't have to venture outside her bible bubble to interact with the world, and there will be plenty of fake news to collect so as not to have to think outside it, either.

[sonia]

Sadly!

I'm wondering what effect it will have to attend an event regularly at my house, where she encounters friction with her way of being in the world. Every time there's friction I wonder if she'll stop coming, but she keeps showing up.

[silveradept]

Perhaps it will bring about needed changes of mind. It might also be useful just to listen in and hear what someone else's arguments are, so you can deal with them more effectively later.

[sonia]

When there's an argument like, "The Bible is factual," it stops the discussion as far as I'm concerned.

[silveradept]

There is that. At a certain point, you can't actually do something about it until someone gets to a particular level.