Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Laham and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I want to hit you with a quote.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard this one a million times before.
Speaker 1: It's a quote from the American writer Upton Sinclair. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the quote goes like this. He says, it is
Speaker 1: difficult to get a man to understand something when his
Speaker 1: salary depends upon his not understanding it. H Well, that's
Speaker 1: pretty apt. I'm not sure I've actually heard that one before,
Speaker 1: but but that certainly has a ring of truth to it. Really,
Speaker 1: you never heard that? I think I've heard that one.
Speaker 1: People roll that out all the time when they're talking
Speaker 1: about you know, industry shills, paid spokespeople, pr types. Um. Yeah, yeah. So.
Speaker 1: Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: and he claimed in a campaign retrospective that he used
Speaker 1: to tell his rally audience is this and it's a
Speaker 1: great line. There's plenty of truth to it. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, for anyone who's not familiar up to
Speaker 1: in Sinclair lived through nine sixty eight, and he was
Speaker 1: the author of The Jungle and perhaps more known to
Speaker 1: some of our listeners for his story Oil, which was
Speaker 1: loosely adapted into the two thousand seventh film There Will
Speaker 1: Be Blood. Always going to be remembered for a movie first.
Speaker 1: But did he also write Boogie Nights the original version?
Speaker 1: Maybe so, John, maybe so? But but no, not just
Speaker 1: an author but also a politician. Yeah, so he was
Speaker 1: used to talking about issues of public policy. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was a politically concerned writer. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of times people put him in categories like like with
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens. You know, somebody who's known for writing fiction
Speaker 1: but also for exposing the plight of the politically disadvantaged.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, this quote comes up a lot, like
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a lawyer representing big tobacco back
Speaker 1: in the day, who would come on TV and say
Speaker 1: the science isn't settled yet, there's no proof cigarettes cause cancer,
Speaker 1: or maybe a col industry lobbyists, maybe literally the same
Speaker 1: exact person comes on TV a few decades later and says,
Speaker 1: don't listen to the climate alarmist, that they're scientists on
Speaker 1: both sides. You know, climate change isn't settled yet. When
Speaker 1: you're hearing from people like this who are like paid
Speaker 1: to represent a particular point of view, you obviously don't
Speaker 1: have to be a super skeptic to realize you shouldn't
Speaker 1: just take their word for it. Um, But people who
Speaker 1: get paid to tell you that the grass is pink
Speaker 1: and the sky is green are going to keep saying that.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not going to change their mind by
Speaker 1: offering them evidence or making good points or something, because
Speaker 1: they're not here to figure out what's true. They're here
Speaker 1: to say their lines. Yeah, I'm I'm always reminded of
Speaker 1: the The Doctor character who would inevitably show up in
Speaker 1: the late night infomercials for various products. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: clearly they didn't just do a cold call and get
Speaker 1: get somebody in there to uh to to show for
Speaker 1: this product. Only Marw Burrow stimulates your cue zone when
Speaker 1: it comes to people like that. I guess this is
Speaker 1: kind of a tangent. But when it when it comes
Speaker 1: to like people who shill for a particular you know,
Speaker 1: point of view, or or spokespeople for some kind of
Speaker 1: line on TV, I always kind of wonder, like, do
Speaker 1: they end up really truly believing the thing that they're
Speaker 1: paid to say, or is there some kind of cognitive
Speaker 1: dissonance in their brain. I don't know what it's like
Speaker 1: to be in that mind. Yeah, that's a great question though,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's one thing for just like an
Speaker 1: individual to endorse a product, you know, yeah, like reading
Speaker 1: an ad or or even saying, hey, I tried out
Speaker 1: this product. It's really great. You guys should give it
Speaker 1: a try as well, which obviously we do on the show.
Speaker 1: But but but when you get to that level where
Speaker 1: you have an expert, when you have say a medical
Speaker 1: doctor um, appearing on an infomercial or appearing even um,
Speaker 1: you know, in some sort of governmental body and saying, yes,
Speaker 1: I state my reputation on this, I state my professional
Speaker 1: um expertise, uh, put it on the line in support
Speaker 1: of this product or this industry and directly contradicting what
Speaker 1: appears to be the preponderance of the thence right, that
Speaker 1: that's what these industry shills come out to do, right,
Speaker 1: they come out to tell you that the scientists are wrong.
Speaker 1: But anyway, given evidence that has emerged in recent years,
Speaker 1: I think maybe later on in this episode we should
Speaker 1: come back and try to do an updated version of
Speaker 1: this Upton Sinclair quote, because I think that the scope
Speaker 1: of this quote is actually too limited by just focusing
Speaker 1: on the salary. So so we'll come back to this,
Speaker 1: But today we're gonna be talking about a form of
Speaker 1: motivated reasoning, a form of motivated reasoning called motivated numerous ee,
Speaker 1: and specifically how that relates to the idea of identity
Speaker 1: protective cognition. And this has come up on the show before.
Speaker 1: We talked about it in an episode a while back
Speaker 1: called Science Communication Breakdown. I think that was like a
Speaker 1: year and a half ago, or so, I believe so.
Speaker 1: But it was based on when you had gone to
Speaker 1: the World Science Festival and seen a talk that included
Speaker 1: the work of the Yale psychologist Dan Kahan, who is
Speaker 1: he does a lot of really interesting research about biases
Speaker 1: and motivated reasoning and the ways in which our brains
Speaker 1: fail to be rational in one way, sometimes by being
Speaker 1: uh sort of subversively rational in another way. Yeah. Isn't
Speaker 1: it interesting how we sometimes uh as seem to outsmart
Speaker 1: ourselves in these matters. Yeah. So I want to start
Speaker 1: by thinking about two different kinds of disagreements that come
Speaker 1: up when people talk about politics. There are obviously lots
Speaker 1: of different ways people can disagree about politics. Here here
Speaker 1: are two different kinds of currently politically relevant statements. One
Speaker 1: is somebody who says the government shouldn't have a right
Speaker 1: to tax my income. Right, you might talk to like
Speaker 1: a libertarian who says that. And then here's a different
Speaker 1: politically relevant statement, human activity is the primary driver of
Speaker 1: global climate change. Now, people have political arguments over statements
Speaker 1: like both of these two all the time, but these
Speaker 1: are not at all the same kind of statement. One
Speaker 1: big difference is that the first statement is a statement
Speaker 1: about val I'll use like you can't do a bunch
Speaker 1: of empirical experiments to determine if it's correct or not
Speaker 1: that the government should be allowed to tax people. That's
Speaker 1: just a question about what you believe should be the case.
Speaker 1: What about values and priorities, and about the priorities of
Speaker 1: the person making the statement, right, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a commentary on how you think, or how one
Speaker 1: group thinks politics should work or how government should work. Rather, uh,
Speaker 1: and we shouldn't be confused by the idea of political science.
Speaker 1: Political science, though a serious field, is a different matter
Speaker 1: compared to the natural sciences. Well, it's certainly true that
Speaker 1: with questions about like whether or not you should tax income,
Speaker 1: you can approach that question from the point of optimizing
Speaker 1: for certain goals, like if you specify a goal and
Speaker 1: you compare different methods of achieving that goal, then you
Speaker 1: can do that. But like, absent all of that kind
Speaker 1: of framework, that's just a statement about values. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, you've got the human activity is the primary
Speaker 1: driver of global climate change change. That statement is not
Speaker 1: like that. There simply is a fact of the matter,
Speaker 1: either human activity is the primary cause of global climate
Speaker 1: change or it isn't. And you can do empirical experiments
Speaker 1: to test this hypothesis, and of course the answer is that, yes,
Speaker 1: we now know that it is the primary driver of
Speaker 1: global climate change with like a you know, ninety something
Speaker 1: percent certainty. It's we really really strongly know this. Now.
Speaker 1: This is undoubtedly the scientific consensus. Even though this question
Speaker 1: is politically controversial, it's not scientifically controversial. And if you
Speaker 1: doubt this, you actually have the ability to go look
Speaker 1: up the evidence yourself. Especially that's one thing that the
Speaker 1: internet is great for. You can go read the most
Speaker 1: recent I p. C. C report. You can read the
Speaker 1: thousands of individual studies, you can look at the data
Speaker 1: and read the climate scientist's own words about how their
Speaker 1: conclusions are drawn from the data of their experiments. And
Speaker 1: if you actually do that, I think any reasonable person
Speaker 1: should be able to conclude, of course, human activities the
Speaker 1: primary cause of climate change change. And yet that's not
Speaker 1: what happens, is it? Questions like this remain politically controversial,
Speaker 1: with people often judging the answer in a way that
Speaker 1: aligns with their political identity. Now, speaking of politics, I
Speaker 1: just want to throw in a quick fact Lloyd here
Speaker 1: about this episode. We were recording this on election day.
Speaker 1: It will be published after election day. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: we don't know what the outcome is going to be. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so none of this, none of this is a commentary
Speaker 1: on things that have not yet occurred as of this recording. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's not really a commentary on politics per se.
Speaker 1: It's a commentary on psychology really that that is going
Speaker 1: to be at play and people of all political persuasions exactly.
Speaker 1: So I think we should turn to look at the
Speaker 1: big paper that we're going to be focusing on in
Speaker 1: this episode. The the lead author was was Dan Kahan,
Speaker 1: but the other authors include Ellen Peters, Rika Cantrell Dawson,
Speaker 1: and Paul Slovak. And it's called Motivated Numerousy and Enlightened
Speaker 1: Self Government, published in Behavioral Public Policy, I think first
Speaker 1: published in Revised in and they start off by observing
Speaker 1: the same kind of thing we've just been talking about
Speaker 1: that Obviously, there are questions where people can argue about
Speaker 1: their political values, but the politics is also full of
Speaker 1: these arguments about purely empirical questions, many of which are
Speaker 1: no longer in fact empirically controversial, like is climate change
Speaker 1: driven by greenhouse gas emissions? The answer is yes, but
Speaker 1: this is still politically controversial. Other questions like this that
Speaker 1: they give a big list of them. One would be
Speaker 1: like could we improve public safety by storing nuclear waste
Speaker 1: deep underground? And that one is a yes as well.
Speaker 1: I believe that's one that was brought up in the
Speaker 1: Penal World Science Festival that Kahan spoke on, and that
Speaker 1: was one that actually I seem to be more divisive. Um,
Speaker 1: they kind of pulled the audience there at the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival, so you know, for the most part of
Speaker 1: very informed and curious bunch, but even they were not
Speaker 1: as well informed, uh on this issue as they were
Speaker 1: on some of these other issues we're talking about here. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: not all of these questions are going to be as
Speaker 1: settled with as much confidence as other ones are. So like,
Speaker 1: we have a very high confidence now that greenhouse gas
Speaker 1: emissions are driving climate change, but there could be other
Speaker 1: questions that are in theory empirical, even if we don't
Speaker 1: have a scientific consensus yet. I honestly don't know where
Speaker 1: this this next question falls in, whether it's more settled
Speaker 1: or less settled. But other questions would include things like, uh,
Speaker 1: do gun control measures reduce violent crime or increase it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Does public spending in the aftermath of an economic recession
Speaker 1: increase the length of the recession or shorten it? And
Speaker 1: so with some of these questions, we don't always yet
Speaker 1: know the correct answer, but they are at least empirical.
Speaker 1: You can do tests, and you can gather data, and
Speaker 1: you can find with some degree of confidence that there
Speaker 1: is a correct answer. It's not just going to be
Speaker 1: an endless contest of values. Yes, it's in the domain
Speaker 1: of science, and science can have at it. One of
Speaker 1: the interesting things about a lot of these questions is
Speaker 1: that they, for some reason almost always seem to concern
Speaker 1: questions or perceptions of risk. I guess maybe that's just
Speaker 1: what politics is about. Yeah, I think there is a
Speaker 1: lot of risk analysis in politics. I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 1: there's there's always a certain amount of fear mongering as well,
Speaker 1: Like how do you how do you capitalize on the
Speaker 1: sort of risks that that voters are considering? How do
Speaker 1: you potentially stir up the flames or or or or
Speaker 1: tap them down a bit depending on what kind of
Speaker 1: a reaction you're looking for. Well, I guess you could
Speaker 1: look at many major policy decisions as um as conflicts
Speaker 1: between perceptions of different kinds of risks, right, Like, so
Speaker 1: somebody will say, well, there's a certain amount of risk
Speaker 1: we're running by not doing anything about global climate change.
Speaker 1: Here the things that could result, and somebody else's yes,
Speaker 1: But if we do something about it, we risk I
Speaker 1: don't know, we risk not making enough money or something
Speaker 1: or or perrap perhap halps, it's yeah, we risk hurting
Speaker 1: ourselves in the short term or a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of times, the short term risk versus long term risk,
Speaker 1: immediate risk versus more you know, elusive risks, Yeah. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: when you look at these questions that have been pretty
Speaker 1: convincingly answered with empirical evidence, and yet intense disagreement persists
Speaker 1: in politics, this obviously isn't helpful. Like there's enough under
Speaker 1: dispute over what values should drive public policy that it
Speaker 1: really doesn't help to add to that that, like unnecessary
Speaker 1: dead end disputes about underlying empirical facts when the science
Speaker 1: or the facts are actually pretty clear. So the question
Speaker 1: is why how come you can have a question where
Speaker 1: the evidence is very clear, such as the cause of
Speaker 1: climate change being related to the burning of fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: but the public not being in general agreement about it.
Speaker 1: And this this paper looks at two major competing hypotheses
Speaker 1: to explain this, like why people don't accept the facts
Speaker 1: when the facts are pretty clear. And the first one
Speaker 1: is the hypothesis they call the science comprehension thesis or
Speaker 1: the SCT, and basically it goes like this, the public
Speaker 1: in general has a pretty weak understanding of science. We
Speaker 1: are likely to misunderstand what scientists are telling us. If
Speaker 1: you put a scientific paper in front of us, we're
Speaker 1: probably not gonna understand it. Thus, we're likely to be
Speaker 1: misled by people who are trying to deceive us to
Speaker 1: their own advantage. And I think unfortunately, or well, I
Speaker 1: don't want to pre empt what we get to in
Speaker 1: a bit, but I guess we could say unfortunately. This
Speaker 1: hypothesis is pretty common among skeptics and science enthusiasts and
Speaker 1: even scientists themselves, and I feel myself very drawn to
Speaker 1: it because if you accept that the problem is, um,
Speaker 1: we're just not scientifically literate enough to understand what's being
Speaker 1: talked about, in a way, this is actually kind of hopeful,
Speaker 1: especially if you're an educator or a science communicator, because
Speaker 1: the problem is simply a lack of knowledge. There's just
Speaker 1: a deficit that can be made up. And so if
Speaker 1: you just you know, community, you give people better scientific education,
Speaker 1: better communication of the scientific reality. Under this hypothesis, if
Speaker 1: you just teach people better scientific literacy skills, they will
Speaker 1: finally see the light and come around and accept the
Speaker 1: empirically verifiable facts. Yeah, there's hoping this because you can
Speaker 1: you can teach people about science. You can you can
Speaker 1: teach people more about logical thinking as well. Um And
Speaker 1: though of course I think that's clearly part of scientific
Speaker 1: literacy as well. But but I can't help but think
Speaker 1: back to, for instance, Carl Sagan's discussion of on the
Speaker 1: Bologna Detection Kit, like, the problem is people don't have
Speaker 1: the kit online, right, or they don't have all the
Speaker 1: tools and the kit for instance, just to just to
Speaker 1: blow through these really quickly. He goes into far more
Speaker 1: detail in the demon Haunted world. But the nine tools
Speaker 1: are and again abbreviated Number one. Whenever possible, there must
Speaker 1: be independent confirmation of the facts. Facts and quotations uh
Speaker 1: Number two. Encourage a substantive debate on the evidence by
Speaker 1: knowledgeable proponents of all points of view. Number Number three.
Speaker 1: Arguments from authority carry little weight. Authorities have made mistakes
Speaker 1: in the past, they will do so again in the future.
Speaker 1: In science, there are no authorities. At most there are experts.
Speaker 1: Number four. Spin more than one hypothesis. Number five. Try
Speaker 1: not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because
Speaker 1: it's yours. Hard Number six quantify If whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it,
Speaker 1: you'll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses.
Speaker 1: This is why numbers are often useful in science exactly.
Speaker 1: Number seven. If there's a chain of argument, every link
Speaker 1: in the chain must work, including the premise, not just
Speaker 1: most of them. Number eight Acam's razer. This is basically,
Speaker 1: when you have um two hypotheses that explain data equally well,
Speaker 1: you choose the simpler of the two. Right, So like
Speaker 1: a dream or a hallucination is probably a better explanation
Speaker 1: for your alien abduction experience than aliens coming here exactly.
Speaker 1: And then finally, the knife tool in a Bolognay detection
Speaker 1: kit always ask whether the hypothesis can be at least
Speaker 1: in principle falsified. Propositions that are untestable or unfalsifiable are
Speaker 1: not worth much. That's a really good kit. And I
Speaker 1: think Carl Sagan, I don't want to put words in
Speaker 1: his mouth, but I do think he he seems to
Speaker 1: operate from that kind of hopeful scientific comprehension thesis point
Speaker 1: of view. At least as best I can tell, it
Speaker 1: seems like he thinks, you know, the problem with the
Speaker 1: lack of scientific skepticism among the people is just that
Speaker 1: they need access to better tools like this, and if
Speaker 1: we can communicate those tools to them, they can bring
Speaker 1: them online. And then they'll be more protected against the
Speaker 1: titular Bolognay, yeah, I think so. Now back to this paper,
Speaker 1: the authors write that on this hypothesis, on the science
Speaker 1: comprehension thesis, the lack of comprehension skill causes people to
Speaker 1: over rely on what's calling what's known as system one
Speaker 1: thinking when judging empirical scientific questions like perceptions of risk.
Speaker 1: Now we should mention a little bit about the difference
Speaker 1: between these concepts of system one thinking and system to thinking.
Speaker 1: This is big in the works of people like Daniel
Speaker 1: Kanaman who have written about behavioral economics and the psychology
Speaker 1: of bias and stuff that's right. It was key to
Speaker 1: his two thousand and eleven book Thinking Fast and Slow. Um,
Speaker 1: And we've talked about system one thinking system to thinking
Speaker 1: on the show before I Think, I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The basic explanation here, system one thinking is all about fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic,
Speaker 1: and unconscious thinking. This is the theory. This is ruled
Speaker 1: by heuristics, you know, shortcut ways of thinking. When you
Speaker 1: when you look at two piles of things and want
Speaker 1: to know how many, you know which pile has more
Speaker 1: things in it. If you just judge by I don't
Speaker 1: know your eyeball. It that system one system to thinking
Speaker 1: would be what maybe you count the things in the pile? Right?
Speaker 1: It is slow, effortful, infrequent, logical calculating, and conscious. This
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of the two fear networks that
Speaker 1: were recently discussed in the show Yeah and the Slayer
Speaker 1: episode Yeah. System two is all about avoiding the tiger
Speaker 1: haunted thickets. Well, if you rely on system one, then
Speaker 1: you're more of a tiger racer, a tiger boxer, or
Speaker 1: just I guess, just a straight up tiger denier. And
Speaker 1: you know, both of those systems are necessary actually because
Speaker 1: we don't always have time to do deliberate, slow logical
Speaker 1: calculating conscious thought a lot. You know, if we did
Speaker 1: that about every decision we made, we couldn't live. That
Speaker 1: would be no way to survive. You have to be
Speaker 1: fast and reactive and unconscious about all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And so the question is how do you choose which
Speaker 1: types of decisions and scenarios to apply these two different
Speaker 1: thinking schema to on the science comprehension thesis, I think
Speaker 1: the idea is that people are relying on system one
Speaker 1: thinking to answer empirical questions about science that are politically relevant,
Speaker 1: whereas they should be using their system to thinking to
Speaker 1: get through the get through the fast reactive, stereotypic kind
Speaker 1: of thing ing and come to the correct answer. Fun fact,
Speaker 1: we used to be owned by a company that called
Speaker 1: itself System one UH, named after this this mode of thinking.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only hypothesis on offer. That's the
Speaker 1: science comprehension thesis. The other hypothesis, the rival hypothesis, is
Speaker 1: what if the problem with controversies over empirical questions is
Speaker 1: not that they're caused by a deficit of knowledge or
Speaker 1: cognitive skill UH. And this other idea the authors called
Speaker 1: the identity protective cognition thesis or the i C t
Speaker 1: They write, quote, whereas s CT attributes conflicts over decision
Speaker 1: relevant science two deficits in science comprehension, I SET sees
Speaker 1: the public's otherwise intact capacity to comprehend decision relevant science
Speaker 1: as disabled by cultural and political conflict. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's not that people can't understand the science, it's that
Speaker 1: they could understand the issue if they were not politically
Speaker 1: charged urged. And it is specifically the political charging of
Speaker 1: the issue that makes it impossible for them to understand
Speaker 1: what they otherwise might be able to. All right, so
Speaker 1: I have to try and put this into tiger terms. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's like having the capabilities to avoid tiger kill zones,
Speaker 1: but refusing to do so for political reasons. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: all your friends around you maybe are saying like, oh no,
Speaker 1: that the people who say that the tigers hang out
Speaker 1: in the jungle are dumb. They are the bad people,
Speaker 1: real people, really, the good people all know that there
Speaker 1: are no tigers in the jungle, that the tigers are
Speaker 1: somewhere else. I do admit I love it anytime we
Speaker 1: can put things in terms of big cat attacks. That
Speaker 1: always just seems to really help explain the topic. You
Speaker 1: should know, I'm picturing not a real tiger, but Tony
Speaker 1: the tiger. Yeah, Tony the tiger mauling and killing people
Speaker 1: a right. Okay, So here's the question. If this hypothesis
Speaker 1: is correct, why would it be the case that political
Speaker 1: charging of issues would make us enable to use our
Speaker 1: normal reasoning faculties. Well, first of all, I mean think
Speaker 1: about the Upton's and Claire quote. It's difficult to make
Speaker 1: a person understand something when their salary depends on it.
Speaker 1: Here we're not talking about a salary, but about something
Speaker 1: else of immense psychic and material value, and that is
Speaker 1: your membership, status and standing within a social group that
Speaker 1: is in part defined by its commitment to certain moral
Speaker 1: and political values. Well, I think that's very much like salary.
Speaker 1: I mean, salary is money, money is life, money is happiness.
Speaker 1: I mean we say it's not, but it is. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then uh and then but but it is the
Speaker 1: thing that allows us to eat and live and be
Speaker 1: in most circumstances, certainly in the world that we've we've
Speaker 1: we've made and remade for ourselves and likewise, in a
Speaker 1: more primal sense, belonging to a group, being part of
Speaker 1: a group, that is, that is survival for for the
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens. Yes, that is how we have historically and
Speaker 1: prehistorically managed to live. It's psychically necessary to us. It's
Speaker 1: necessary for us to have good mental and in fact,
Speaker 1: I think in some ways good physical health, to be
Speaker 1: a member in good standing of a social group and
Speaker 1: a social network. But if you want to go into
Speaker 1: our you know, our our evolutionary history, it is literally
Speaker 1: materially necessary to be accepted as a member of the
Speaker 1: end group. If you're driven out of your hunter gatherer
Speaker 1: tribe that things are not looking good for you, you're
Speaker 1: just waiting to fall into a tiger thicket at that point, right.
Speaker 1: And so, if all your friends and allies believe one
Speaker 1: way about any politically charged issue, climate change or gun
Speaker 1: control or whatever, and you put yourself at huge personal
Speaker 1: risk by advocating a position that that group disagrees with,
Speaker 1: you could be alienated from your social group. You could
Speaker 1: lose connections that you depend on for mental health and survival. Thus,
Speaker 1: you could definitely see identity protective cognition as a kind
Speaker 1: of mental immune system. It protects the brain from beliefs
Speaker 1: that could potentially cause you immense harm if you were
Speaker 1: to express them. The brain detects a belief or an
Speaker 1: idea that is a threat to your social identity, and
Speaker 1: it puts up a wall against that belief and doesn't
Speaker 1: let it in because it could hurt you. You know,
Speaker 1: And I think we can all relate to this on
Speaker 1: one level or another. You know, how many times have
Speaker 1: any of us said, well, I refuse to believe that,
Speaker 1: or I find that hard to believe U. And of
Speaker 1: course there are a lot of examples that come up
Speaker 1: in which the issues relate more clearly to personal belief
Speaker 1: and and or just pure opinion and artistic value. For instance,
Speaker 1: of a movie reviewer television reviewer tells me that an
Speaker 1: upcoming Cohen Brothers movie isn't worth seeing. I generally find
Speaker 1: that hard to believe until I see it for myself,
Speaker 1: and say, in the case of Inside Lewyn Davis, I
Speaker 1: end up agreeing with what Inside Lewyn Davis. You know
Speaker 1: it was wonderfully made. Prepare to be ostracized, but you
Speaker 1: know it was wonderfully made. But it was just not
Speaker 1: my cup of tea. Oh I loved it. I love
Speaker 1: Oscar Isaac. It was Oh man, he's such a great
Speaker 1: singer to the music was wonderful. The music was was great.
Speaker 1: It just did not It did not make me happy
Speaker 1: or make me sad in an interesting way. You know,
Speaker 1: I will, I will do my best not to fully
Speaker 1: alienate you and throw you out into the cold. So
Speaker 1: but that's one thing, right, Ultimately coming down to art
Speaker 1: in personal opinion. Uh, And and there are I think
Speaker 1: there are going to be certain areas where you are
Speaker 1: going to be so attached to certain artistic values that
Speaker 1: you're going to feel reluctant to state it because of
Speaker 1: how it might affect your standing in a group. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a different kind of variation. Like there are
Speaker 1: some unpopular aesthetic opinions that you're not really scared to
Speaker 1: voice because you could abandon them if you needed to. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but I really deeply held aesthetic preference that would be
Speaker 1: unpopular you maybe just don't even bring up. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I imagine a band abandoning suddenly abandoning your favorite rock
Speaker 1: band in high school. You know that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But but clearly, you know a lot of these other
Speaker 1: issues are all so are going to be different matters, say,
Speaker 1: matters of hearsay or something that's just not completely provable
Speaker 1: one way or another, uh, say, some bit of dirt
Speaker 1: on a political candidate that can need to be confirmed
Speaker 1: or denied. But then we have to come back to
Speaker 1: those empirical questions, the ones where science can and does
Speaker 1: weigh in on the matter. Yes, and fortunately, as the
Speaker 1: authors point out, not that many empirical questions are really
Speaker 1: likely to trigger identity protective cognition. Only empirical questions that
Speaker 1: are unfortunate enough to get tagged as politically significant along
Speaker 1: partisan lines really acquired this taint. For example, you know,
Speaker 1: there's been a partisan divide over the HPV vaccine, probably
Speaker 1: because it has some kind of perceived relevance to sexual
Speaker 1: morality and young people. But there's no partisan divide on
Speaker 1: the use of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, and most
Speaker 1: questions are more like the antibiotics. There's just there's not
Speaker 1: a partisan divide about it. What you know, temperature, water
Speaker 1: boils or scientific questions. There's just not really a partisan divide.
Speaker 1: Dawn though, to come back to antibiotics, I see, I
Speaker 1: see a dark future. I see there could be a
Speaker 1: time where if members of one major political party but
Speaker 1: not the other, happen to start talking about antibiotics, I
Speaker 1: think you could quite easily see partisan associations arise, and
Speaker 1: antibiotics could go from an issue that's non politicized where
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody agrees to an issue that suddenly is
Speaker 1: divided along partisan lines. Now that that seems sadly like
Speaker 1: the kind of thing we would do. But to come
Speaker 1: back on the other side, Okay, wait a minute. Don't
Speaker 1: people also have an incentive to have correct beliefs obviously, right,
Speaker 1: I mean right, yeah, I mean we It definitely pays
Speaker 1: off to have a working, realistic model of how the
Speaker 1: world works that you live in. But it pays off
Speaker 1: in some ways that are much more personally immediately relevant
Speaker 1: than others. Uh, depending on the issue. Think about it.
Speaker 1: In policy relevant empirical questions like the impact of carbon
Speaker 1: emissions or the act of gun control policies, the consequence
Speaker 1: of one individual person being wrong is vanishingly small. But
Speaker 1: for that one person, the consequence of being alienated from
Speaker 1: their identity group is potentially massive. So on one decision,
Speaker 1: you potentially cast one vote out of millions for a
Speaker 1: poorly reasoned public policy, and on the other decision, you
Speaker 1: could alienate or weaken your most important friendships, your work relationships,
Speaker 1: and even your sense of self um and so the
Speaker 1: author's right quote persistent conflict over risks and other policy
Speaker 1: relevant facts reflects a tragedy of the science communications commons,
Speaker 1: a misalignment between the individual interests that culturally diverse citizens
Speaker 1: have informing beliefs that connect them to others who share
Speaker 1: their distinctive understanding of the best life, and the collective
Speaker 1: interests that members of all such groups share in the
Speaker 1: enactment of public policies that enable them to pursue their
Speaker 1: ends free from threats to their health and prosperity. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: come back we can take a look at how we
Speaker 1: can compare these two hypotheses. Alright, we're back, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at ways to compare these two hypotheses. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, in all of this, I can't help but think, well,
Speaker 1: why can't it be both? Why can't we can't we
Speaker 1: have like both of these uh, these uh, these reasons
Speaker 1: in play? You mean that? So we've got the two hypotheses,
Speaker 1: the science comprehension thesis, which says that people come to
Speaker 1: incorrect beliefs about scientifically are politically relevant empirical questions because
Speaker 1: they lack the scientific literacy skills to understand the issues.
Speaker 1: And then the other one says it's not that they
Speaker 1: lack the skills to understand the issues, it's that they
Speaker 1: are being selectively blinded from proper reasoning by identity protective
Speaker 1: cognition that is socially conditioned. Right, the idea coming back
Speaker 1: to Segan's toolkit. It's like, do I not have the
Speaker 1: tools or is there just this like this, there is
Speaker 1: a social and psychological reason for not using the tools
Speaker 1: that I have. Well, I think technically you could have
Speaker 1: both in a way. So the question would be, um,
Speaker 1: can you show that these are are mutually exclusive, and
Speaker 1: that would come through in the evidence. But you certainly
Speaker 1: could have a population that has fewer science comprehension skills
Speaker 1: than it could and so you could educate people in
Speaker 1: science better and we would have higher scientific comprehension skills.
Speaker 1: But also within that population, identity protective cognition could be
Speaker 1: highly salient. So that's a good question. But if you
Speaker 1: want to pit these two hypotheses against each other, you
Speaker 1: can create just create conditions where they're obviously going to
Speaker 1: be antagonistic as far as the data is concerned. So
Speaker 1: here's one idea. If the science comprehension thesis is correct, right,
Speaker 1: the problem is a deficit and understanding science. People who
Speaker 1: are better at drawing correct conclusions from scientific data will
Speaker 1: be better at it, whether or not the data concerns
Speaker 1: politically relevant issues. Right, So it should mean that if
Speaker 1: the s CT is correct, the science comprehension thesis, it
Speaker 1: should mean that if you have scientific understanding skills like
Speaker 1: numerous e, which is skill at using numbers and drawing
Speaker 1: conclusions from from quantitative data. If you have high NUMEROUSY
Speaker 1: you should be better at drawing the correct conclusions from data,
Speaker 1: whether or not that data flatters your political perceptions. UM.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, if the identity protective cognition thesis
Speaker 1: is correct, people who are better at drawing correct conclusions
Speaker 1: from scientific data will see this skill significantly hampered by
Speaker 1: the introduction of a political identity threat. All right, so
Speaker 1: I have a feeling we're gonna we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: some experiments. Yes, So the experiment is big sample of
Speaker 1: one thousand, one hundred and eleven demographically diverse and ideologically
Speaker 1: diverse US adults. Uh, and you sort them according to
Speaker 1: a couple of major factors. One is political ideology, so
Speaker 1: they're sort of on on a scale of how liberal
Speaker 1: or conservative they rate themselves. And then the next is
Speaker 1: their numeracy skills, determined by a numeracy test. The author's
Speaker 1: right quote a well established and highly studied construct and
Speaker 1: NUMEROUSY encompasses not just mathematical ability, but also a disposition
Speaker 1: to engage quantitative information in a reflective and systematic way
Speaker 1: and to use it to support valid inferences. So it's
Speaker 1: not just being good at math, but it's being able
Speaker 1: to say, look at data in a study and figure
Speaker 1: out what that data should tell you. So the authors
Speaker 1: came up with a couple of fictional experiments, and they
Speaker 1: took the results of these fictional experiments and asked the
Speaker 1: participants to draw conclusions based on the results they showed them. Now,
Speaker 1: both the results of the fictional experiment and the topic
Speaker 1: of the experiment were manipulated to create different test conditions,
Speaker 1: so the same results were offered in the context of
Speaker 1: either being about quote the effectiveness of a new skin
Speaker 1: rash treatment or quote the effectiveness of a ban on
Speaker 1: carrying concealed weapons in public. One of those is going
Speaker 1: to be more controversial than the other. Right, So what
Speaker 1: they're saying is they they expect that the skin rash
Speaker 1: treatment is not going to have any partisan significance unless
Speaker 1: I don't know, major Republicans or Democrats start talking about
Speaker 1: skin rashes a lot, but at this point it was
Speaker 1: not politically relevant. The other is, of course, being about guns,
Speaker 1: which is one of the most highly charged, politically charged
Speaker 1: topics where people break down along partisan lines. Okay, so
Speaker 1: imagine you're one of the people who's a subject in
Speaker 1: this experiment, they will give you a table of results
Speaker 1: to look at, and it might say it's say it's
Speaker 1: you're in the skin rash condition. It might You'll have
Speaker 1: a table of four numbers, and the different numbers represent
Speaker 1: patients who did use a new skin cream and patients
Speaker 1: who did not use a new skin cream. And then
Speaker 1: the other axes of the table will be patients whose
Speaker 1: rash got worse and patients whose rash got better. And
Speaker 1: then you need to determine, based on the numbers and
Speaker 1: the table, whether the skin cream is more helpful or
Speaker 1: more harmful, and then substitute in the exact same thing
Speaker 1: for instead of using patients using a skin cream, cities
Speaker 1: that did or did not ban carrying concealed handguns in public,
Speaker 1: and instead of the rash getting worse or the rash
Speaker 1: getting better, it's crime went down or crime went up.
Speaker 1: So the authors had three hypotheses three that they would
Speaker 1: test here. One is that they guessed subjects scoring high
Speaker 1: in numeracy would be more likely to get the right
Speaker 1: result in both skin treatment conditions. And this is pretty straightforward. Basically,
Speaker 1: they're saying people who have higher numeracy skills are more
Speaker 1: likely to use deliberate system to thinking to work out
Speaker 1: the covariance between the results and draw the correct conclusions.
Speaker 1: They're more likely to get the skin rash thing right.
Speaker 1: Hypothesis too, is based on the science comprehension thesis, So
Speaker 1: if the science comprehension thesis is correct, they predict that
Speaker 1: subjects scoring higher in numeracy QUOTE would be more likely
Speaker 1: to construe the data correctly, not only when it was
Speaker 1: consistent with their ideological predispositions, but also when it was
Speaker 1: inconsistent with them, and thus they were likely to display
Speaker 1: less ideological polarization than subjects lower in numeracy. In other words,
Speaker 1: on the science comprehension thesis, if you're better at understanding
Speaker 1: quantitative science, your interpretation of the results of the gun
Speaker 1: band thing should be less affected by political bias. And then, finally,
Speaker 1: they have a third hypothesis based on the identity protective
Speaker 1: cognition thesis QUOTE. Ideological polarization in the gun band conditions
Speaker 1: should be most extreme among those highest in numerous E.
Speaker 1: Under this hypothesis, people high in NUMEROUSY are not immune
Speaker 1: from identity protective cognition and will, like everyone else, always
Speaker 1: seek ways to affirm their existing political beliefs, but using
Speaker 1: their NUMEROUSY skills, they can use system to thinking to
Speaker 1: draw correct but counterintuitive inferences from the data when it
Speaker 1: flatters their beliefs, but detect that they should skip this
Speaker 1: and use quick heuristics to arrive at the wrong, wrong
Speaker 1: answer when that flatters their beliefs. So quote, if high
Speaker 1: numerous E subjects use their special cognitive advantage selectively only
Speaker 1: when doing so generates an ideologically congenial answer, but not otherwise,
Speaker 1: they will end up even more polarized than their low
Speaker 1: numerous EY counterparts. And so here we get to the results.
Speaker 1: So first thing worth noting is that detecting covariance is
Speaker 1: difficult if you're not experienced in it. So across all
Speaker 1: test conditions, most people got the answers wrong. All test
Speaker 1: conditions combine, fifty nine percent of subjects supplied the incorrect answer. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is probably because if you just look at
Speaker 1: the numbers and use a quick heuristic or system one thinking,
Speaker 1: you're likely to draw the opposite of the correct conclusion.
Speaker 1: You'd actually have to do the math and compare some
Speaker 1: ratios to come up with the correct answer, but the
Speaker 1: results found hypothesis one, which was that if you're high
Speaker 1: and numerous E, you're you've got a better chance of
Speaker 1: getting the skin rash results correct. That was ordered by
Speaker 1: the data. The better yard at numerocy, the more likely
Speaker 1: you are to draw correct inferences from politically neutral data,
Speaker 1: though most people were not very good at this um
Speaker 1: hypothesis to which would be consistent with the scientific comprehension
Speaker 1: thesis that people high in numeracy will show less polarization
Speaker 1: on the gun band condition, This was not supported by
Speaker 1: the data. Conversely, hypothesis three was supported by the data,
Speaker 1: and and that one was that people with high NUMEROUSY
Speaker 1: skills will show even more ideologically polarized judgments about the
Speaker 1: results in the gun band condition. And so what the
Speaker 1: authors conclude is that high numerous E partisans use their
Speaker 1: skills selectively. When a laborious system to calculation will yield
Speaker 1: results that are flattering to your political point of view,
Speaker 1: you'll do it. But when it threatens your point of view,
Speaker 1: you'll skip it. You'll skip system to reasoning and just
Speaker 1: draw incorrect heuristic conclusions. Uh. And so a few takeaways here.
Speaker 1: I think we should think about while we're discussing this
Speaker 1: one is that I should stress this study doesn't show
Speaker 1: that science education and science communication efforts are pointless or
Speaker 1: bad or anything like that. Science comprehension skills, including numerous
Speaker 1: e are crucial for answering all kinds of questions accurately
Speaker 1: when a system one heuristic model would cause you to
Speaker 1: come to the wrong conclusion. So it's kind of the baseline, right,
Speaker 1: you've got to have scientific comprehension skills. But if these
Speaker 1: results are valid, what they do show is that science
Speaker 1: comprehension skills are not necessarily a protection against getting politically
Speaker 1: charged science questions wrong. Because the brain uses its science
Speaker 1: comprehension skills selectively. It's more likely to bring out the
Speaker 1: big guns if they will help it protect its identity,
Speaker 1: and it's more likely to surrender to heuristic thinking if
Speaker 1: that's what protects your identity. Another way of putting it,
Speaker 1: political identity can make you selectively bad at math, even
Speaker 1: if you're normally good at math. And so in this week,
Speaker 1: this is where we get into some of these theories
Speaker 1: where we see, say you know an individual um that
Speaker 1: that has a scientific background or PhD or what have you,
Speaker 1: uh that you see showing up on the side of say,
Speaker 1: climate change deniers, or or even something more ridiculous like
Speaker 1: a like a like a flat earth belief system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I almost never see it with flat earth beliefs, but
Speaker 1: you do see it with climate change most definitely. What
Speaker 1: you notice with climate changes that like, um, sometimes people
Speaker 1: come up with lists of scientists who don't agree with
Speaker 1: the consensus on climate change, and usually almost none of
Speaker 1: them work in fields relevant to climate change. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: they're not like climate scientists. I'm not saying there are
Speaker 1: no climate scientists that disagree, but they're almost none. They
Speaker 1: tend to be somebody like one example that often comes
Speaker 1: up and I honestly can't remember to what extent his
Speaker 1: disagreement is with it, but say, Freeman Dyson is an
Speaker 1: individual of note who has at least at times cast
Speaker 1: some doubt in the area, but is brilliant. Is Freeman
Speaker 1: Dice and Susan was He's not a climate scientist, right,
Speaker 1: It's it tends to be people commenting outside their area
Speaker 1: of expertise, and yet they still have the aura of
Speaker 1: credibility because it's like, well, these are smart people, they're scientists, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: So you know, you'll see a list of scientists who
Speaker 1: don't accept the consensus on climate change, and they might
Speaker 1: be like petroleum engineers and stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 1: so it's like, not like petroleum engineers aren't smart. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure all all these people are very smart people.
Speaker 1: But it's just that having scientific comprehension skills does not
Speaker 1: protect you against arriving at malinformed, bad conclusions that support
Speaker 1: your identity. Now, of course, one of the tools and
Speaker 1: seconds toolkit I had to do with replication. Yes, uh
Speaker 1: so that's always a big question. And in fact I
Speaker 1: found one thing that I wanted to explore real quickly.
Speaker 1: If you follow psychology research and you saw something about
Speaker 1: motivated numerousy failing replication in a recent study, I think
Speaker 1: that's probably a reference to a conference paper draft presented
Speaker 1: an seventeen that claimed, as part of its findings to
Speaker 1: fail to replicate the motivated numeracy effect. And then Dan
Speaker 1: Kahan and Ellen Peters, two of the original authors of
Speaker 1: the first paper we were talking about, in response, defended
Speaker 1: their paper as best as I can tell, quite successfully
Speaker 1: by pointing out that the study that failed to replicate
Speaker 1: the motivated reasoning effect. Uh number one had a very
Speaker 1: small sample size and fifty five and was ideologically homogeneous.
Speaker 1: It was basically liberal, and in a paper called rumors
Speaker 1: of the non replication of the motivated numeracy effect are
Speaker 1: greatly exaggerated, uh Kahan and Peters. They so they they
Speaker 1: argue against this supposed failed replication, and they also present
Speaker 1: the results of their own replication attempt with a with
Speaker 1: a sample size of fife, in which they did successfully
Speaker 1: replicate the findings of the original very closely. And so
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, motivated numeracy through identity
Speaker 1: through identity protective cognition and is still pretty solid. It
Speaker 1: looks solid to me. And also, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, that's not just me defending a cherished belief
Speaker 1: that's important to my identity through motivated judgment, because in fact,
Speaker 1: I find I strongly dislike the idea of identity protective cognition.
Speaker 1: I think I would much rather live in the world
Speaker 1: of so many of our anthropogenic climate change accepting peers,
Speaker 1: and where you know, it's the world where if you
Speaker 1: could just educate people enough with better science literacy skills,
Speaker 1: these dead end public disputes over pretty solid empirical science
Speaker 1: could be resolved. What mean you could essentially win an
Speaker 1: argument over these issues by presenting facts, presenting data, And
Speaker 1: that's how a lot of these you know, like science
Speaker 1: people want it to be like that, right, sciencey people
Speaker 1: want to say, well I can, I'll just bring more
Speaker 1: evidence you. I'll show up with even more references next time,
Speaker 1: and that'll get them. But I'm afraid the evidence seems
Speaker 1: to be coming in that it doesn't necessarily work that way.
Speaker 1: And maybe, and you know, we shouldn't be all or
Speaker 1: nothing in the way we talked about things. Different different
Speaker 1: types of appeals will work with different people, but on average,
Speaker 1: that does not appear to be how people work. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna expand on the the
Speaker 1: concept a little bit and talk about what can possibly
Speaker 1: be done and talk about Scott Steiner. Oh, yes, thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, Joe, were you familiar with the Scott
Speaker 1: Steiner before I mentioned him to you? I was not
Speaker 1: tremendously familiar, But you sent me the best video I've
Speaker 1: seen all week. Yes, so this, uh, this was a
Speaker 1: video and this is readily available online because it it
Speaker 1: kind of went viral and became its own meme. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a video of professional wrestler Scott Steiner, a k a.
Speaker 1: Big Papa pump Um. Okay, yeah, well I think I
Speaker 1: knew him better by that name. Yeah that was Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a moniker he adopted at one point. Uh
Speaker 1: and it's This is a clip from a wrestling promotion
Speaker 1: that was known in TOO in two thousand eight is
Speaker 1: t n A. The promotion is now called Impact, and
Speaker 1: Miner launched into a backstage promo that, in typical pro
Speaker 1: wrestling fashion, is all shouty and laced in macho pravada,
Speaker 1: but in a twist, it's also full of math and statistics.
Speaker 1: So he makes the rigorous yes yes, and in this
Speaker 1: particular promo he makes the following claims, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: roll through these in a normal human voice. Okay. So
Speaker 1: he points out that normally a wrestler has a fifty
Speaker 1: chance of winning a match, all else being equal share Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but given his uh Big Papa pump superior genetics um,
Speaker 1: his opponent Samoa Joe only has a chance of winning.
Speaker 1: But it's a three way match as well, and it
Speaker 1: involves Kurt Angle so each participant here has a thirty
Speaker 1: three and a third percent chance of winning, but he
Speaker 1: but since Kurt Angle, according to to Steiner, knows that
Speaker 1: he cannot win, he won't try. Uh So Steiner presses
Speaker 1: the following point quote, So, Samoa Joe, you take your
Speaker 1: thirty three and one third chance, it's minus my twenty
Speaker 1: percent chance, and you have an eight and one third
Speaker 1: chance of winning at Sacrifice, Sacrifice being the name of
Speaker 1: the pro wrestling event. But when you take my seventy
Speaker 1: five percent chance of winning, if we were to go
Speaker 1: one on one and then add sixty six and two
Speaker 1: thirds per cents, I got one and forty one and
Speaker 1: two thirds chance of winning at Sacrifice. See Samoa Joe.
Speaker 1: The numbers don't lie, and they spelled disaster for you
Speaker 1: at Sacrifice. Did you watch Sacrifice? Were you there? I
Speaker 1: did not. I was not there. I did to watch
Speaker 1: some clips from it. Looks like it was, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty hard hitting match. Interestingly enough, um Samoa Joe. One
Speaker 1: oh Man. However, Kurt Angle was injured and had to
Speaker 1: be replaced by another wrestler, so one assumes that that
Speaker 1: would have changed the equation somewhat. Despite having a negative
Speaker 1: forty one chance of winning one. So um, yeah, this,
Speaker 1: but as Steiner says, the numbers don't lie or do that?
Speaker 1: Is this admittedly ridiculous example. Is this is this Scott
Speaker 1: Steiner falling prey to a lack of understanding regarding numeracy
Speaker 1: or is it motivated numeracy? Is he just so highly
Speaker 1: motivated by his dislike of Samoa Joe and his belief
Speaker 1: in his own superior genetics that he just so uh
Speaker 1: you know, readily mishandles them. Uh. That might be a
Speaker 1: better example of a mathematical incarnation of the Dunning Krueger effect.
Speaker 1: That's sure. But this is where you believe that you
Speaker 1: have more fluency in a particular area than you actually do. Yes,
Speaker 1: because the we we should, we should get into it
Speaker 1: at one time, the Dunning Kruger effect, because there's a
Speaker 1: I know, there is a more nuanced understanding of it
Speaker 1: than you usually see when it's deployed in the media
Speaker 1: and stuff. But the basic idea is that with the
Speaker 1: Dunning Krueger effect, if you are not very good within
Speaker 1: a skill set or within a knowledge domain, you also
Speaker 1: lack the meta cognitive capacities to understand what would make
Speaker 1: somebody good at it. Thus you fail to grasp your
Speaker 1: own shortcomings. And thus people who are very low skilled
Speaker 1: or very low knowledge in a certain domain tend to
Speaker 1: vastly overestimate their skills or their knowledge because they can't
Speaker 1: know they can't know what they don't know. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I realized that this example was was maybe more entertaining
Speaker 1: than helpful. Still my only opportunity to really work Scott
Speaker 1: Steiner into an episode. Come on, we've been plowing through
Speaker 1: a psychology paper. We've gotta have a little wrestling to
Speaker 1: lighten the load. Alright, Well, well, now that we've lightened
Speaker 1: the load, let's let's come back to like the big
Speaker 1: remaining question you have? You have motivated numeracy? Uh is
Speaker 1: the key thing that's happening here? If this is the
Speaker 1: the enemy, the threat, then how do we deal with it? Yeah? Like?
Speaker 1: What what can be done? And so? One thing I
Speaker 1: would take away from this research is that good science
Speaker 1: education and science communication are necessary, but not sufficient. Necessary
Speaker 1: but not sufficient to produce a correctly informed citizen. Read
Speaker 1: You can't have people making good judgments without understanding the facts.
Speaker 1: But the better they understand the facts, the more they'll
Speaker 1: use their understanding to support their identity derived point of view.
Speaker 1: So Kahan and others proposed that the way to beat
Speaker 1: motivated reasoning is not necessarily to improve the reasoning, but
Speaker 1: to remove the motivation. To remove the motivation, I like that.
Speaker 1: That reminds me so much of Krishna's words to Arginna
Speaker 1: in the Hindu epic the Baka bad Ghita. Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if if if I may, I'd like to read, you know,
Speaker 1: because having come from the quoting Scott Steiner, I obviously
Speaker 1: want to move on to the other high literature. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh so this is these are the words of of Krishna,
Speaker 1: that man alone is wise, who keeps the mastery of himself.
Speaker 1: If one ponders on objects of the sense, there springs attraction.
Speaker 1: From attraction grows desire, Desire flames to fierce passion, passion
Speaker 1: breeds recklessness. Then the memory all betrayed. Lets noble purpose
Speaker 1: go and say apps the mind. Until purpose, mind and
Speaker 1: man are all undone. But if one deals with objects
Speaker 1: of the sense, not loving and not hating, making them
Speaker 1: serve his free soul, which rests serenely Lord Low, such
Speaker 1: a man comes to tranquility, and out of that tranquility
Speaker 1: shall rise the end and healing of his earthly pains.
Speaker 1: Since the will governed sets the soul at peace. I'd
Speaker 1: say the will governed as much asier said than done,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Oh yeah, I mean that's why we've clearly
Speaker 1: we're still struggling with it. And uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to you know, obviously this is a
Speaker 1: this is the work of immense literary significance and in
Speaker 1: deep philosophy. But but yeah, this idea of of acting
Speaker 1: without passion seems to to line up reasonably well with
Speaker 1: this idea of tackling various um uh you know, innumerable
Speaker 1: um problems without bringing in this political motivation. Yeah. Though,
Speaker 1: of course it seems very unfortunate that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of this motivation comes in unconsciously, right, because I mean,
Speaker 1: we we I guess we haven't really addressed this so far.
Speaker 1: But you have to assume that people are not generally
Speaker 1: and you probably know from your own experience at least
Speaker 1: if it's like mine, they're not generally thinking like, Okay,
Speaker 1: how should I trick myself right now to come to
Speaker 1: the wrong conclusion because it would be socially acceptable. It
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like that to think about political issues that
Speaker 1: you know, are empirical issues that are politically relevant. Um,
Speaker 1: it just feels like, well, I'm just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what's right, but obviously I must be doing this
Speaker 1: at least sometimes. Yeah, we're just kind of we're often
Speaker 1: just we're swimming through life. We're not necessarily thinking about
Speaker 1: the individual strokes. You know, it all kind of comes
Speaker 1: together and we end up making these mistakes and cognition
Speaker 1: and to reemphasize what the authors of that original paper
Speaker 1: we're talking about, I mean, in a way, this is rational.
Speaker 1: It's rational in a perverse way. Not in a good
Speaker 1: way that ultimately creates the most benefit, but in a
Speaker 1: kind of short term perversity. It is rational. Like you
Speaker 1: will sometimes hear people talking about or lament in politics,
Speaker 1: how others just won't do what's rational. But given a
Speaker 1: certain interpretation of rational self interest, this irrational relationship with
Speaker 1: empirical questions makes perfect sense. The author's right quote what
Speaker 1: any individual member of the public thinks about the reality
Speaker 1: of climate change, the hazards of nuclear waste disposal, the
Speaker 1: efficacy of gun control is too inconsequential to influence the
Speaker 1: risk that that person, or anyone he or she cares
Speaker 1: about faces. Nevertheless, given what positions on these issues signify
Speaker 1: about a person's defining commitments, forming a belief at odds
Speaker 1: with the one that predominates on it within important affinity
Speaker 1: groups of which such a person as a member could
Speaker 1: expose him or her to an array of highly unpleasant consequences. Thus, like,
Speaker 1: we know that it's radically consequential, what in general public
Speaker 1: policy is about climate change or gun policy or something.
Speaker 1: You know, these are hugely important questions, but the impact
Speaker 1: of one individual person his opinion feel small enough that
Speaker 1: you basically the consequences of that are almost irrelevant. It's like,
Speaker 1: what's really relevant is how is this affecting me in
Speaker 1: my day to day? And now it's primarily affecting you
Speaker 1: in your day to day? Is the social consequences of
Speaker 1: the beliefs you express? But obviously that's not what we want, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we want everybody making rational decisions, having correct empirical information
Speaker 1: to reason from. Of course they're still gonna argue about
Speaker 1: political values, but at least having everybody except the same
Speaker 1: set of correct facts when correct facts are on the table, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of it comes kind of comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that we are a short sighted
Speaker 1: species that can, you know, barely see beyond our own horizon.
Speaker 1: But but we are attempting to see beyond that arizon.
Speaker 1: We are trying to to to maintain a world or
Speaker 1: create a world that can be sustained in some fashion.
Speaker 1: We you know that the the old addage, of course,
Speaker 1: is making thinking about your children and your grandchildren when
Speaker 1: when you're making decisions such as ease. But historically it's
Speaker 1: not the sort of thing that we're great at as
Speaker 1: a species. And yeah, and so it's clearly not enough
Speaker 1: just to tell people like, well, here's a problem with
Speaker 1: how you're probably thinking. You're probably doing identity protective cognition,
Speaker 1: and you need to stop it. You know that that
Speaker 1: that's just obviously not going to work as just asking
Speaker 1: somebody to shut their mind their ears off, like like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're really going to listen to you now, buddy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and they're they're probably not even doing it
Speaker 1: on purpose, right, I mean, you and I are doing
Speaker 1: it sometimes, we're not doing it on purpose. The people
Speaker 1: who do this, they're not doing it out of a
Speaker 1: will to deceive themselves. Is just happening as part of
Speaker 1: what the brain does, even unconsciously. So the question is,
Speaker 1: could you do something external? Could you create a state
Speaker 1: of affairs that would change the incentive structure? Do what
Speaker 1: the author said and somehow change the motivation. If you
Speaker 1: can't change the reasoning and motivated reasoning, maybe you can
Speaker 1: change the motivation and motivated reasoning. So here's one thing
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about. Most politically relevant. Numeracy is basically recreational, right,
Speaker 1: Like you need to get the numbers right when you're
Speaker 1: calculating your bank balance. But if you get the numbers
Speaker 1: wrong when you're talking about gun control or climate change,
Speaker 1: there's no immediately detectable consequence to you, as long as
Speaker 1: you get them wrong in the way that your social
Speaker 1: group approves of. And this is not true of every
Speaker 1: person in every context. For example, why does scientists working
Speaker 1: within their own fields UH tend usually to get the
Speaker 1: numbers right? Of course, not always, but usually, like, regardless
Speaker 1: of whatever their political opinions are, if they're doing work
Speaker 1: within their field, they tend to get it right most
Speaker 1: of the time. Well, because they're gonna be other scientists
Speaker 1: that are going to be attempting to UH to perform
Speaker 1: the same experiment to see if they get the same results.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be people reading it, and if they see
Speaker 1: the error, they are going to they are going to
Speaker 1: correct them on it. I mean, that's part of the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a strong incentive to get the numbers right. Failed
Speaker 1: numeracy in your own published research is potentially a major
Speaker 1: blow to your credibility, to your career, to your standing
Speaker 1: among your professional peers and stuff. So I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's possible to change the incentive structure for non scientists
Speaker 1: to somehow be more like that. This might be just
Speaker 1: completely impossible fantasy, but is there a way you could
Speaker 1: make it so that getting the factually correct answer is
Speaker 1: incentivized in and in the social situations of lay people,
Speaker 1: and arriving at conclusions in agreement with your social group
Speaker 1: is not especially incentivized that maybe is that just a
Speaker 1: totally unrealistic hope. Can human nature change that much? And
Speaker 1: it does sound kind of daunting, like like what kind
Speaker 1: of structure or system would enforce that? And then how
Speaker 1: does it know? How do you roll it out successfully?
Speaker 1: I'm some I'm sure some tech billionaire has some kind
Speaker 1: of nightmaresh idea for an app that would do that,
Speaker 1: but in fact we just destroy everything. They're all sorts
Speaker 1: of sort of black mirror esque solutions that come to mind,
Speaker 1: but they all have like a black mirror s twist
Speaker 1: where you can see how it would screw things up,
Speaker 1: or where people would essentially rebel against it and say, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't I don't really want Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter or what have you coming along and calling
Speaker 1: me on things that I've said that we're incorrect in
Speaker 1: the past. Maybe about just why my account instead suffering
Speaker 1: that embarrassment. Yeah, okay, here's another idea. Maybe some way
Speaker 1: to fight the motivation. Perhaps this social support networks and
Speaker 1: structures that are not dependent on ideological agreement. Like if
Speaker 1: people really strongly felt confident that their friendships and their
Speaker 1: work and family relationships were safe and would not suffer
Speaker 1: at all no degree of alienation or weakening of relationships
Speaker 1: from disagreement over political issues, maybe that would remove the incentive.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Like if people felt that they
Speaker 1: could disagree with their social group and not not risk
Speaker 1: anything by doing that, then there would so no longer
Speaker 1: be a protective motivation in what beliefs you whold so
Speaker 1: you're saying, basically, make our the social groups, making they're
Speaker 1: more making them more open to free discussion, more accepting
Speaker 1: of disagreement. I guess. So, I mean that at least
Speaker 1: seems like a possibility. Um. And maybe the way, maybe
Speaker 1: one way of addressing that is not that you can
Speaker 1: really change the nature of people's family and friendship relationships
Speaker 1: like that all that much, but if you could have
Speaker 1: I don't know, uh, supplemental social dynamics like this may
Speaker 1: be one thing that community style groups like church congregations
Speaker 1: and things like that are useful for, and that they
Speaker 1: provide sort of like outside of the family and the
Speaker 1: small friend group, they provide like a backup social situation
Speaker 1: where you you can retreat if you are feeling down
Speaker 1: in your other relationships. Though not to say that no
Speaker 1: certain church congregations have ever made people feel alienated for disagreeing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, I guess the thing. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like supplemental social safety nets, I guess right. Well,
Speaker 1: I could see where different groups, I mean, different social
Speaker 1: groups can serve as the backup depending on what's happening
Speaker 1: in your life. I mean, I can imagine a scenario
Speaker 1: in which certainly a church could be the the fallback,
Speaker 1: but also scenarios in which work social group could be
Speaker 1: the fallback or just uh, you know, your your your
Speaker 1: home life, so your home, social your family can't times
Speaker 1: do the fall it. You know, Well, my friends are
Speaker 1: mad at me because of what I said about but
Speaker 1: at least ways, at least I'm doing okay work. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like one of the ideas, it seems,
Speaker 1: one of the ideas that comes to mind here is
Speaker 1: like you'd almost want to have just social groups that
Speaker 1: are more adherent to scientific insensus. I hate to come
Speaker 1: back to to that, but because ultimately you have if
Speaker 1: if that is not present in uh, in one of
Speaker 1: these social structures, I mean, it's there's going to be
Speaker 1: a high possibility that some other factor is going to
Speaker 1: be more pressing in the worldview. And certainly one sees
Speaker 1: in religious groups, I mean not all religious groups, but
Speaker 1: there are certainly religious groups out there, uh that have
Speaker 1: have beliefs that run very counter to scientific consensus. Now
Speaker 1: do they do so in a detrimental fashion? I mean
Speaker 1: that's it's going to depend Yeah, again, I don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: as with all these questions like Is there any way
Speaker 1: to actually engineer that or is that just impossible? Well, no,
Speaker 1: I think we have We need to create a new religion.
Speaker 1: That's what we're coming down to, you know. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: an open discussion science first, religion. Uh, they can just
Speaker 1: sweep across the sweep across the land from shore to
Speaker 1: shore and uh and and make a better world for
Speaker 1: the future. Well, I'll let you carry the croak of
Speaker 1: priests and profit on that one. But okay, here's maybe
Speaker 1: one more way another. Basically, I'm just offering different ways
Speaker 1: you could approach the motivation problem. I don't know of
Speaker 1: any specifics that you could create, But here's another way
Speaker 1: of approaching it. What if there is a way to
Speaker 1: shield facts from acquiring in the first place what Kahan
Speaker 1: and co authors call quote antagonistic cultural meanings. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you can't fix public and understanding by making people
Speaker 1: better at science comprehension, and you can't program people not
Speaker 1: to be incentivized first and foremost by a sense of
Speaker 1: partisan social belonging, maybe the best way to protect facts
Speaker 1: is to find a way to never let them become
Speaker 1: politically charged in the first place. If there's a if
Speaker 1: somebody could figure out a way to do that or
Speaker 1: at least lessen the probability that would happen. That also
Speaker 1: seems like a very useful thing, a good way to
Speaker 1: fight this problem. But it may also be impossible because
Speaker 1: there's again political incentive for people to politicize certain issues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe Ka Kahan has definitely talked about this before.
Speaker 1: I believe he touched on the idea of of not
Speaker 1: necessarily like outright preventing, but like identifying when it is
Speaker 1: beginning to take place, and in finding ways to intervene
Speaker 1: and keep it from being so highly politici because it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, barnacles building up on a ship or something, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: like when you detect and maybe you have a process
Speaker 1: for when you detect that a an empirical scientific question
Speaker 1: is starting to become an issue of political significance suddenly.
Speaker 1: What you want is to get all the politicians and
Speaker 1: political actors to stop talking about it immediately and instead
Speaker 1: get politically neutral celebrities and spokespeople and stuff to talk
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah. I feel like that's a pretty good idea.
Speaker 1: I think it probably has a thirty three and one
Speaker 1: third percent chance of success. But if you add that
Speaker 1: to the forty six and one half percent chance, then
Speaker 1: you're really getting steinorific. Yeah, you might get up to
Speaker 1: chance of winning. You know. One of the things that
Speaker 1: that can hunt it all right. In their paper that
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting is that they point out that people,
Speaker 1: even when experts in other fields are primarily as humans
Speaker 1: experts about quote, identifying who knows what about what? That
Speaker 1: sort of is the main way our brains work, right,
Speaker 1: That's like our primary capacity is figuring out who knows
Speaker 1: about what things? Right? Yeah, I mean to come back
Speaker 1: to Sagan's point of view, you know, it's it's it
Speaker 1: should be certainly less about trying to figure out who's
Speaker 1: the authority and just looking at who is the best
Speaker 1: and expert in a given field and being able to
Speaker 1: sort of weigh what they're saying and why they're saying it.
Speaker 1: But oftentimes we use this capacity of looking at who
Speaker 1: knows what about what not to figure out who has
Speaker 1: the real who's got the best expertise to offer? But
Speaker 1: with the best expertise is saying what I want to
Speaker 1: hear said exactly, Yes, who is saying what I want
Speaker 1: to hear said or what my social group believes in
Speaker 1: the best way, so I can say it the same
Speaker 1: way anyway, Eugenius is out there, who who can think
Speaker 1: of more specific and possibly effective ways to undercut the
Speaker 1: motivation part of motivated reasoning and uh, politically relevant empirical questions?
Speaker 1: Let us know what are those ideas you have? Indeed,
Speaker 1: this is one of those areas where this this hypothesis
Speaker 1: is so new I don't even think we probably have
Speaker 1: the science fiction to level at it. So you the listener,
Speaker 1: will be creating the science fiction uh that might in
Speaker 1: some way inform what we actually do about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this whole field identity protective cognition in a way
Speaker 1: is still developing, so more research could change what seems
Speaker 1: to be true about it today. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's one of those where I feel like I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in this research, but it's not necessarily encouraging. I
Speaker 1: want to go back to the science comprehension thesis world.
Speaker 1: I want to live in the place where you can
Speaker 1: just where you can just tell people more, share more
Speaker 1: knowledge with more enthusiasm, model the correct kinds of critical
Speaker 1: thinking and all that and uh and bring people aboard.
Speaker 1: But it's just not that easy, is it, right? Or
Speaker 1: it's just not enough. I mean it kind of comes
Speaker 1: back though again to the GETA and and and other
Speaker 1: older works that taught about like self awareness, because that's
Speaker 1: ultimately what we're talking thing about is new ways to
Speaker 1: become aware of how our brains are working and how
Speaker 1: in some cases we our brains our minds are are
Speaker 1: tricking ourselves into um and clinging to beliefs that simply
Speaker 1: don't hold up. Yeah. Oh and one of the things,
Speaker 1: of course, we've always got to mention. We mentioned this
Speaker 1: and pretty much anytime we talk about bias or something,
Speaker 1: you're sitting out there thinking, right now, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: what other people do. Yeah, but it's we can all
Speaker 1: look to examples in our own lives. Big ones, small ones,
Speaker 1: Uh ones you you can't recognize and don't even know
Speaker 1: you do. Yeah, exactly, I got to remove that plank. Alright. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna go ahead and close out
Speaker 1: this episode. As always, head on over to stuff to
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Speaker 1: ideas of how to take the motivation out of motivated
Speaker 1: numeracy and motivated reasoning. If you want to let us
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