Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech
Speaker 1: Stuffs one thousand episode. I am your host, who has
Speaker 1: been on every single of the thousand one thousand. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I've done a thousand of these, one one thousand of these?
Speaker 1: How crazy is that? And I debated for a while
Speaker 1: on what I should cover for the one thousand episode
Speaker 1: of text Stuff because I've already covered a lot of
Speaker 1: my favorite tech companies and a lot of my favorite
Speaker 1: tech topics, whether it's a specific technology or a person,
Speaker 1: A lot of my favorites are ones that I've already
Speaker 1: focused on in the past. Plus, choosing one company or
Speaker 1: technology or person over all the others seems like a
Speaker 1: pretty difficult decision. How could I say that one company
Speaker 1: or one technology deserved it more than all the others.
Speaker 1: And besides, assigning significance to the number one thousand is
Speaker 1: sort of an arbitrary concept anyway when you think about it.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, I decided to skip all that and cover
Speaker 1: something I think is important that relates to everything in
Speaker 1: our lives, not just tech, but also tech, and that
Speaker 1: would be the concepts of skepticism and critical thinking. These
Speaker 1: are incredibly important tools we should familiarize ourselves with and
Speaker 1: use properly and frequently. First, let's define the terms, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to start with skepticism because I want to
Speaker 1: be clear about what I mean when I use the term,
Speaker 1: as opposed to other usages, including common usages of skepticism. Now,
Speaker 1: philosophically speaking, skepticism refers to the belief that true knowledge
Speaker 1: is difficult and likely impossible for humans to achieve, and
Speaker 1: I'm pretty much on board with that. I think it's
Speaker 1: impossible for us to know everything. Thousands of years ago,
Speaker 1: we had to rely almost solely on our own senses
Speaker 1: to figure out how the world works. But our senses
Speaker 1: are limited. Even the most keenly cited human can't see
Speaker 1: as well at a distance as a falcon, for example,
Speaker 1: and we aren't able to see light in the ultra
Speaker 1: violet or infrared ranges. We're incapable of directly perceiving electro
Speaker 1: magnetic radiation outside of the visible spectrum. The same is
Speaker 1: true for our other senses. That we have a limit
Speaker 1: uh and what we can perceive sounds below twenty hurts
Speaker 1: or above twenty kilo hurts are essentially beyond the range
Speaker 1: of human hearing. Our sense of smell is nowhere near
Speaker 1: sensitive as dogs, so we are limited by the extent
Speaker 1: to which our senses can take in information around us.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of information out there that we are
Speaker 1: incapable of sensing. Now, as time is past, we have
Speaker 1: created technologies that augment our senses and increase our ability
Speaker 1: to detect things we otherwise would never notice. But even so,
Speaker 1: we still don't know how much we don't know. Cosmological
Speaker 1: theories state that dark matter has to exist based on
Speaker 1: our observations of how galaxies move in our universe, and
Speaker 1: that this matter must make up the majority of all
Speaker 1: matter in our reality, but we can't detect it directly.
Speaker 1: That leads me to believe that we will never possess
Speaker 1: true knowledge of the universe, because I think there's always
Speaker 1: going to be something more that's outside our ability to
Speaker 1: perceive and understand. Now, that should not stop us from trying.
Speaker 1: We should just be aware that there's always more to discover,
Speaker 1: and if anything, I think that should make us more
Speaker 1: determined to learn. Frequently we will use the word skeptic
Speaker 1: to refer to someone who doubts or denies the existence
Speaker 1: of something. But when I say it's good to be
Speaker 1: a skeptic, I do not mean you should doubt or
Speaker 1: deny everything. Rather, I use the word to refer to
Speaker 1: someone who applies critical thinking to subjects. They ask questions,
Speaker 1: they look for evidence to support claims. They do not
Speaker 1: accept a statement without supporting proof, and they look to
Speaker 1: make sure that any proof that is offered is of
Speaker 1: sound quality. This is why I won't call anyone a
Speaker 1: climate change skeptic. In that case, I would use the
Speaker 1: term denier rather than skeptic, because there is a mountain
Speaker 1: of research and there's a scientific consensus that climate change
Speaker 1: is a real thing. It is one thing to question
Speaker 1: a topic and demand evidence that I think you should
Speaker 1: totally do. However, it's another thing to dismiss the conclusion
Speaker 1: despite the evidence. If you don't accept evidence despite a
Speaker 1: sidentific a consensus, that's pretty much denial. A skeptic who
Speaker 1: would be confronted by sound evidence should be able to
Speaker 1: accept that information. So, for example, let's move away from
Speaker 1: climate change. Some people argue that that shouldn't count. I
Speaker 1: think they're wrong, but let's take something totally different. Let's
Speaker 1: say let's talk about ghosts. I do not believe in
Speaker 1: ghosts at all. If you came up to me and
Speaker 1: you told me a story about how you once saw
Speaker 1: a ghost, I might humor you, but I wouldn't believe
Speaker 1: you actually saw a ghost. I might believe that you
Speaker 1: believe it, but I would be pretty sure that what
Speaker 1: you experienced wasn't anything supernatural. I would suspect that something
Speaker 1: more mundane had happened, and that over time you had
Speaker 1: formulated a narrative that was reinforced with retellings, perhaps even
Speaker 1: to the extent that the version you tell no longer
Speaker 1: even remotely resembles the thing that actually happened. Because we
Speaker 1: you as we do that when we remember stuff. It's
Speaker 1: not like our brains are acting like a computer. Right
Speaker 1: with a computer, you tell a computer retrieve a file,
Speaker 1: it's gonna pull up a file, and that file is
Speaker 1: going to be exactly the same as it was the
Speaker 1: last time you saved the file. It will be identical
Speaker 1: to the last time you saved it. It's preserved perfectly,
Speaker 1: assuming that there's not something wrong with your computer. But
Speaker 1: that's not how our brains work. When we remember something,
Speaker 1: our brains actually form neural pathways. They create connections between
Speaker 1: neurons in our brains right, and that pathway resembles the
Speaker 1: one that happened when we first experienced the situation that
Speaker 1: formed the memory in the first place. So we experience something,
Speaker 1: our brain creates a connection that is related to that something.
Speaker 1: When we remember, our brain tries to recreate that connection.
Speaker 1: But our brains aren't perfect at recreating those pathways. Detours happen.
Speaker 1: Our memory areas are faulty. To us. It seems like
Speaker 1: the things were remembering our perfect recreations, but in reality,
Speaker 1: we are recreating a scenario in our heads, and our
Speaker 1: brains are not perfect, so we get things wrong and
Speaker 1: sometimes we reinforce the wrong parts. We make those detours
Speaker 1: more permanent parts of a pathway. So I'm not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to think you're trying to hoodwink me. I'm not
Speaker 1: thinking you're lying if you tell me you saw a ghost.
Speaker 1: But still I'm not going to believe your account that
Speaker 1: you saw a ghost. I'm going to think something else
Speaker 1: happened that made you think you saw a ghost, but
Speaker 1: in reality it was something more natural and mundane. However,
Speaker 1: if someone were to provide to me real evidence of
Speaker 1: the existence of ghosts, not an anecdote, but real, incontrovertible
Speaker 1: evidence of ghosts. I would have to reevaluate my beliefs.
Speaker 1: I would need to reconcile my disbelief in ghosts and
Speaker 1: then incorporate a new belief into my worldview. That's my
Speaker 1: responsibility as a skeptic. If you came up to me
Speaker 1: and you said, here's the proof, and you laid it
Speaker 1: out and I look at it and it is undeniable,
Speaker 1: I would have to say, you know what I was wrong,
Speaker 1: You are right, there are ghosts. This probably would not
Speaker 1: be easy for me to do, but I would like
Speaker 1: to think I would do it because I would be
Speaker 1: confronted by evidence. However, the claim that ghosts exist is
Speaker 1: an extraordinary claim, so it requires extraordinary proof. So if
Speaker 1: you are confronted with evidence and the evidence seems reliable,
Speaker 1: then you should take whatever the claim is and think
Speaker 1: this may very well have merit. Climate change deniers do
Speaker 1: not do this. They deny this mountain of evidence and
Speaker 1: a scientific consensus, so they do not take that and
Speaker 1: they incorporated. They instead say this does not align with
Speaker 1: my worldview, and so I reject it. That is not skepticism,
Speaker 1: that is denialism. Now, one of my favorite episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff was all about ghost hunting technology, and that's
Speaker 1: because Chris Palette and I went through the equipment that
Speaker 1: is frequently used by people in the ghost hunting professions
Speaker 1: and we explained why that technology did not actually prove
Speaker 1: the existence of ghosts. For one thing, ghost hunters tend
Speaker 1: to use equipment that was intended to do other work.
Speaker 1: One example would be a meter to detect electromagnetic fluctuations,
Speaker 1: which you would use in order to look for faulty
Speaker 1: wiring in a house. For example, if wiring didn't have
Speaker 1: proper insulation, then whenever a current runs through that wire,
Speaker 1: it would generate an electromagnetic field and you would be
Speaker 1: able to pick it up and that would tell you, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we need to fix the wiring here. That's what
Speaker 1: those meters are full. Or however, ghost hunters would say, uh,
Speaker 1: this meter shows fluctuations. That means there's a ghost here,
Speaker 1: But that puts the cart about a mile in front
Speaker 1: of the horse. Because at no point that the ghost
Speaker 1: hunter actually provide evidence that ghosts exist. They're saying, here
Speaker 1: is an effect the cause is this other thing that
Speaker 1: I have yet to prove exists. That's not how science works.
Speaker 1: You have to prove that a ghost exists first. Then
Speaker 1: you have to prove that a ghost can affect or
Speaker 1: generate electromagnetic fields. Then and only then can you say
Speaker 1: I just found a fluctuating electromagnetic field. One possible explanation
Speaker 1: is ghosts. You can't just say because this needle moved,
Speaker 1: ghosts exist. That's not how science works. You have to
Speaker 1: establish the existence first, then established that they can in
Speaker 1: fact produce the effect you claim. Then and you can
Speaker 1: use uh actual instances of that effect to potentially detect
Speaker 1: the presence of such a thing. So that's the way
Speaker 1: that would have to work. Ghost hunting does not do that.
Speaker 1: It ignores that. It skips It presupposes the existence of
Speaker 1: the thing they're looking for without first establishing that actually
Speaker 1: is a thing. Now, I want to stress that I
Speaker 1: don't mean to say ghosts definitely do not exist. What
Speaker 1: I'm saying is I do not believe they exist. But
Speaker 1: as I said at the beginning, I think it is
Speaker 1: impossible for humans to know everything, so I could be
Speaker 1: wrong about this. However, I have seen no evidence that
Speaker 1: cannot be attributed to much more mundane causes than ghosts,
Speaker 1: and that would be necessary for me to change my mind.
Speaker 1: I would need that extraordinary evidence. I do not deny
Speaker 1: the existence of ghosts outright, I just don't believe in them,
Speaker 1: because skepticism and denial are two different things. Now, some
Speaker 1: skeptics do deny certain things that might be climate change.
Speaker 1: There are skeptics who don't believe in it that might
Speaker 1: be the supernatural. And some skeptics believe in certain things
Speaker 1: that are not supported by evidence as a matter of faith.
Speaker 1: They might be uh devout in a religion, and other
Speaker 1: skeptics would say, oh, you're not a skeptic because you
Speaker 1: actually believe in this religious faith and there's no evidence
Speaker 1: to support your beliefs. I don't want to say there's
Speaker 1: only one way to be a skeptic. I do think, however,
Speaker 1: the application of critical thinking and the scientific method is
Speaker 1: really important for everyone, whether you consider yourself a skeptic
Speaker 1: or otherwise. Now, when we come back, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: into the scientific method, how it works, and why I
Speaker 1: think it's so important, And I'm also going to probably
Speaker 1: talk about some other stuff like anti intellectualism and why
Speaker 1: it's so demoralizing. Maybe I'll even get around to explaining
Speaker 1: why I think the term Boffin's is incredibly insulting. So
Speaker 1: tune in Brits because I got a bone to pick
Speaker 1: with you guys. But first, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and thank our sponsor. The scientific method is a process
Speaker 1: by which we test ideas to ascertain their validity. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it's how we make sure the stuff
Speaker 1: we believe in has some basis in actual reality. The
Speaker 1: history of the scientific method is complex. I can't really
Speaker 1: go into all of it because you could do a
Speaker 1: full podcast series just about the evolution of the scientific method.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating, but it is also exhaustive. Cultures from
Speaker 1: all around the world developed approaches to testing ideas, so
Speaker 1: this was in something that arose specifically out of one
Speaker 1: place in the world. Lots of different cultures came up
Speaker 1: with different ways to take this approach. However, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: we trace the scientific method as we understand it today
Speaker 1: back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He gets the credit
Speaker 1: for laying out the basics of the scientific method. He
Speaker 1: proposed combining empirical measurements and observations with inductive reasoning. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of Greek philosophers before Aristotle essentially said, all
Speaker 1: you need is to be able to think. And if
Speaker 1: you think, and you think good enough, if you're really
Speaker 1: good at the thinking, then you can think the things
Speaker 1: that you never thought before and figure out how the
Speaker 1: world works. All it takes is just pure thought. Aristotle said,
Speaker 1: hang on, what if we see stuff and we measure stuff,
Speaker 1: and we take those empirical measurements and we incorporate that
Speaker 1: into what we think, so that we can actually see
Speaker 1: how the world really works, and by is our knowledge
Speaker 1: off of that. This was pretty rebellious among Greek philosophers
Speaker 1: at the time. Inductive reasoning, by the way, is where
Speaker 1: you take specific points of data and you make generalizations
Speaker 1: from those specific points. Contrast that with deductive reasoning. That's
Speaker 1: where you start with a general idea and then you
Speaker 1: work your way towards specifics. Now, typically scientists use both
Speaker 1: inductive and deductive reasoning in order to form hypotheses and
Speaker 1: then test them to make sure they are true. The
Speaker 1: Islamic scholar even al hath them further developed the scientific method.
Speaker 1: His basic steps are pretty much the foundation of the
Speaker 1: scientific method today. He said, well, first you have to
Speaker 1: state and explicit problem. This would essentially be a claim,
Speaker 1: usually based off observations and experimentation. Then you test a
Speaker 1: hypothesis through various experiments to see if it holds validity.
Speaker 1: You interpret the data from those experiments, and then you
Speaker 1: conclude whether the hypothesis held up under experimentation or whether
Speaker 1: the experimentation didn't support the hypothesis, and then you publish
Speaker 1: what you found so that other people can read it.
Speaker 1: The scientific method developed further throughout the Renaissance, also developed
Speaker 1: in the Enlightenment and the Modern Age of science, and
Speaker 1: basically the principles have remained fairly stable, although the particulars
Speaker 1: have obviously changed over time. Now you can't use the
Speaker 1: scientific method for absolutely everything, but it does provide a
Speaker 1: great model to follow as a skeptic. Basically, you take
Speaker 1: a testable claim, and it is important that the claim
Speaker 1: is testable. It's a claim that can be tested for accuracy.
Speaker 1: If a claim is not testable, then it does not
Speaker 1: belong to the realm of science. We used to call
Speaker 1: this falsifiable. By the way, if a claim is falsifiable,
Speaker 1: then it is scientific. That means if the claim is
Speaker 1: such that you could design a test where the claim
Speaker 1: is proven to be untrue, then you would say it's
Speaker 1: falsifiable and thus scientific. If it's a claim where you
Speaker 1: cannot come up with a test that would have an
Speaker 1: outcome where the claim could be untrue, it is not
Speaker 1: part of science. So, for example, if I claim there
Speaker 1: is a pixie that follows you around and it's always
Speaker 1: just over your right shoulder, however it is completely undetectable
Speaker 1: by any means that we know, that claim is not testable.
Speaker 1: There's nothing you can do to see if there's a
Speaker 1: pixie there, because I just told you it's completely undetectable.
Speaker 1: It's there, but you can't detect it. Well, there's no
Speaker 1: experiment you can conduct to test that claim. It does
Speaker 1: not fall in the realm of science. But if I
Speaker 1: said there's a pixie that floats over your right shoulder
Speaker 1: that can only be detected by some particularly expensive piece
Speaker 1: of scanning equipment, that claim is testable because you could
Speaker 1: go out and secure the appropriate scanning equipment and scan
Speaker 1: yourself and look for the evidence, and if there's no
Speaker 1: evidence of a pixie there, it would show that my
Speaker 1: claim was not substantiated. There was no pixie and I
Speaker 1: had told you, hey, if you get this expensive scanner,
Speaker 1: then you'll find a pixie. If I'm the one selling
Speaker 1: you the expensive scanner, it just means I scammed you,
Speaker 1: and I probably changed my claim slightly, because that's how
Speaker 1: things often go. It's called moving the goal posts. Where
Speaker 1: I make a claim, someone tests the claim, the claim
Speaker 1: does not hold up to the test, so I change
Speaker 1: the claims slightly in order to make it seem like
Speaker 1: it's still valid. That's moving the goal posts. That's not
Speaker 1: good cricket, y'all. Anyway, Let's say I make a testable claim,
Speaker 1: such as, this extremely expensive sound system can playback a
Speaker 1: recording at such high fidelity that it leaves all other
Speaker 1: sound systems behind. Now, you could perhaps measure the performance
Speaker 1: of this sound system with very precise sensitive measurement devices,
Speaker 1: and it might even show that, according to those devices,
Speaker 1: my system is outperforming other systems. But it may not
Speaker 1: actually matter. And that's because again, our senses are limited, right.
Speaker 1: Human senses have limitations. So there comes a point where
Speaker 1: replication will be meaningless because we humans are physically incapable
Speaker 1: of detecting anything at that level of fidelity or resolution.
Speaker 1: So with a claim, like that the way we perceive
Speaker 1: sound might matter more than the empirical measurements we gather
Speaker 1: from the device. And not only that, but the psychology
Speaker 1: of listening to a sound system might matter more. If
Speaker 1: I believe I'm going to get a better experience from
Speaker 1: a particular sound system, my perception might be that I
Speaker 1: did get a better experience, even if objectively, if I
Speaker 1: had no knowledge of the quality or back thereof of
Speaker 1: the sound system, I might not ever have noticed it.
Speaker 1: Brains are funny things. So how can you test a
Speaker 1: claim that says this sound system is better than all
Speaker 1: others so that it makes sense to us that we
Speaker 1: can actually see if there's something there. Well, this is
Speaker 1: where formulating a proper experiment is incredibly important. So a
Speaker 1: blind experiment helps reduce bias in a process. In a
Speaker 1: blind experiment, the subject does not know if he or
Speaker 1: she is in a test group or a control group. Uh.
Speaker 1: And with a sound system issue, you might be in
Speaker 1: a control group sometimes in a test group other times,
Speaker 1: and you're recording your responses to a questionnaire. Let's say
Speaker 1: this design to see if you detect a difference in
Speaker 1: sound quality. Uh. So it might mean that if I
Speaker 1: were to design an experiment to test the claims someone
Speaker 1: makes about a particular sound system. I might make it
Speaker 1: like this. Uh. You are invited to participate in a
Speaker 1: test to see if a particular sound system is perceptibly
Speaker 1: better than other sound systems. So you're led to a room.
Speaker 1: You cannot see the system, or the speakers or anything
Speaker 1: in this room. The room is is designed in such
Speaker 1: way where the entire sound system is hidden from your view.
Speaker 1: You're told to listen to a recording. You do, so,
Speaker 1: you listen to the recording. Maybe you make some notes.
Speaker 1: Then you're led to a second room and you repeat
Speaker 1: the procedure. You you can't see the sound system in
Speaker 1: this room. You don't know if you're listening to an
Speaker 1: identical sound system or a totally different sound system. You
Speaker 1: make notes. Maybe you go to several rooms and you're
Speaker 1: asked to rate the audio quality experience in each of
Speaker 1: the rooms you visit. Some of the rooms might have
Speaker 1: duplicate systems calibrated precisely the same way for their respective
Speaker 1: spaces to give you the same sort of uh, replicated sound,
Speaker 1: but you don't know that. You don't know that going
Speaker 1: from room to room, which one it is and there
Speaker 1: might be as many variables eliminated as possible. So you're
Speaker 1: trying to, you know, keep the rooms the exact same size,
Speaker 1: with the exact same uh sound proofing. Everything needs to
Speaker 1: be as close to identical as possible to eliminate variables.
Speaker 1: And it might be that rooms two and three out
Speaker 1: of seven have the supposedly remarkable system in them, but
Speaker 1: the other five have regular sound systems in them. Now, you,
Speaker 1: as the subject, don't know that. You're just going through
Speaker 1: the experiment. The experimenters will repeat this process with as
Speaker 1: many test subjects as they possibly can. The more subjects
Speaker 1: you have, the better it increases the sample size. It
Speaker 1: helps account for outliers. Then the experimenters collate all the data,
Speaker 1: they analyze it, and they draw conclusions. And perhaps the
Speaker 1: super relative system really is superior, and people are regularly
Speaker 1: and reliably picking it out. They're saying rooms two and
Speaker 1: three sounded really good, like better than all the others.
Speaker 1: If everyone is saying that, or if enough people are
Speaker 1: saying that reliable, then you might say he the claims
Speaker 1: that were made seem to hold true people are able
Speaker 1: to identify it, or you might find that there's no
Speaker 1: conclusive support for the claim, not enough people were able
Speaker 1: to tell a difference, or maybe some other people said,
Speaker 1: you know, rooms two and six sounded better than all
Speaker 1: the other rooms, and you're thinking to yourself, huh, only
Speaker 1: two and three had the sound system that was really
Speaker 1: good in them. The other rooms had regular sound systems
Speaker 1: in them. So if you say two and six, that's
Speaker 1: not conclusive. Or if you say five and six, now
Speaker 1: that's a real problem because you've picked out two of
Speaker 1: the sound systems that we're not supposed to be as good.
Speaker 1: So that's one way of testing it. Now, I would
Speaker 1: actually suggest you go a step further in your experiment
Speaker 1: design and you create what is called a double blind experiment.
Speaker 1: In a double blind experiment, the person in charge of
Speaker 1: conducting the test is unaware of which subjects are in
Speaker 1: a control group or a test group as well. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the person who leads you the subject
Speaker 1: from room the room also does not know which rooms
Speaker 1: have the really good system in them and which rooms
Speaker 1: have normal systems in them. They have no idea. This way,
Speaker 1: the person who's leading you from room to room can't
Speaker 1: unconsciously introduce bias into the experiment by perhaps giving away
Speaker 1: that rooms two and three have the really good system
Speaker 1: in them because they don't know. Double Blind experiments, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, tend to be the way to go for
Speaker 1: testable claims, especially claims that are on the extraordinary side.
Speaker 1: You want to design a test in such a way
Speaker 1: that you don't influence the subjects to give you the
Speaker 1: result you want to get. Whether you want a test
Speaker 1: to come out positive or negative, you want to avoid
Speaker 1: introducing bias into the actual experiment. Uh, these tests where
Speaker 1: you're testing something that's subjective, like the quality of sound,
Speaker 1: those are particularly tricky because it's not like it's just
Speaker 1: a measurement you can read off a meter. It's the
Speaker 1: experience someone is having, and subjective experiences are very difficult
Speaker 1: to quantify in a meaningful way. But this is the
Speaker 1: way I would go about designing such an experiment. Now,
Speaker 1: not everything can be tested. Some things go beyond observations
Speaker 1: or empirical measurements. Now that does not necessarily mean those
Speaker 1: claims are untrue. They might be true. It just means
Speaker 1: we cannot apply the scientific method to test those claims.
Speaker 1: String theory falls into that category. Mathematically, stringth theory holds
Speaker 1: up if you allow for certain claims such as additional dimensions,
Speaker 1: but we have no means of observing or measuring those claims.
Speaker 1: There's no way for us to test it scientifically. Mathematically,
Speaker 1: it all makes sense, but we can't actually practically test
Speaker 1: it or observe it. That's led some people to argue
Speaker 1: that strength or is not really a scientific theory but
Speaker 1: more of a philosophy. Now that does not mean that
Speaker 1: it's untrue. It just means we do not as yet
Speaker 1: have a means of testing it to apply the scientific method.
Speaker 1: So that's something to keep in mind as well. That
Speaker 1: step that uh that we heard about publishing your findings,
Speaker 1: that's also very important. A good scientist will submit his
Speaker 1: or her work to a peer reviewed journal for publication.
Speaker 1: Peer review means that other scientists will take the work,
Speaker 1: they'll examine it. They'll look at the design of the experiment,
Speaker 1: the claim, how the experiment was designed, how it was
Speaker 1: carried through, the methodology that was used to collect data,
Speaker 1: the process of the researchers used to analyze the information
Speaker 1: that was collected, and then the conclusions that were drawn
Speaker 1: by the researchers based on that analysis. Ideally, that weeds
Speaker 1: out bad experiments. Now, in reality, sometimes stuff slips through,
Speaker 1: at least temporarily, but the purpose of peer review is
Speaker 1: really important. It gives a scientists the opportunity to poke
Speaker 1: and prode at an experiment to make sure it holds
Speaker 1: up to scrutiny. And if it can't hold up to scrutiny,
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean the conclusions are false. It just
Speaker 1: means there's a lack of support to validate the conclusions,
Speaker 1: and a better experiment should be designed. The publication process
Speaker 1: also allows for another important step in science. It gives
Speaker 1: other scientists the opportunity to attempt to replicate the experiment.
Speaker 1: If an experiment has a proper design and the researchers
Speaker 1: did everything correctly, their work should be replicable by anyone
Speaker 1: else who follows that exact same methodology. If another scientist
Speaker 1: follows your procedure exactly but arrives at a completely different result,
Speaker 1: something has gone wrong. Moreover, scientists should be able to
Speaker 1: come at the experiment from different angles, and with a
Speaker 1: properly designed experiment, their work should arrive at a similar
Speaker 1: conclusion to the previously established experiments. There will always be
Speaker 1: variability and result, but as long as that variability isn't
Speaker 1: statistically significant, or as long as it's not outside the
Speaker 1: range of error, it should still be seen as supporting
Speaker 1: the conclusions of the first experiment. So you want to
Speaker 1: be able to replicate an experiment. You want to be
Speaker 1: able to design new experiments to test the same claim
Speaker 1: in a slightly different way to make sure that the
Speaker 1: claim still holds true. And if all of that ends
Speaker 1: up being the case, then you know you're onto something
Speaker 1: because you're starting to get consistent results and different people
Speaker 1: trying to do the same experiment and coming up with
Speaker 1: the same conclusion. That's a good thing in general. Now,
Speaker 1: clearly we can't all design scientific experiments to test every
Speaker 1: claim we encounter. That's not practical. It's not something that
Speaker 1: you and I are going to do on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis. It would be silly, it would be
Speaker 1: a huge time sync. But we can apply our knowledge
Speaker 1: of the scientific method to ask questions either of ourselves
Speaker 1: of other pull to look into a matter more thoroughly,
Speaker 1: and if we encounter an extraordinary claim, we can look
Speaker 1: for the support for that claim. In some cases we
Speaker 1: may find the support is logical, it's consistent, and it's sufficient,
Speaker 1: And then we might find ourselves able to accept this
Speaker 1: new claim, even if it is extraordinary. But in other
Speaker 1: cases we might not see any support at all. We
Speaker 1: might look and say, you know, the premise that you
Speaker 1: have here is faulty, so your conclusion is not really reliable.
Speaker 1: Or you might say you don't even present premises to
Speaker 1: support your argument, so how do I know your argument
Speaker 1: is sound? Then we become less eager to accept a
Speaker 1: claim at face value. Well, I've got a lot more
Speaker 1: to say about critical thinking and scientific method and skepticism,
Speaker 1: but before I go any further, let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsors. Are how do we know
Speaker 1: science works? But why have I put so much stock
Speaker 1: in science? Well? We know science works because our stuff works.
Speaker 1: Our computers work, our smartphones work, cellular technology, satellites, rockets, sensors, medicine.
Speaker 1: These things work because men and women have used a
Speaker 1: scientific process to develop these over the course of many
Speaker 1: years of research and development and prototyping. If science did
Speaker 1: not work, we would have a much higher failure rate
Speaker 1: on our exploits because without science, the odds of us
Speaker 1: ever developing something like WiFi just by pure luck are
Speaker 1: astronomically bad. So we know science works because we have
Speaker 1: stuff based on science, and that stuff actually works as
Speaker 1: it's supposed to. Now, a quick word about some more
Speaker 1: terminology like laws versus theories versus hypotheses, because these get
Speaker 1: kind of conflated too. So in science, a law is
Speaker 1: a generalization about data that describes what we might expect
Speaker 1: will happen per a given situation. So the laws of
Speaker 1: thermodynamics are generalizations about fundamental elements like temperature and entropy
Speaker 1: of thermodynamic systems that are at equilibrium. These laws are
Speaker 1: based off of countless observations, and they are well established.
Speaker 1: They are not immutable. Scientific laws can in fact change
Speaker 1: if evidence supports such a thing, but they tend to
Speaker 1: serve as the foundation for much of our knowledge, which
Speaker 1: means if we do need to make changes, we also
Speaker 1: have to reevaluate all the knowledge we base off of
Speaker 1: those ideas. You can think of it as the foundation
Speaker 1: for a house. It holds everything else up. This is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why scientifically minded folks are pretty
Speaker 1: comfortable saying things like perpetual motion machines are impossible because
Speaker 1: for a perpetual motion machine to work, it would have
Speaker 1: to violate the laws of thermodynamics, and while it is
Speaker 1: at least possible in the strictest sense of the word,
Speaker 1: that our understanding of the laws of thermodynamics is not correct.
Speaker 1: To date, our observations and tests have all validated those laws,
Speaker 1: so it would take extraordinary proof to the extreme to
Speaker 1: overturn that, and it would mean that much of our
Speaker 1: advances in science and technology over the years has worked
Speaker 1: largely by good luck, because if we were off base
Speaker 1: about something so fundamental, it would be amazing that all
Speaker 1: the things we've built that at least relied partly on
Speaker 1: those laws actually works, because our understanding would be faulty.
Speaker 1: So our technology shouldn't work if the principles that was
Speaker 1: built upon were unsound. Next, we have scientific theories. This
Speaker 1: one is tricky because we have different meanings for theory.
Speaker 1: In science, a theory is something specific. The University of California, Yeah, Berkeley,
Speaker 1: has a really great glossary of scientific terms, and this
Speaker 1: is their definition for a scientific theory. Quote in science
Speaker 1: a broad natural explanation for a wide range of phenomena.
Speaker 1: Theories are concise, coherent, systematic, predictive, and broadly applicable, often
Speaker 1: integrating and generalizing many hypotheses. Theories accepted by the scientific
Speaker 1: community are generally strongly supported by many different lines of evidence,
Speaker 1: but even theories may be modified or overturned if warranted
Speaker 1: by new evidence and perspectives. So again, science allows that
Speaker 1: we can't know everything, and it may turn out that
Speaker 1: one day we find some form of evidence that contradicts
Speaker 1: a previously established theory, and that means we have to
Speaker 1: test it and make certain that in fact, this anomaly
Speaker 1: is a real thing, and if so, we have to
Speaker 1: revisit our theory and we have to change it because
Speaker 1: it clearly does not reflect reality. Now, contrast this with
Speaker 1: the more casual use of the word theory to mean idea.
Speaker 1: For example, I have a theory about why the peanut
Speaker 1: butter keeps going missing is a different statement than the
Speaker 1: theory of gravity, unless you mean the peanut butter jar
Speaker 1: keeps falling to the ground because you're releasing it in
Speaker 1: mid air, in which case your theory about why the
Speaker 1: peanut butter goes missing and the theory of gravity are
Speaker 1: actually kind of aligned. The difference causes problems. Sometimes people
Speaker 1: might dismiss as scientific claim by saying, oh, that's only
Speaker 1: a theory, as if to say, that's just your opinion,
Speaker 1: except In science, a theory is an explanation that has
Speaker 1: stood up to numerous tests along different lines of evidence.
Speaker 1: It's not just a proposed explanation that lacks support. A
Speaker 1: hypothesis is an explanation for something. Typically in science, a hypothesis,
Speaker 1: a good hypothesis says will explain a fairly limited set
Speaker 1: of phenomenon. It's it's narrowly focused. Hypotheses are testable, so
Speaker 1: you should be able to take a hypothesis, create a
Speaker 1: test that would produce results that either show the hypothesis
Speaker 1: has merit or the hypothesis does not apply, and then
Speaker 1: you should be able to carry out the experiment and
Speaker 1: observe the results and then determine is the hypothesis good
Speaker 1: or not. The scientific method is sort of a finely
Speaker 1: tuned approach to critical thinking. Critical thinking is all about
Speaker 1: trying to be as objective in your analysis as possible
Speaker 1: to form a judgment about something, and ideally you should
Speaker 1: apply critical thinking too many areas of your life, particularly
Speaker 1: when you encounter various claims about stuff. This can come
Speaker 1: in many forms. For example, politics is a great place
Speaker 1: to apply critical thinking. Politics deals with some incredibly important
Speaker 1: aspects of our lives, things that affect us day to
Speaker 1: day and affect other people, thousands or millions of people
Speaker 1: every day. Political matters are often emotionally charged, and there's
Speaker 1: rhetoric on all sides of issues. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you identify yourself as being conservative or liberal or whatever.
Speaker 1: There's rhetoric on every side. People get passionate. Using critical
Speaker 1: thinking is important, not just as in an effort to
Speaker 1: try and pick apart the arguments that you don't agree
Speaker 1: with philosophically, but also to make certain that those who
Speaker 1: claim to align themselves with your own worldview actually do
Speaker 1: align themselves to your worldview. So let's say I get
Speaker 1: a message from a politician saying I should vote for
Speaker 1: her because she believes the same things I believe, And
Speaker 1: I might go and look at this politicians voting record
Speaker 1: to check and see if that's actually true, and I
Speaker 1: might discover that while the candidate aligns herself with a
Speaker 1: particular party, one that I identify with when it comes
Speaker 1: to voting, their point of view and my point of
Speaker 1: view may not be aligned at all. Well, that would
Speaker 1: be me using critical thinking, saying, just because she says
Speaker 1: that she holds the same beliefs I do, doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that's the case. I should really look into this further.
Speaker 1: Or to bring it back around to technology, I might
Speaker 1: hear claims about a company saying that they have a
Speaker 1: particularly really awesome cable and it delivers superior performance to
Speaker 1: any other cable. Let's say it's an HDMI cable. And
Speaker 1: to evaluate that claim, I might look at some other information,
Speaker 1: such as what are the limits of the pieces of
Speaker 1: tech the cable will connect, like a set top box
Speaker 1: and a television. Let's say that I've got, you know,
Speaker 1: my own setup at home, and I've got a particular
Speaker 1: kind of set top box and a particular kind of
Speaker 1: TV at home, and they have limits of them themselves,
Speaker 1: right They They are not able to accept all forms
Speaker 1: of media at all forms of resolution. They have a limit.
Speaker 1: Let's say that I've got an HDTV, not a four K,
Speaker 1: not two K or anything like that, just an HDTV.
Speaker 1: No matter how good a cable is, it's not going
Speaker 1: to make my HDTV show video at four K resolution.
Speaker 1: That's impossible. The television cannot do that. Now, there are
Speaker 1: companies out there that sell the idea of a superior experience.
Speaker 1: They're going to say this cable is going to provide
Speaker 1: a superior experience to any other cable. They don't actually
Speaker 1: have to deliver this promise. They don't have to deliver
Speaker 1: that experience, or or maybe the experience they promise is
Speaker 1: beyond the ability for humans to perceive, So there's no
Speaker 1: way for you to actually tell if that experience is
Speaker 1: what they say it is, because you can't discern the
Speaker 1: difference between that and the next step down because it's
Speaker 1: beyond our ability to perceive it. That resolution, but that's
Speaker 1: not what's important to the company that's making the product.
Speaker 1: They're selling an idea. The idea is what you are buying.
Speaker 1: So the reason I wanted to dedicate an episode to
Speaker 1: this topic is that I see a lot of misinformation
Speaker 1: out there, and I've fallen for some of it. I'm
Speaker 1: a human being. I make mistakes, but I try to
Speaker 1: apply critical thinking so that I avoid those situations as
Speaker 1: frequently as I can, knowing that I'm not always going
Speaker 1: to succeed, but always trying to. I think it's an
Speaker 1: important practice. If you practice good critical thinking, you might
Speaker 1: find yourself saving money because you're not following an unsupported trend.
Speaker 1: You're not just buying a new trendy thing because people
Speaker 1: think it's cool. You're actually critically thinking about this thing
Speaker 1: and whether or not it really has a place in
Speaker 1: your life, whether or not it can do the things
Speaker 1: that people promise it can do. You might even improve
Speaker 1: your health, or at the very least you might avoid
Speaker 1: endangering your health. You could even save a life. Just
Speaker 1: be sure to be skeptical without being a denialist. Right
Speaker 1: ask for evidence, look for evidence. But if you get
Speaker 1: evidence and that evidence supports the claim, don't just deny
Speaker 1: the claim. If if you feel the evidence warrants the
Speaker 1: claim being true, then you need to incorporate that into
Speaker 1: your worldview. And don't be afraid to do a little
Speaker 1: digging to verify claims, especially of claims that seemed to
Speaker 1: validate your philosophy. That's one of the go twos of
Speaker 1: any snake oil salesman. Find out what your mark believes,
Speaker 1: reinforce that belief, and claim that whatever you're selling is
Speaker 1: aligned with that belief. You need to take claims that
Speaker 1: seem to align with your worldview, and you need to
Speaker 1: question them just as much as you need to question
Speaker 1: the claims that come in that conflict with your worldview,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you're just gonna buy into something that may
Speaker 1: not be true because it conveniently reinforces what you already
Speaker 1: believe in the world. That is unfortunate. That's like at
Speaker 1: the very heart of the concept of fake news, which
Speaker 1: I hate to even talk about. But fake news, I
Speaker 1: mean it is a thing, and it's true for all
Speaker 1: different types of use. If you see an article out
Speaker 1: there that seems to confirm a belief you already hold,
Speaker 1: then you might be less inclined to question the validity
Speaker 1: of that article, but it behooves you to do so
Speaker 1: because either you're going to question it and turn out, oh,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely accurate, it is true, or as true as
Speaker 1: anything is that we can determine, and therefore I feel
Speaker 1: good about this validating my world view, or you could say,
Speaker 1: turns out this is not true, no matter how much
Speaker 1: I might wish it to be true, and knowing that
Speaker 1: makes it better because I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: use this to support an argument that later on can
Speaker 1: get undermined because someone else is going to point to
Speaker 1: that thing and say, yeah, but you're citing this as
Speaker 1: your source, and that source has proven to be unreliable.
Speaker 1: It's better to actually use this practice in all areas. Also,
Speaker 1: critical thinking leads to an actual understanding of a subject,
Speaker 1: not just of technology, but all sorts of stuff. People
Speaker 1: talked about critical thinking in my literature classes when I
Speaker 1: was in college. Honestly, that critical thinking concept should have
Speaker 1: been taught much earlier in my educational experience, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it just wasn't. I think for a lot
Speaker 1: of kids these days, it's introduced much earlier, which is
Speaker 1: great for me. I didn't get into it until college.
Speaker 1: But critical thinking allows you to question things and then
Speaker 1: through the question get a deeper understanding of the subject matter,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just memorizing stuff. Like you can memorize
Speaker 1: a list of facts and rattle those facts off, but
Speaker 1: if you don't have an actual understanding, then there's nothing
Speaker 1: really going on. You're just you're just regurgitating information, you're
Speaker 1: not really incorporating that. But when you question, there comes
Speaker 1: a point where a little lightbulb comes on in your
Speaker 1: head and you get it, and that's way more powerful.
Speaker 1: To conclude, I like to recommend some interesting books about
Speaker 1: critical thinking and skepticism. Uh, the best one I've ever
Speaker 1: read is The demon Haunted World that was written by
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan. Uh. There's a great audiobook version of this.
Speaker 1: By the way, Carrie Ls of Princess Bride Fame does
Speaker 1: the the narration for it. I highly recommend that if
Speaker 1: you don't want to read it, you can listen to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sagan is wonderful and not only advocating for careful critical thought,
Speaker 1: but also he is really good at expressing the wonders
Speaker 1: of the universe and of science. He's great at engaging
Speaker 1: the imagination and grounding us in the real world at
Speaker 1: the same time. And I think his message is ultimately
Speaker 1: one of wonder and hope, because it's all about how
Speaker 1: phenomenal the universe is and how much we can stand
Speaker 1: to learn from it. A lot of people, I think,
Speaker 1: I think of skepticism is taking the magic out of
Speaker 1: the world, but really it's just making sure the stuff
Speaker 1: you are putting stock into is real. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean real. He can't be amazing, it can be. It's
Speaker 1: just not magic because magic is not real. Asking the
Speaker 1: Right Questions A Guide to Critical Thinking by m Neil
Speaker 1: Brown and Stuart M. Keely is also a good read.
Speaker 1: Mistakes Were Made But Not by Me by Carol Tigress
Speaker 1: and Elliott Aaronson explores why we are so adept at
Speaker 1: passing the buck when we make a mistake. It's a
Speaker 1: very human thing when we make a mistake, to justify
Speaker 1: that mistake or gloss over it, or try to deflect
Speaker 1: it so it doesn't seem like we've made a mistake.
Speaker 1: It's a very human thing. This book specifically goes into
Speaker 1: why is that? Why are we so reluctant to say
Speaker 1: I was wrong? Because if we could say I was
Speaker 1: wrong more frequently when we are legitimately wrong, then we
Speaker 1: could proceed toward the truth much more quickly. But we're
Speaker 1: really reluctant to do that in general. Flam Flam by
Speaker 1: James Randy is a really interesting book about various hoaxes, scams,
Speaker 1: and unsupported claims, most of which are in the supernatural realm.
Speaker 1: But I think it is very helpful if you want
Speaker 1: to look at critical thinking. Randy is a professional magician,
Speaker 1: and as such he has a working understanding of human psychology.
Speaker 1: You know, not necessarily a scholarly understanding, but human psychology
Speaker 1: is something magicians work on like. They have to understand it.
Speaker 1: They have to understand how people think and how people
Speaker 1: perceive in order to trick them. So they're all about
Speaker 1: misdirection and deception, and a lot of magicians actually have
Speaker 1: created really great work calling for critical thinking and using
Speaker 1: their understanding of human psychology and misdirection to point out
Speaker 1: how we humans are really good at fooling each other
Speaker 1: and ourselves. Also, I feel I need to point this out.
Speaker 1: Randy is a bit of an irascible fellow. He's grouchy
Speaker 1: and it comes across and his writing. Just throwing that
Speaker 1: out there because I don't want to be a surprise
Speaker 1: to anybody if they pick up the book. Another one
Speaker 1: is Pseudoscience and the Paranormal by Terence hinz Uh. That's
Speaker 1: a book I've heard recommended numerous times, but I have
Speaker 1: not yet read it myself. It's on my to read list.
Speaker 1: I just haven't read it yet, but I keep hearing
Speaker 1: Pseudoscience and the Paranormal is a very good one, so
Speaker 1: I hope it is. That's my next book to read
Speaker 1: once I'm done with the one I'm on now. In
Speaker 1: my next episode, I'm going to be joined by the
Speaker 1: fabulous Mr Benjamin Bolan to cover some of the scams
Speaker 1: and hoaxes and flam flam and technology that in cases,
Speaker 1: some cases rob people of money. In some cases that
Speaker 1: just deluded a person into thinking they had found something
Speaker 1: interesting when really they hadn't. In some cases it led
Speaker 1: to even worse outcomes. And I really want to do
Speaker 1: that to explore again why scientific thinking, Why why skepticism
Speaker 1: critical thinking? Why that's so important? And the next episode
Speaker 1: is going to kind of illustrate that with a bunch
Speaker 1: of examples, but it'll be a pretty entertaining story as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much. We have a thousand episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff and there's no stopping. We're gonna keep
Speaker 1: on going. But one thousand, I can't believe it. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of Jonathan Strickland talking. I feel like I
Speaker 1: should apologize, But if you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, write me, send me a
Speaker 1: message at tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. The
Speaker 1: handle at both of those is tech Stuff H s W.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: Com