4 ms·

Undoubtedly, one of the largest problems since the dawn of humanity is the refusal to admit "I don't know". This is what is most frustrating to me regarding a v

by epr 6y ago

Undoubtedly, one of the largest problems since the dawn of humanity is the refusal to admit "I don't know". This is what is most frustrating to me regarding a variety of subjects including religion (and atheism for that matter), climate change, economics, and others. My formative experiences that communicated the scope of this problem were my time in high school and college when my fellow students seemed to be absolutely terrified to ask any questions. Even the smallest admission that "I'm sorry professor, I didn't understand that. Could you explain it again?" or something to that effect was not ever even considered for probably 80% of students. I believe this is intimately related to how commonly people hold very strong opinions, while either understanding absolutely nothing about the subject when there is plenty of information available (economics, climate change), or where there is no evidence to even address (religion, atheism). They seemingly adopt the popular view of their peers, and rarely consider questioning anything. I won't pretend I have some way to solve this problem, as it seems inherent to humanity, but I believe this is causing the effects that Feynman is lamenting in the article, and I'm also not at all convinced that this problem is peculiar to modern times.

netcan 6y ago
I think it's an inability, rather than refusal. It's not outright impossible to say "this is unknown," but it does conflict with the way our mind naturally works. We don't leave "i don't know" holes. We don't think in terms of degrees of confidence. We think in terms of facts, abstract theories... at least "we" as groups. There wasn't really a time in the past when people didn't know what the stars were. They always had a view of the world that was complete internally, including "what are stars" knowledge. Even science, in the philosophically ideal sense, works by theories overtaking earlier theories. We don't go from unknowledge to knowledge. We go from bad knowledge to better, truer knowledge over time. Interestingly, science in the squishier sense does have more ability to recognize holes in knowledge. Physics has distinct holes in its knowledge base that they are trying to answer. As a human, deciding to do an experiment or study something requires a "we don't know" posture. Epistemologically though, science doesn't have this posture. It totally falls apart as you distance from hard sciences though. They don't tend to have "quantum theory of gravity" like holes that they are trying to fill.

by epr 6y ago

netcan 6y ago

I think it's an inability, rather than refusal. It's not outright impossible to say "this is unknown," but it does conflict with the way our mind naturally works. We don't leave "i don't know" holes. We don't think in terms of degrees of confidence. We think in terms of facts, abstract theories... at least "we" as groups. There wasn't really a time in the past when people didn't know what the stars were. They always had a view of the world that was complete internally, including "what are stars" knowledge. Even science, in the philosophically ideal sense, works by theories overtaking earlier theories. We don't go from unknowledge to knowledge. We go from bad knowledge to better, truer knowledge over time. Interestingly, science in the squishier sense does have more ability to recognize holes in knowledge. Physics has distinct holes in its knowledge base that they are trying to answer. As a human, deciding to do an experiment or study something requires a "we don't know" posture. Epistemologically though, science doesn't have this posture. It totally falls apart as you distance from hard sciences though. They don't tend to have "quantum theory of gravity" like holes that they are trying to fill.