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One of the things that I've learned from historians is how often they have to teach people empathy. From Brett Devereaux having to explain to students that peop

One of the things that I've learned from historians is how often they have to teach people empathy. From Brett Devereaux having to explain to students that people from other religions actually believe their own religion[1] to Jen Manion explaining in this post that people defined their gender in relation to their own upbringing, students don't naturally just know how to empathize. It's really a difficult thing to put yourself in the shoes of another human being. I ran into this myself when discussing historical experiments with regard to cholera. The person I was discussing was arguing that certain experiments were unscientific, based on the fact that they weren't eliminating the proper variables. I'm not sure I really ever got him to understand that the scientists at that time didn't already know what caused cholera--that they were asking questions of nature because they really didn't know the answers. It is cliche that if you don't know history you're doomed to repeat it, but I think it goes deeper than that: if you can't empathize with history, you're doomed to repeat it. It's tempting to look at people from the past as quaint and stupid, but the fact is, evolutionarily, people from 1000 years ago are barely distinguishable from us: their brains are as developed as ours. If they are quaint and stupid, then we are quaint and stupid--just as enslaved by our fears, superstitions, nationalisms, and enmities as they were. History should teach us to be humble. [1] https://acoup.blog/2019/06/04/new-acquisitions-how-it-wasnt-game-of-thrones-and-the-middle-ages-part-ii/ https://acoup.blog/2019/06/04/new-acquisitions-how-it-wasnt-...

enkid 6y ago
I liked your example of scientists from history. One of the things I'm minorly obsessed with is the idea that we've gotten better at science itself recently. So not only did they not know they weren't eliminating the proper variables, they had fewer techniques to know which variables to eliminate. This is similar to the application of statistics. We're just now realizing issues with publication bias and how to properly due meta-analysis that can help identify those problems. Think about not knowing how to apply even simple statistics to science.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  But that's exactly my point: we still are groping around in the dark on a lot of issues. Can you explain to me why P=.05 is the ubiquitous standard for statistical significance? No? Neither can anyone else I've come across. It doesn't get much more basic than that--we still don't know how to apply even simple statistics to science. And what we as a species know, we as individuals don't know. It's true that the knowledge of the human race has moved forward with regard to applying statistics to science, but if you make a habit of reading scientific papers and checking their math, you'll quickly realize that there are critical errors in lots of papers. And even if the scientists get the math right, the journalists and marketing teams who publicize their results rarely do. Better tools don't do us much good if we don't use them.
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totetsu 6y ago
I often think of this when people say something along the line of "the first person to ever eat that must have been brave", or "how did they even know ..." . If you spend a lot of time outdoors in a preindustrial world, wouldn't a lot of this stuff would just be second nature? Life in contemporary cities and that of most of human history is so different people can't empathise very well.

enkid 6y ago

I liked your example of scientists from history. One of the things I'm minorly obsessed with is the idea that we've gotten better at science itself recently. So not only did they not know they weren't eliminating the proper variables, they had fewer techniques to know which variables to eliminate. This is similar to the application of statistics. We're just now realizing issues with publication bias and how to properly due meta-analysis that can help identify those problems. Think about not knowing how to apply even simple statistics to science.

kerkeslager 6y ago
But that's exactly my point: we still are groping around in the dark on a lot of issues. Can you explain to me why P=.05 is the ubiquitous standard for statistical significance? No? Neither can anyone else I've come across. It doesn't get much more basic than that--we still don't know how to apply even simple statistics to science. And what we as a species know, we as individuals don't know. It's true that the knowledge of the human race has moved forward with regard to applying statistics to science, but if you make a habit of reading scientific papers and checking their math, you'll quickly realize that there are critical errors in lots of papers. And even if the scientists get the math right, the journalists and marketing teams who publicize their results rarely do. Better tools don't do us much good if we don't use them.

deleted 6y ago

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totetsu 6y ago

I often think of this when people say something along the line of "the first person to ever eat that must have been brave", or "how did they even know ..." . If you spend a lot of time outdoors in a preindustrial world, wouldn't a lot of this stuff would just be second nature? Life in contemporary cities and that of most of human history is so different people can't empathise very well.