3 ms·

Reposting a comment I made a few years ago on a thread lamenting the "church of TED." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9209761 https://news.ycombinator.com

by bloaf 6y ago

Reposting a comment I made a few years ago on a thread lamenting the "church of TED." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9209761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9209761 I think that in science there is an inherent tension between what scientists know and what what the public knows. Scientific knowledge is covered in asterisks. To read and understand science typically requires an extensive amount of background knowledge; without that it is very easy to misinterpret the strength, significance, or applicability of a scientific finding. Many of the asterisks are themselves scientific conclusions with their own set of asterisks. The public, at least in areas which are not immediately relevant to daily life, cannot be assumed to have that background knowledge. Therefore, the tension is essentially this: How can scientists make people aware of (or interested in) scientific knowledge if they have to strip out all the asterisks when talking to them? Making science into a catechism is simply one solution to the above problem. Ignore the asterisks and turn the fundamental findings of physics and chemistry into dogma and dispense it as gospel truth. I actually am somewhat o.k. with this. Sure, Joe Public might come away with an over-simplified and over-confident knowledge about what science says, but I think that a clumsy knowledge of scientific facts is better than the impression that scientific knowledge is arcane and out of reach. After all, it is highly unlikely that Joey P. will find himself in a situation where it is very important for him to really understand all the subtleties behind his k-8 scientific knowledge, but that knowledge is likely to come in handy. The only problems with the science-as-religion solution are a potential "loss of faith" and the perception of arbitrarity with regards to scientific findings. The first can easily happen when someone learns about a new finding which contradicts the dogmatic version of science but is entirely consistent with the heavily asterisked actual scientific consensus. The second problem is basically "rejectability;" if people think that science is a set of arbitrary rules, then they are free to reject them the same way they would reject other religions.

dmingod666 6y ago
I think falling for the Science as religion trap is a bad choice in the long run. Why not Math as a religion, dumb down complex problems, if it's wrong for the common Joe, it's okay cause he wouldn't understand it anyway.. not a good strategy.. I think if Science has a knowledge management problem, that should be addressed rather than dumbing down of things for public consumption.
- bloaf 6y ago
  Do you have an example of a mainstream presentation of a complicated math discovery that doesn't dumb down the complex problem? I will point out that math discoveries don't have quite the same kinds of asterisks as the physical sciences.
- paganel 6y ago
  > Why not Math as a religion Math is indeed a religion deep down, at least according to people like Hume, you have to "believe" in things like induction, you have to "believe" that natural numbers "don't end at some point" (for lack of a better word) or that two parallel lines don't finally meet, because who's there to watch them till the end of the world to say that they don't in fact meet? (Hume writes it down way better than I could ever do).
  - bollu 6y ago
    That's not how it works, though. We can study any set of axioms we want. Mathematics often study "multiple incompatible worlds". For example, euclidean space where parallel lines never meet, and projective space, where parallel lines do meet at infinity. This is a general theme of math; we can study different sets of "beliefs" when we don't know which one is the "correct belief". Thus, we come out on top, since we know what happens in all possible worlds.
    - paganel 6y ago
      > what happens in all possible worlds. Talking about "all possible worlds" is religious-talk (at least that's what Hume would say), afaik we only know of one world, talking about the "possibility" of other worlds is what established/institutional religions do.
      - mkl 6y ago
        Not literal worlds, mathematical possibilities. Analysis like "If XYZ is true, then [conclusion 1], but if XYZ is false, then [conclusion 2]". It's not religion, it's logic and mathematics, and we absolutely can look at all possibilities in many circumstances.
SuoDuanDao 6y ago
>Joe Public might come away with an over-simplified and over-confident knowledge about what science says, but I think that a clumsy knowledge of scientific facts is better than the impression that scientific knowledge is arcane and out of reach. This seems like a false dilemma. Joe Public is as capable of reading a paper on sci-hub as anyone else. It would probably do everyone a bit of good if JP were more likely to do that when he's wondering what to do about the aphids in his garden, or read a patent relevant to his mechanics business, or assess the evidence around masks during a pandemic. And I think it's the idea that science needs to be dumbed down for a certain kind of person that keeps ordinary people from digging into the asterisks when things are relevant to what they're doing. Executive summaries are useful when something isn't very relevant, which is most of science for most people. But some science is relevant to everyone, and it would be good if we challenged the myth that one needs to belong to some kind of separate class in order to practice science. Science is for everyone. No one can know all of it, but everyone will come to a point where they'd benefit from knowing some of it.
- rwj 6y ago
  I'm sure that many could read it, but reading it and understand are not the same thing. Understanding takes time, often a lot of time. And this is where the simplified bit comes back. Discussions on social media rarely indicate much effort at nuance...
  - bloaf 6y ago
    I'm not even confident about the "many could read it" part. Most papers are full of obscure jargon, and occasionally fields of study will just re-define words for their own purposes.
- sn41 6y ago
  I think the picture you paint is too idealistic. Not many can read a scientific paper and understand exactly what it is trying to say, since we are trained to avoid adjectives, adverbs, and half-formed speculations when writing papers. What is omitted from a paper is often as illuminating as what is in the paper. To know what is not said, you must have an anticipation of what must have been said. Often, that is quite important in peer review. Even when giving scientific talks, the advice I give my students and post-docs is to first have a clear idea of who the audience is: is it a) experts only from your area? [e.g. conference] b) people from the same department who may be generally aware of the area without knowing specifics? [e.g. job talk] c) General public [e.g. showing lab to school kids. This is the level at which you talk to the public. soundbites - so it is invariably misrepresented by the media] All three levels require different approaches for the same subject. (b) is especially tricky - you are talking to experts, but from a different field. So you have to simplify, while not being patronizing. As for (c), I think it is best to avoid it. Except in situations like the pandemic, it rarely is beneficial. Also, to do it right, it requires a lot of preparation.

by bloaf 6y ago

dmingod666 6y ago

I think falling for the Science as religion trap is a bad choice in the long run. Why not Math as a religion, dumb down complex problems, if it's wrong for the common Joe, it's okay cause he wouldn't understand it anyway.. not a good strategy.. I think if Science has a knowledge management problem, that should be addressed rather than dumbing down of things for public consumption.

bloaf 6y ago
Do you have an example of a mainstream presentation of a complicated math discovery that doesn't dumb down the complex problem? I will point out that math discoveries don't have quite the same kinds of asterisks as the physical sciences.
paganel 6y ago
> Why not Math as a religion Math is indeed a religion deep down, at least according to people like Hume, you have to "believe" in things like induction, you have to "believe" that natural numbers "don't end at some point" (for lack of a better word) or that two parallel lines don't finally meet, because who's there to watch them till the end of the world to say that they don't in fact meet? (Hume writes it down way better than I could ever do).
- bollu 6y ago
  That's not how it works, though. We can study any set of axioms we want. Mathematics often study "multiple incompatible worlds". For example, euclidean space where parallel lines never meet, and projective space, where parallel lines do meet at infinity. This is a general theme of math; we can study different sets of "beliefs" when we don't know which one is the "correct belief". Thus, we come out on top, since we know what happens in all possible worlds.
  - paganel 6y ago
    > what happens in all possible worlds. Talking about "all possible worlds" is religious-talk (at least that's what Hume would say), afaik we only know of one world, talking about the "possibility" of other worlds is what established/institutional religions do.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Not literal worlds, mathematical possibilities. Analysis like "If XYZ is true, then [conclusion 1], but if XYZ is false, then [conclusion 2]". It's not religion, it's logic and mathematics, and we absolutely can look at all possibilities in many circumstances.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

>Joe Public might come away with an over-simplified and over-confident knowledge about what science says, but I think that a clumsy knowledge of scientific facts is better than the impression that scientific knowledge is arcane and out of reach. This seems like a false dilemma. Joe Public is as capable of reading a paper on sci-hub as anyone else. It would probably do everyone a bit of good if JP were more likely to do that when he's wondering what to do about the aphids in his garden, or read a patent relevant to his mechanics business, or assess the evidence around masks during a pandemic. And I think it's the idea that science needs to be dumbed down for a certain kind of person that keeps ordinary people from digging into the asterisks when things are relevant to what they're doing. Executive summaries are useful when something isn't very relevant, which is most of science for most people. But some science is relevant to everyone, and it would be good if we challenged the myth that one needs to belong to some kind of separate class in order to practice science. Science is for everyone. No one can know all of it, but everyone will come to a point where they'd benefit from knowing some of it.

rwj 6y ago
I'm sure that many could read it, but reading it and understand are not the same thing. Understanding takes time, often a lot of time. And this is where the simplified bit comes back. Discussions on social media rarely indicate much effort at nuance...
- bloaf 6y ago
  I'm not even confident about the "many could read it" part. Most papers are full of obscure jargon, and occasionally fields of study will just re-define words for their own purposes.
sn41 6y ago
I think the picture you paint is too idealistic. Not many can read a scientific paper and understand exactly what it is trying to say, since we are trained to avoid adjectives, adverbs, and half-formed speculations when writing papers. What is omitted from a paper is often as illuminating as what is in the paper. To know what is not said, you must have an anticipation of what must have been said. Often, that is quite important in peer review. Even when giving scientific talks, the advice I give my students and post-docs is to first have a clear idea of who the audience is: is it a) experts only from your area? [e.g. conference] b) people from the same department who may be generally aware of the area without knowing specifics? [e.g. job talk] c) General public [e.g. showing lab to school kids. This is the level at which you talk to the public. soundbites - so it is invariably misrepresented by the media] All three levels require different approaches for the same subject. (b) is especially tricky - you are talking to experts, but from a different field. So you have to simplify, while not being patronizing. As for (c), I think it is best to avoid it. Except in situations like the pandemic, it rarely is beneficial. Also, to do it right, it requires a lot of preparation.