This is a great post, and needed right now. I never put a name to it before, but we really do hear a lot of lazy skepticism now. It’s understandable why. There’s just so much information, and we never got the kind of education we needed to help us parse all of it out as it’s volume increased exponentially.
It presents a problem the focus. We need to decide when we’re going to focus, and dig in to these really tough, dense mounds of information, and see what we can sort out.
One of the most helpful things that I found is to ask a question about method. So, for the example of cholesterol studies, you can ask the question of what method they used to figure out what was good versus what was bad. A knowledge of statistics is also extremely helpful for many of these popular study results. Just understanding sample size, demographics, standard deviation‘s, and the like. Also understanding P values. But by and large, we don’t tend to get an education on those things at the same time as we are hearing about the results.
Thanks for this, Mike! I love the point about statistics. Even more broadly, I think scientific literacy is a huge problem. People see science as wishy-washy, never right but always claiming to be right instead of a process with methods.
My favorite book related to this is "How To Lie With Statistics." I think it should be mandatory in high school.
Carlos, thanks for this raving review! I am so grateful that these thoughts and writings are helpful. It's hard to keep up with the daily posts, so you must be a reading MACHINE!!
Thanks so much.
I love "conspiracy analyst." I have to find a way to talk about that in a future post, haha!
You're right about the class war conversation, too. What an effective way to kill a conversation. People don't want to hear it, so they reject it and walk away instead of asking "how?" or "why?"
I feel like I'm okay at scrutinizing my own beliefs and I'm okay at communicating ideas, but I really struggle with remaining positive and calm amidst the slowly unfolding tragedy.
I've been saying it for a few years now, but my next big milestone in my journey is probably going to be figuring out how to 1) be at peace with an imperfect world while also 2) not losing my ambition to improve it.
What a world.
Also, thanks for the list of authors! You are much more well-read than I am! I have to do some research on those folks!
This is a great post, and needed right now. I never put a name to it before, but we really do hear a lot of lazy skepticism now. It’s understandable why. There’s just so much information, and we never got the kind of education we needed to help us parse all of it out as it’s volume increased exponentially.
It presents a problem the focus. We need to decide when we’re going to focus, and dig in to these really tough, dense mounds of information, and see what we can sort out.
One of the most helpful things that I found is to ask a question about method. So, for the example of cholesterol studies, you can ask the question of what method they used to figure out what was good versus what was bad. A knowledge of statistics is also extremely helpful for many of these popular study results. Just understanding sample size, demographics, standard deviation‘s, and the like. Also understanding P values. But by and large, we don’t tend to get an education on those things at the same time as we are hearing about the results.
Thanks for this, Mike! I love the point about statistics. Even more broadly, I think scientific literacy is a huge problem. People see science as wishy-washy, never right but always claiming to be right instead of a process with methods.
My favorite book related to this is "How To Lie With Statistics." I think it should be mandatory in high school.
Carlos, thanks for this raving review! I am so grateful that these thoughts and writings are helpful. It's hard to keep up with the daily posts, so you must be a reading MACHINE!!
Thanks so much.
I love "conspiracy analyst." I have to find a way to talk about that in a future post, haha!
You're right about the class war conversation, too. What an effective way to kill a conversation. People don't want to hear it, so they reject it and walk away instead of asking "how?" or "why?"
I feel like I'm okay at scrutinizing my own beliefs and I'm okay at communicating ideas, but I really struggle with remaining positive and calm amidst the slowly unfolding tragedy.
I've been saying it for a few years now, but my next big milestone in my journey is probably going to be figuring out how to 1) be at peace with an imperfect world while also 2) not losing my ambition to improve it.
What a world.
Also, thanks for the list of authors! You are much more well-read than I am! I have to do some research on those folks!