= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wedrifid comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1329)
I'll bite the bullet and say global warming is the perfect example here. It's pretty clear to me that many people hold their positions on this issue - pro and contra - for political/social reasons rather than evidential ones.
Unfortunately that often seems to be the case when there are vested interests in the answer going one way or the other.
The impact of genetics on behaviour is another example. Most of the educated people I know are ultra-behaviorists, so if I see somebody argue that genes matter (but aren't everything), they definitely get brownie points. Especially since such a view tends to be seen as vaguely quasi-racist.
Are educated people really that badly informed? I would believe it but sometimes I overestimate how much my own knowledge is representative.
I'm not sure people are that badly informed, so much as people are unwilling to admit beliefs that contradict the beliefs they are "supposed" to have.
I've found that, in general, yes, people really are that badly informed about basically everything.
I went looking for polls to answer your question; the only one I could find was this outdated one. So on the basis of that one, I'm wrong. But there's no breakdown there for level of education.
However, I suspect based on my anecdotal experience that educated people might be worse than the general public.
That wouldn't surprise me. Ignorance of bad information can be a good thing. There are political reasons to neglect genetic influence (easier to blame people while avoiding charges of racism and sexism). There are are also ideological motivations for such a preference (see pjeby's emphasis on learned responses rather than genetic influences).
True. In that respect I think part of the problem might also be the Science News Cycle as it applies to genetics. The geneticists know what they mean by "a gene for X" - merely a shorthand, that the presence of the gene affects the expression of X along with umpteen other factors. But inevitably the news media report a "gene for intelligence" as though the gene was a switch to turn intelligence on or off. Probably that type of thing has undermined any & all innatist ideas.
That's primarily an issue in the titles (often set by editors). The body of the text usually has the standard litany of basic caveats.