Anomalies & Outliers: Field Notes on a Human Tribe
In August 2011, the libertarian Reason Magazine worked with the Rupe organization to survey 1,200 Americans by telephone. The Reason-Rupe poll...
This evening the twitter celebrity @MooseAllain retweeted mainly English, particularly Wessex/Cornwall, regional names for woodlice. They are...
Ich bin dabei! This is the night when most of Hamburgs churches open their doors.
The theme is “Alpha and...
Prev: Reflections on Defining “Groupishness” and Its Function in Human Society (part one of ?)
It is my observation that for some people, “groupishness” (often vaguely conceived) is the moral sin that produces wars, Nazism, racism, homophobia and all manner of social/societal sins. Similarly, some groups that I have observed in the US habitually believe themselves to be free of this sin.
I am going to argue that an interesting way to view this issue is to re-frame the question.
So, a fun opening offered by Dan Kahan over at the Cultural Cognition Project blog (http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/6/28/decisive-strike-in-the-asymmetry-debate.html) for his readers to respond to a new paper from Nam, Jost and Van Bavel in support of what Kahan calls the “Asymmetry Thesis.”
I’ve been thinking about the Egalitarian “half” of the Cultural Cognition of Risk Group-Grid schema.
David Berreby, in his useful book Us and Them, argues strenuously that science does not equal truth, that the scientific enterprise is a matter of ever-shifting approaches to solving problems, and that we are pretty much guaranteed to find all that we consider quite solid and irrefutable now to be overturned by some new paradigm some time in the future. I personally found that perspective quite depressing, that we are never really getting any closer to an actual truth, but I also think it is not the primary mode used to think about science, even if he is correct that it is the proper scientific view of science in regards to truth. Instead, what seems to predominate is the idea that science does equal truth and that the reverse is also presumed: if I know something to be True, it must be scientifically true. Then, suddenly, I become a Berrebian and argue that even if scientific consensus says I am wrong, it is just a matter of time before they discover the error of their ways and the Truth will out.
Science is like an effective vaccine. It has been a helpful inoculant to the limitations of our individual human experience, boosting our collective immunity not to foreign invaders but inborn single-viewpoint and single-lifespan limitations. The scientific method provides an intellectual prophylactic to certain sorts of error and imprecision. Despite the competitive individualist machismo widely evident in the various fields of science, it is the ability of science to aggregate these individual efforts into focused and generative solutions that underlies its enduring impact. Science is an intellectual form of herd immunity. Things that seem obvious turn out, upon close scientific measurement, to just not be so. What feel like essential experiences, such as optical illusions, that one might assume are universal, simply are not. Real solutions to real problems are generated by the scientific enterprise.
What is wrong with the science of communicating the science of science communication (i.e. Cultural Cognition of Risk theory) is a failure to apply the theory to its own endeavor.
I’ve spent the last few months taking a couple of college classes and so, in the interest of meeting all of my responsibilities, had to set aside my intellectual pursuits around Cultural Cognition Theory of Risk (CCR). Since I have a couple of weeks before classes start up again, I thought to catch myself up a bit by delving into Dan Kahan’s excellent blog. His writing always makes me think, and I love to think, but once I think, then I must ultimately extravert that thinking, hence the compulsive if erratic blogging.
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
TEDTalks as a platform for “Ideas worth spreading” has become incredibly successful in recent years, now with over 800 thousand subscribers on YouTube and 1.5 million monthly visitors to ted.com. As their motto suggests, TED has sought out and given wide exposure to people with revolutionary ideas. It is their hallmark, and many people, myself included, have found inspiration in the ingenious, beautiful and thought provoking ideas presented on the TED stage. So it may come as a surprise that TED has recently removed from distribution two popular talks given by brilliant speakers with revolutionary ideas. Ironically, these two talks, one entitled The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake, and the other The War on Consciousness by Graham Hancock, were given at a TEDx event with the theme Visions for Transition: Challenging Existing Paradigms and Redefining Values.
Shared human origins stories are vital in the formation and maintenance of cultural cohorts. They provide a basis for members of these cultural cohorts to be in meaningful relationship to one another, whatever cohort a particular origin story evokes. The challenge in many courses in high schools and colleges that rely on evolution as the one true and acceptable human origin story is that the participants in those classes may have other human origin stories that are vital to their lives in ways that evolution theory may never be.
It occurs to me that those of the statistical liberal moral/cultural viewpoint have one broad conception of what it means to “care” morally, while those of the statistical conservative moral/cultural viewpoint have a differing broad conception of what it means to “care” morally. I see a few different ways to slice and dice it, but I will start by discussing it from the perspective of Moral Foundation Theory (hereafter MFT). MFT, as put forward by this motley crew, has a moral foundation known as “care/harm.” Per their website, they describe it so:
This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.