Science viewed as a way of quickly recovering from stupidity

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Peo­ple are dumb. They make mis­takes, they mis­lead them­selves, they are merely bound­edly ratio­nal in a com­plex world, they think fuzzily, they rely on heuris­tics that gen­er­al­ize poorly, and they are prone to over-​​reliance on super­sti­tion and mal­adap­tive instincts and pat hack­neyed answers. If you want to know some­thing, don’t walk up to an arbi­trary per­son and ask them to fig­ure it out for you.

In read­ing and com­plain­ing about Kevin Chang’s arti­cles on Intel­li­gent Design in the New York Times, it strikes me that what peo­ple mis­un­der­stand the most about sci­ence is this: We as sci­en­tists expect peo­ple to be wrong, includ­ing our­selves. The sci­en­tific process is not about find­ing the truth, but rather notic­ing and recov­er­ing from the stu­pid mis­takes we make, faster and bet­ter than any­body else can.

The infra­struc­ture of sci­ence, what makes it sci­ence, is no more philo­soph­i­cally com­pli­cated than that: it’s the trans­parency, the pub­lic state­ments of hypothe­ses and results, the check­ing each other, the argu­ments, the peer review. It’s not fal­si­fi­a­bil­ity and what’s a “the­ory” or a “fact”, it’s not pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive heuris­tics and research pro­grammes, it’s not athe­ism and mate­ri­al­ist bias in inter­pret­ing real­ity, it’s not log­i­cal con­se­quences and induc­tion and deduc­tion or even abduc­tion. Sci­ence is all about lis­ten­ing to other peo­ple when they tell you you’re full of shit. It’s about say­ing every­thing in a frame­work designed so that other peo­ple can check it. And it’s about respond­ing grace­fully when they do, inevitably, tell you your shit-​​levels are a bit high, sorry, revise and resub­mit, thank you very much.

That’s the cru­cial point where ID falls on its face. It surely doesn’t man­age to be judged by the same cri­te­ria as sci­en­tific research on evo­lu­tion, or its believ­ers would have vast bib­li­ogra­phies of rea­son­able papers in peer-​​reviewed jour­nals. Which they do not.

So when you get right down to it, ID’s attempts to evade the sci­en­tific community’s steady and con­sis­tent stream of invec­tive, call­ing them vac­u­ous and wrong, is just another way of let­ting peo­ple stay stu­pid longer.

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5 thoughts on “Science viewed as a way of quickly recovering from stupidity”

  1. But things like “the­ory,” “fact,” and “fal­si­fi­a­bil­ity,” (or at least, the last one) are the log­i­cal con­se­quences… or at least, the nec­es­sary con­di­tions… for some­one telling you you’re full of shit.

    But you’re right, I sup­pose that in talk­ing about “the­o­ries” and “fal­si­fi­a­bil­ity,” you kind of lose the for­est for the trees. And the for­est is a for­est of invec­tive. Indeed.

  2. This is not to say that sci­en­tists, as mem­bers of some much-​​vaunted Com­mu­nity, are nicer than other peo­ple, or are try­ing to be right. Indeed, I know a num­ber who I might say (on an unflat­ter­ing day) seem to be avoid­ing say­ing any­thing at all for fear of being told they’re say­ing noth­ing at all.

    Hell, I seem to be one of those, myself. But that’s nei­ther here nor there.

    In an ideal world, though, the for­est of “invec­tive” might be better-​​described as “dis­trib­uted con­tin­u­ous edi­to­r­ial com­men­tary”, don’t you think? Includ­ing inter­nal­ized edi­to­r­ial commenting?

  3. Yeah: I mean, I think I basi­cally agree. Prac­ti­cally, sci­ence is this ongo­ing process of comment/​learning/​teaching/​boasting. I think your “dis­trib­uted edi­to­r­ial com­men­tary” is per­fectly accurate.

    I guess my only point was that the edi­to­r­ial com­men­tary usu­ally occurs (can occur) because most of the edi­tors agree, on some level, about some of the basic prin­ci­ples involved. I mean, they agree that they can only edit “that which is editable.” They can only com­ment on “things that make them­selves open to com­men­tary.” They share a cer­tain set of min­i­mum stan­dards which allow them to main­tain this “sci­ence” thing — they form an epis­temic com­mu­nity, if you will. And one of the con­cepts that join them is some­thing like “fal­si­fi­a­bil­ity” (that is, “edit-​​ability,” or “open to com­ment”), in one of its many guises.

    But yeah, ulti­mately, it’s a dis­trib­uted comment-​​driven process. Which is why the whole ID thing rubs so many sci­en­tists the wrong way — it has the feel of a party-​​crasher, some­one who doesn’t want to par­tic­i­pate at all, com­plain­ing about how the party isn’t being con­ducted the way they want.

  4. When I think about sci­ence as a “social activ­ity,” I think about peo­ple as social ani­mals. They exist in rela­tion to each other and as part of groups that exist in rela­tion to other groups. Okay, I’m say­ing things that we already agree on probably.

    But what I’m try­ing to do is dis­so­ci­ate the social activ­ity from the cog­ni­tive activ­ity. The doing from the know­ing, rea­son­ing, judg­ing mind.

    Damnint. I have more to say but I have to go to a freakin’ soc­cer game. I’ll be bahck.