To think people are too evidence/science-obsessed?

[namechangegamee]

Of course these things are very important when it comes to stuff like politics, because we do need some sort of evidence or hard fact to make correct decisions.

However, I think that this obsession kills that little bit of magic in life otherwise. For example I love superstition, horoscopes and palm reading. I’m a majorly lapsed Catholic but I do still quite like bits of the religion.

Do I believe in any of these things? No.

Do I salute magpies and check my horoscope? Yes.

Why not? I think we don’t have enough of these whimsy little things in our lives, yet so many people think them stupid. I think it adds a little bit of fun to life. I think it’d be boring if everything was completely logical, or if we knew everything

[chomalungma]

Why is this not taught in schools

You need to apply your critical thinking skills for that one

The ability to think 'slowly' - not quickly - is a a valuable skill and one that should be taught.

[ErrolTheDragon]

• Also instinctive things can be exactly the same way too, minus being able to see tanagible stuff) as a scientist I amagine they use their intuition with scientific experiments combined to know what feels right too.
  
  Its quite interesting for e.g the scientist who invented the chemistry perodioc table left one element out,but he instinctly knew there was one element to the this, but he did not know precise know what it was..*
  
  What we call 'intuition' is often (perhaps always when it works?) actually subconscious pattern recognition. Mendeleev didn't come up with the periodic table through 'instinct' , it was a product of his knowledge of the properties of the elements known at that point.
  
  'What feels right' might prompt a scientist to come up with a theory, ask some new question - but the crucial point is that they then test it. If it doesn't fit reality, the theory must be refined (eg Newland's idea of octaves superseded by Mendeleev's table which then itself was refined with the expansion for the transition metals etc) - and ultimately however beautiful a theory or however well it accords with 'instinct', if it's disproved then it's out.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Sorry, the bolding on the first two quoted paragraphs didn't work properly.

[ArthursRoundTable]

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

"You can't rationalise something that is entirely irrational. There's no point in trying to apply logic to understand something that is entirely illogical."

To be devil's advocate: irrational numbers can be understood and are actually very important/useful, so there's one argument for at least trying to understand the "irrational"... It was challenging for the first discoverers of irrational numbers, because the rational numbers crew wouldn't accept it was even possible. How ironic that they were so irrational...

You might be surprised if you tried to understand. Humans have engaged in mass magical thinking for centuries. Do you not think it's a bit illogical to at least be open minded to try and understand why?

From a casual observation, it seems people can hold irrational beliefs (like they saw something and it was their grandma's ghost) because it's comforting. The studies that have been conducted (you know, science based experiments with evidence and method) suggest the psychological benefits of magical thinking. If magical thinking provide comfort, then it's a survival thing and that's kinda rational... In fairness, if it makes someone happy and i's not hurting anyone else, then what's the problem? I realise I'm being devil's advocate, but maybe it's needed...

"Research suggests that magical thinking is both less and more pervasive than previously thought. First, evidence suggests that although young children do utilize magical thinking, their egocentrism is much less pervasive and profound, and they are capable of a much more sophisticated understanding of physical causality, at a much earlier age, than Piaget proposed. Second, adults, despite their capacity for scientific reasoning, do hold religious beliefs that often involve features of magical thinking, engage in magical thinking at times, and can be influenced to think thusly under some circumstances. Third, the magical thinking of children may be distinct from the religious beliefs of adults, which address metaphysical considerations about ultimate questions of life, meaning, being, and mortality that involve more sophisticated cognitive considerations than found in children’s magical thought." www.britannica.com/science/magical-thinking

[CherryPavlova]

Morning Jack, hows your brother?

Science and evidence are more magical than superstition. Not always as pretty but stories of vaccination achievement, antibiotics, gamma ray ‘laser knife’, robotic limbs and thrombolysis for strokes are far more awe inspiring than Enid Blyton.

[lazylinguist]

YABU. Horoscopes, palm reading and mediums - at best just a load of stupid bollocks, at worst charlatans making money out of deluded people, some of whom take it seriously and rely on it in desperation over things in their lives.

There is no such thing as being 'too evidence-based'. There is plenty of 'magic' and wonder to be had in life from things that actually exist - e.g. nature, fiction, art, music and human experience in general, without resorting to woo nonsense.

[SchrodingersImmigrant]

How do people salute the magpies? I've never heard of it? Like an army salute? I would never put the hand down eith so many magpies around this year. (They are destructive beautiful buggers literally trying to take our houses apart!)

[ArthursRoundTable]

@lazylinguist

Evidence is a key word, but isn’t simple. Quality of evidence is as important as the quantity. The evidence needs to be relevant.

Example
i-sight.com/resources/15-types-of-evidence-and-how-to-use-them-in-investigation/

[lazylinguist]

Quality of evidence is as important as the quantity.

Naturally.
Of course, the kind of things the OP mentions have absolutely diddly squat evidence of any kind.

[ArthursRoundTable]

@lazylinguist

There’s evidence that a lot of people who believe in some of the stuff the OP has listed. The evidence for them may be confirmation bias?

Is it Occam’s razor?

[murbblurb]

Arthur C Clarke (scientists as well as sci-fi writer): 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'.

If real things can't be explained, it is because we are not yet sufficiently advanced to understand. Some members of our society are less advanced than others.

Religion WAS a way of explaining the inexplicable, and also of creating law and order; belief in hell might stop you stealing or killing, when stealing or killing might actually allow you to eat. Many (most?) humans are not inherently moral - as is shown depressingly on here.

Enjoying fantasy (science fiction, fairy stories, tarot, astrology) is fine as long as you don't let it affect how you run your life.

[ErrolTheDragon]

To be devil's advocate: irrational numbers can be understood and are actually very important/useful, so there's one argument for at least trying to understand the "irrational"...

There's nothing irrational about 'irrational' numbers except for their name though. The Pythagoreans had a theory about numbers which Hippasus disproved.

Actually that's maybe one of the problems nowadays - terminology can impede laypeople's understanding of science or even mislead.

[TeaMilkNonePlease]

Arthur C Clarke said Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Ricky Gervais said in an interview that if we destroyed from the world (and from our memories) all scientific knowledge and all religion, then hundreds of years from now all the scientific stuff would be back just the same as it is now, rediscovered by enquiring minds, observed, tested and peer-reviewed. Religion would be back too, but it would look very different because it would be whatever had been made up and handed down the generations.

Magic is what we see but don't (yet) understand. Science is what we've been able to understand. Religion is what people have been able to convince other people.

[PattyPan]

Yabu science is magical. There’s so much beauty in an elegantly solved maths problem!
Meanwhile, unscientific beliefs can do people serious harm (eg anti vax/not believing in western medicine/dangerous home remedies, lack of understanding of electricity, even making bad life choices because of what a fortune teller said etc).

[grapewine]

@longwayoff

No. I value science and evidence. Neither of these require belief, THEY JUST ARE. In their absence, lunatic theories like Bill Gates wants to eat my children and Hilary Clinton is a blood drinking devil worshipper, can thrive. And, whilst I'm here, 'research' featuring the paranoid ramblings of right wing conspiracy fans, fuelled by Russian troll farms, and found on the Internet is NOT research in any commonly accepted form. And God did not put fossils here to test our faith. Bloody hell.

All of this! Spot on.

[DPotter]

I don't see it as either / or but a combination of the 2, 2 sides of the same coin if you like.

I'm an artist - I find inspiration from many different sources, they whizz around in my head and develop into other ideas - which can at times seem like a magical process. However underlying my art is some pretty heavy chemistry which I need to understand and work with if I'm to get those flights of mental fancy out of my head and into something real that others can see.

I think one of the problems is that science and scientists are painted and portrayed in the media as black and white, off and on, but actually scientists need a lot of imagination to push scientific understanding forwards, to devise ways of investigating the world around us. There is a lot of 'what happens if / what happens when' that goes on as well.

[boobot1]

[quote namechangegamee]@minipie

I suppose that’s very true, although within movements like anti-vax for example, people are entirely convinced that some made up studies are true. I’m of the opinion that the big harmful movements are people convinced by science— except it’s bad science and they don’t (or don’t want to) believe that it’s bad.[/quote]
Science is the new religion. Scientists too can be wrong though, you should always be able to question everything. Lets face it this whole covid mess has shown how scientists just can't agree on anything. The worrying thing is when it becomes politicised.

[ArthursRoundTable]

@ErrolTheDragon

To be devil's advocate: irrational numbers can be understood and are actually very important/useful, so there's one argument for at least trying to understand the "irrational"...

There's nothing irrational about 'irrational' numbers except for their name though. The Pythagoreans had a theory about numbers which Hippasus disproved.

Actually that's maybe one of the problems nowadays - terminology can impede laypeople's understanding of science or even mislead.

I never said there was actually anything irrational about irrational numbers. I just meant that for its context, when Hippasus presented something considered irrational (or out of the ordinary) then the Pythagoreans were offended because it challenged their worldview of what was rational. I suspect that's where they got the name 'rational' and 'irrational' from. The rational people in that story drowned the so-called irrational one, because that's apparently the rational thing to do lol!

I suppose what it does highlight is the issue with labels we assign to things. Or, perhaps, that we should question more?

[IJustWantSomeBees]

Yanbu, so many of these replies are coming from a defensive place as if you're questioning science/devaluing science when you clearly aren't. I love science, it is absolutely essential to human life and it is fascinating. I, however, strongly dislike the concept that science gets to dismiss every other lived human experience though.

Humans are natural story-tellers, humans are naturally emotive and driven by their hearts as well as their heads. When people try to make out that people who carry some harmless superstitions are unintelligent I find that offensive. And when people put a blanket statement of danger on superstition I find it ironic. Look to history to see how many awful, inhuman things have been/are being done to people and animals in the name of advancing science.

Also, many peoples have been denied access to science over human history and so have had to rely on superstitions/stories to make sense of the world around them. Through this different cultures have come up with beautiful, rich concepts for explaining nature, love, birth, death, etc. I think shaming peoples and cultures because this is their history is quite (often unconsciously) colonialist/supremist. It is a very western view that 'science good superstition bad'.

[ArthursRoundTable]

@IJustWantSomeBees

[ThereIsNoSuchThingAsRoadTax]

Your experience with the whimsical magical stuff is still a form of evidence. It's empirical evidence of your lived experience. It's just not tangible, but not everything can be.

I don't think you understand what the word empirical means.
And wtf is 'lived experience'? How can an experience be anything other than lived?

[knittingaddict]

[quote namechangegamee]@minipie

I suppose that’s very true, although within movements like anti-vax for example, people are entirely convinced that some made up studies are true. I’m of the opinion that the big harmful movements are people convinced by science— except it’s bad science and they don’t (or don’t want to) believe that it’s bad.[/quote]
Ah, so you're an anti vaxxer/conspiracy theorist then? It's what I suspected form your op, but nice to have it confirmed. As soon as someone says that we rely too much on science/facts/evidence it's clear where this is going.

[ArthursRoundTable]

@ThereIsNoSuchThingAsRoadTax

I can probably hold my hands up to say I may have misused the word 'empirical' (just googled it to check and I thought it meant something else, sorry).

Ok, by lived experience I probably just mean personal experience. It's subjective but it's where people draw their frames of references from, whether they realise it or not. So, it might be the kinds of experiences they are not conscious of, like those through their senses (what they see, hear, smell, taste, feel etc). It's subtle, but it's just the mind and body getting data/evidence (via experience) from its environment so it knows how to respond or form opinions etc. Not all of it can be consciously understood and from what I understand we don't really know how the mind works.

Science is objective, yes. What I'm trying to say is that the subjective is real too, but perhaps more complicated because it's not objective like science and therefore cannot be proved or shared with others as easily.

Is that better?

[OneTC]

The funny ones are people who have accepted science in place of religion, in that they evangelise, view it dogmatically and have about as much in depth understanding as your average devotee so are in effect taking knowledge on faith

[lazylinguist]

Through this different cultures have come up with beautiful, rich concepts for explaining nature, love, birth, death, etc. I think shaming peoples and cultures because this is their history is quite (often unconsciously) colonialist/supremist. It is a very western view that 'science good superstition bad.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying cultural stories and traditions, but that's all they are - stories. Things are either true or they're not. And basing things like the way you run your society on provably or patently untrue stories made up by people long ago who had no understanding of science is a pretty bad idea.

Shaming people for their cultural traditions is wrong (except when those traditions are obviously harmful, such as FGM). Expecting people worldwide to base their behaviour, political principles, education systems and general treatment of others on actual reality is not wrong.