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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 12 2018, @04:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the This-is-why-my-tribe-is-correct dept.

From Scientific American

Science literacy is important, but without the parallel trait of "science curiosity," it can lead us astray

What intellectual capacities—or if one prefers, cognitive virtues—should the citizens of a modern democratic society possess? For decades, one dominant answer has been the knowledge and reasoning abilities associated with science literacy. Scientific evidence is indispensable for effective policymaking. And for a self-governing society to reap the benefits of policy-relevant science, its citizens must be able to recognize the best available evidence and its implications for collective action.

This account definitely isn’t wrong. But the emerging science of science communication, which uses scientific methods to understand how people come to know what’s known by science, suggests that it is incomplete.

Indeed, it’s dangerously incomplete. Unless accompanied by another science-reasoning trait, the capacities associated with science literacy can actually impede public recognition of the best available evidence and deepen pernicious forms of cultural polarization.

The supplemental trait needed to make science literacy supportive rather than corrosive of enlightened self-government is science curiosity.

Simply put, as ordinary members of the public acquire more scientific knowledge and become more adept at scientific reasoning, they don’t converge on the best evidence relating to controversial policy-relevant facts. Instead they become even more culturally polarized.

This is one of the most robust findings associated with the science of science communication. It is a relationship observed, for example, in public perceptions of myriad societal risk sources—not just climate change but also nuclear power, gun control and fracking, among others.

In addition, this same pattern—the greater the proficiency, the more acute the polarization—characterizes multiple forms of reasoning essential to science comprehension: polarization increases in tandem not only with science literacy but also with numeracy (an ability to reason well with quantitative information) and with actively open-minded thinking—a tendency to revise one’s beliefs in light of new evidence.

The same goes for cognitive reflection. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) measures how much people rely on two forms of information processing: “fast,” preconscious, emotion-driven forms of reasoning, often called “System 1”; or a conscious, deliberate, analytical, “slow” form, designated “System 2.”

[...] But given what positions on climate change have now come to signify about one’s group allegiances, adopting the “wrong” position in interactions with her peers could rupture bonds on which she depends heavily for emotional and material well-being. Under these pathological conditions, she will predictably use her reasoning not to discern the truth but to form and persist in beliefs characteristic of her group, a tendency known as “identity-protective cognition.”

[...] Conceptually, curiosity has properties directly opposed to those of identity-protective cognition. Whereas the latter evinces a hardened resistance to exploring evidence that could challenge one’s existing views, the former consists of a hunger for the unexpected, driven by the anticipated pleasure of surprise. In that state, the defensive sentries of existing opinion have necessarily been made to stand down. One could reasonably expect, then, that those disposed toward science curiosity would be more open-minded and as a result less polarized along cultural lines.

This is exactly what we see when we test this conjecture empirically. In general population surveys, diverse citizens who score high on the Science Curiosity Scale (SCS) are less divided than are their low-scoring peers.

[...] The findings on science curiosity also have implications for the practice of science communication. Merely imparting information is unlikely to be effective—and could even backfire—in a society that has failed to inculcate curiosity in its citizens and that doesn’t engage curiosity when communicating policy-relevant science.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @02:53PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @02:53PM (#773451)

    I have a feeling you'd rather destroy my culture though

    If your discourse is representative of your culture, then you've given us every reason to want to destroy it.

    By your own admission, you put loyalty to your tribe before reality, on purpose. You will gladly intentionnally and knowingly spread deception, misinformation and lies before truth because you feel that your own personal set of beliefs is more important that the advancement and well-being of all of humanity. You're like the clergy that condemned Galileo of heresy, or those who mocked and tried to destroy Darwin's reputation.

    You know what ? Climate scientists never wanted to "destroy your culture". In fact, they didn't give a shit about your culture. At first, anyway. But then, your culture started to act like a giant ass. It started to attack not only the climate scientists' work and conclusions, but the climate scientists themselves, then ALL scientists, and finally science itself. It started to attack one of the fundamental pillars of modern civilization: A society based on true knowledge of reality, and not on anecdotal evidence and superstition.

    You claim you're "science-minded", but everyone with half a brain reading your post knows immediatly that it's bullshit. You're not science minded: you're a primitive, bigoted, tribal, dogmatic, xenophobic caveman. You and the likes of you are exactly the kind of dead-weight that evolved, rational people have had to fight against for centuries in order to pull humanity out of tribalism, superstition and savagery.

    You bet we want to destroy your culture now. For the same reasons the body has to try to destroy the cancer growing within it.

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @08:39PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @08:39PM (#773658)

    Nope, not this: "By your own admission, you put loyalty to your tribe before reality, on purpose."

    Loyalty to tribe would be the social risk issue. I'm not doing this for social reasons.

    My motivation is that I don't want more government control. I don't want communism. I don't want 1-world-government. I don't want treaties that choke the life out of the economy. I don't want the finance parasites getting richer via carbon credit trading. I don't want giant government boondoggles for carbon sequestration.

    You're using global warming to justify all that crap. I will oppose that crap in every possible way, even if it means pretending that the science is wrong. If I have to oppose all funding for science, then sadly I'll do it. I'll team up with the Jesus freaks if I have to, even though their dumb stance on evolution makes me feel ill.

    Quit abusing science to justify government action that I hate, and I'll quit opposing science.

    Can you do it? Say it for me: "A significant portion of climate change appears to be human-induced, but we shouldn't attempt any government action to influence this."

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @11:59PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @11:59PM (#773788)

      So you're of the "The end justifies the means" crowd. To you, if your cause is just, every action is justified, regardless of the possible side effects or unintended consequences. Well guess what ? That's the textbook definition of barbarism. Everyone thinks that their cause is just. Even barbarians, and sometimes they were even right. But that's not the point; the point is that you fail to learn the lessons of history. Even if you win, you still loose, because you will have sold your soul to the devil to achieve your goals, you will have compromised the future of your children and your granchildren, and all that for purely ideological reasons, whether you want to admit it or not.

      During WWII, a luftwaffe commander told his men: "If I ever find out that one of you has shot a parachute, he better never show his face here again, because I will shoot him myself. This is not something you do for the ennemy, this is something you do for yourself, so you don't completely lose your humanity".

      That commander had understood what it meant to be civilized. And he was a fucking nazi. So what does that make you ?

      • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @06:43AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @06:43AM (#773913)

        You're of the "The end justifies the means" crowd. To you, if your cause is just, every action is justified, regardless of the possible side effects or unintended consequences.

        Why: to get control of a possible climate change, you justify massive government control. You justify it, ignoring the possible side effects and consequences like prison camps.

        You fail to learn the lessons of history. Even if you win, you still loose, [...] you will have compromised the future of your children and your grandchildren, and all that for purely ideological reasons, whether you want to admit it or not.

        Why: the world already tried communism. Letting the government run the economy is your ideology, and it leads to starvation. It leads to dictatorship. It leads to death camps.

        It's better to be a fucking nazi (merely a socialist, slightly left of Bernie) than a damn fucking communist. Both suck however, with socialism being watered down communism. All that left-wing stuff is horrible.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @10:14PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13 2018, @10:14PM (#774173)

          I rest my case. You're completely brainwashed by the liberal-demonizing conservative propaganda. To you, liberals are the devil incarnate, and you'd rather destroy humanity than let it fall under their rule. You sound exactly like one of those pathological stalkers who'd rather kill the woman they lust over than see her in the arms of another. "If I can't have you, nobody will !"

          And what's worse, your intellect is so constrained and choked by your brainwashing that you refuse to even consider that there might be other solutions to prevent science from being used as a weapon than to destroy science.

          Seriously man, get help. You're so completely filled with hate that it will consume you from the inside.

          I've waisted enough time with you.