The University of Colorado Boulder has an article up about a paper [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-018-0520-3] [DX] published Monday in Nature Human Behavior which finds that U.S. adults:
who hold the most extreme views opposing genetically modified (GM) foods think they know most about GM food science, but actually know the least
The paper's key finding is that:
the more strongly people report being opposed to GM foods, the more knowledgeable they think they are on the topic, but the lower they score on an actual knowledge test.
Interestingly the authors found similar results applied to gene therapy, but were unable prove a similar conclusion when they tested against climate change denialism. This leads them to hypothesize that:
the climate change debate has become so politically polarized that people's attitudes depend more on which group they affiliate with than how much they know about the issue.
It might be instructive to run similar studies in a number of areas such as
Vaccinations
Nuclear Power
Homeopathy
...
Where would you like to see this study done next?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:46PM (6 children)
People who don't like EMACS think of themselves as "power users", but on average, when asked to locate the Escape, Meta, Alt, Control, and Shift keys on an unlabeled keyboard, they get less than 50% of them correct.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:57PM (5 children)
That applies to EMACS so-called "power-users" as well -- ask them to point out the Super and Hyper keys on their keyboards and less than 1% can do so.
(Score: 4, Touché) by pipedwho on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:52PM (3 children)
Don't worry, 50% of Microsoft Office power users still can't find the 'Any' key.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @01:22AM (1 child)
Stick hand out. Put on keyboard. Push down. You just found it. Your are welcome.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 18 2019, @12:49AM
Yes, that's what they can't do.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:01AM
I see catarel, essce and pigup.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday January 15 2019, @11:36PM
Meh... im not sure i could point at the letter B or the period or the letter L or the + sign either. It's all muscle memory.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:49PM (24 children)
Nearly everybody knows less than they think they know. That's the reason for this line from Plato's Apology (which Socrates might have actually said):
He goes on to argue that the only people who actually know anything about anything are those engaged in skilled trades of some kind, and even then all that they know is their own trade. So, for instance, he'd agree programmers know something about programming, but they're unlikely to know anything about farming if they've never been farmers.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:58PM (4 children)
"Those who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
(In truth, the more educated I've become the more I realize how little I know.)
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:29PM (1 child)
Well, given that nobody knows everything, that means that they are a great annoyance to nobody. I think that's acceptable. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday January 16 2019, @01:02AM
I'm pretty sure my wife knows everything, or at least is great at acting as if she does.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday January 15 2019, @11:57PM
--The Books of Bokonon
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:21PM
I was interviewing with a graduate adviser. He asked what I learned in my undergraduate studies. I said, "honestly, the only thing I think I learned is that I don't know anything about EE."
His response: "Seems you are ahead of most people."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:25PM (17 children)
The flaw in the classic Socratic of reasoning is you eventually start discounting experts(or even non-experts who've thoroughly reviewed relevant expert analysis) who do understand things because they speak with a modicum of (apparently undue) confidence. And it can be identical to someone blasting out their ass with bullshit. You eventually arrive at a kind of epistemological nihilism, where the threshold for new understanding as an individual is not "more clarity and insight than I had before" but "it's impossible for me to understand anything but my own ignorance". Or worse, you end up one of those dumbshit centrists who think all sides have useful things to say.
It's a good starting point for critical thinking, but eventually, you have to settle on a meaningful epistemological method for your life(or a meaningless garbage one, plenty of people do that too). Maybe not one that gives you perfect certainty of your correctness, but a way of weighing the more accurate and less accurate and defraying your own biases as much as possible.
The people in this survey who have false conviction of their own truth didn't get there in a vacuum. They aren't just a generic exercise of human ignorance, but victims of propaganda, and often have a few specific biases and fallacious worldviews holding up the superstructure of the propaganda.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:22PM (15 children)
aka the Socratic conclusion. Anything taken to absurd extreme is worthless. The tricky part is recognizing the threshold of absurd extremity.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:27PM (14 children)
I felt like that was the point of my post, that you have to decide some rigorous method of sorting true from false, or at least more true from less true. That that is the most reasonable escape from that trap.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:57PM (13 children)
The interesting thing about the GM food debate, to me, is the fact that the uninformed, reactionary, absolute abolitionists - in my view - probably have the more beneficial approach, long term.
Sure, foods like "Golden Rice" will be hugely beneficial (although the current strains of "Golden Rice" don't seem to be living up to the initial hype...) GM scientists are merely accelerating the same processes that selective breeders have been employing for thousands of years; however, selective breeders worked on roughly natural timescales and rarely (never?) had dramatic changes appear within a single generation - never created anything that was too "far out" from existing and more or less understood species.
GM scientists are essentially creating exotic species, most of which will be fragile and short lived in the wild, but... some, especially those along the lines of "roundup ready soybeans" and similar are essentially designed to be difficult to eradicate invasive exotics. We've already seen how troublesome invasive exotics can be: fire-ants, africanized honeybees, jumping carp [youtu.be], kudzu, etc.
Will the benefits of GM in the field outweigh their destructiveness in the wild? I don't think so, but, then, I tend to value wild spaces more than most people. https://www.half-earthproject.org/ [half-earthproject.org]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:05PM (5 children)
That doesn't sound like a very serious or scientific analysis of transgenic crops.
Crop plants don't have the rigor to survive the wild very well. And, though I consider this a problem for farmers that mostly serves corporations, most GM crops are 100% sterile. They don't reproduce at all.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:18PM (3 children)
If you're interested in depth, serious talk about the value of species diversity, follow the half Earth [half-earthproject.org] link. I'm not in the mood for more than a sound-bite, but the sound-bite on my mind is: billions of years of evolution produced more "value" in the diversity of life than all of mankind's scientific study and development have managed to even begin to understand. Also: the post 1950 population boom is destroying that value faster than science is cataloging it, much less preserving or extending it.
If you are just in the mood for a funny video, you should watch the flying carp, they're funny (unless you're one of the native species they've wiped out.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:21PM (2 children)
Diversity of life is great for things like natural beauty and thriving ecosystems. It's not so great for, let me check my notes... uh... it says here on my todo list "feed 7 billion people with the least possible farmland"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:34PM
Keep feeding those 7B people with no respect for thriving ecosystems, when they become 70B, or 700B, at some point the solar energy intercepted by the Earth won't be enough to sustain the human bodies. Now, read me fantasies about how the population boom is going to level out, any day now, go on, I've been hearing that one since before I was born.
The "Half Earth" approach is relatively simple: feed the people with half the planet, keep the other half in a relatively wild state - you know, like it was for tens of millions of years before we had our little oil fueled multi-generational orgy. Keep studying, keep developing, science marches on and will do great things; however, without a wild planet backing us up, we're going to implode in a very unpleasant way within a very few generations.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday January 15 2019, @11:29PM
Dismiss ecology in favour of growth at your peril. Everybody's peril, actually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:04AM
> Crop plants don't have the rigor to survive the wild very well.
Until they chance mutate, the old way, and do?
Or until they're barely able enough, just like lots of plants which have limited ranges/niches?
Or maybe "very well" doesn't matter: they can survive at all. Life struggles, and will survive and spread.
> most GM crops are 100% sterile
That would excuse those, somewhat, except that genes from purportedly sterile GM varieties have been found (and sued over!) in fields adjacent to their plots. Ie. they'd mutated to become fertile, or the strain expressed fertility under some conditions, or with some frequency which hadn't been characterized in the lab and test fields.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @10:26PM (5 children)
Funny you should mention Golden Rice:
https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/golden-rice-attack-in-philippines-anti-gmo-activists-lie-about-protest-and-safety.html [slate.com]
Be very wary of the anti-GMO crowd.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 16 2019, @12:40AM (4 children)
PETA is a bunch of wackos too, seriously dangerous ones. I worked in a very visible animal research lab that was "hiding in plain sight" in the middle of a major metro area. Everyone involved exercised a great deal of discretion because: A) the lab did important work that helped a lot of people, B) that type of place is horrendously expensive and difficult to set up and takes years to start producing important results, and C) if PETA set their sights on a place like that they could easily get it shut down, not because PETA has any legal, moral, scientific, or other grounds to stand on, just because they can muster a large number of screaming lunatics at will and that sort of thing is extremely bad for business, so much so that the businesses supporting (and benefiting from) the lab would shut it down rather than provide PETA with a platform in the media with which to sling unsubstantiated muck around the place.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:54AM
That, and they've funded Animal Liberation Front efforts before. ALF in this case isn't a loveable alien life form from the 1980's, but a friggin' terrorist group that has members convicted of arson and bombing and such. And PETA gives those guys money.
Oh, and PETA also kills most of the animals put in its care. That shows you how much they really care about animals.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:04AM (2 children)
Agreed, PETA is a bunch of wackos at best. As was pointed out, they kill lots of animals. The documentary cowspiracy plausibly painted them in cahoots with the meat industry. They are a walking contradiction. On the flip side animal research labs are not known for their benevolence toward animals, as documented by Peter Singer in Animal LIberation, who sums up animal testing as a torture industry designed to appease government regulators/grants. So *!@# them. The meat industry isn't much better. Would be nice to have PETA for the meat industry. Call them META? Maybe then I can get a mass produced steak that hasn't been laced with glyphocene, raised in a dungeon, pumped with anti-biotics, and forced to eat grain (which is kind of like humans surviving on bark I think).
The study says that: People with strong opinions tend to be clueless. Next up: water is wet.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 16 2019, @01:06PM (1 child)
Oh no, not at all. Note that I said that the work benefits lots of people.
What I did there involved baby piglets. We would source the piglets from the local Oscar Meyer farm, so - when born into that farm a piglet has a 99.99% chance of becoming bacon, among other things, and a 0.01% chance of taking a quick trip to the lab, getting a shot of ketamine and never waking up again, but in their final hours after the ketamine shot contributing in a small way to human knowledge of physiology and potentially improving future methods of CPR. Of course, our anaesthesiologist no longer practiced on humans - possibly because he had an attention span problem - and I did witness one horrible day when a piglet "went light" on the pentobarbitol (pain killer) while still dosed with pancuronium (paralytic) so you've got an animal on the table with open chest surgical preparations in extreme pain, unable to move due to the paralytic, but physiological signs like heart rate and blood gasses going completely bonkers due to the pain response.
The lab also had a pair of ferrets who had a relatively happy life, except when the new EMTs would come in for intubation training - the ferrets had been intubated thousands of times by inexperienced EMTs learning how to properly get the airway tube going to the lungs, not the esophagus. Not fun for the ferrets on training day, though they did get a chance to bite the EMTs - also a training lesson, humans can do that too... but... when an EMT shows up at your door and you need to be intubated, do you want their first live intubation experience to be on you? Even with the training, intubation errors are still common, and a real problem for the incorrectly intubated patients, but without live training performance is even worse.
The whole place floats on drug research, and they have made several major improvements in the drugs over their decades of operation as a result of the research - that's the driving reason why the place continues to operate. Not fun for the disease model animals which have been specifically bred to have the disease under treatment, but this is how we learn.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @07:32PM
The attitude of: well these piglets would be dead anyway, is a bit naive. I'm guessing Oscar Mayer, just ramped up production to meet their demands. It sounds like you work at one of the more purposeful labs. Animal testing has a purpose, and it sounds like your department is a necessary evil. However, Singer's book suggests that this is not the norm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:59AM
> GM scientists are merely accelerating the same processes that selective breeders have been employing
No. That was the case for 'gamma gene gardens' that produced eg. red grapefruit. But shotgun-and-sample is not what GMO means now, or there would be no problem. The problem is gene transfer from other organisms right now (copy-paste), and is rapidly expanding to include from-scratch gene edit/composition (protein programming). These two are not just faster, they're different, and more powerful.
The difference is categorical. It's akin to the difference between pulling ice from lakes for preserving food, and creating then decompressing and releasing CFCs for coolant. One of these has serious impact - though with a time lag and no physical proximity, making the causal link hard to discern - and is only made possible through a dramatic new technology, and one of these has less impact than a volcano melting a glacier.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:34PM
I tend to think that applies to a much wider range of people than we might want to admit. And no, academics aren't immune from this problem either, although the smarter ones do manage to reduce that influence in fields where ideas have to face empirical testing.
As far as "non-experts who've thoroughly reviewed relevant expert analysis", I'm still fairly skeptical about declaring something to be The Truth in a subject I'm not an expert in without good evidence backing up whatever is being said, mostly because those same biases and fallacious worldviews influence both which expert analyses are included in that review and how the non-expert interpreted what the experts wrote. My general viewpoint on the maximum levels of truth attainment possible depends on the relationship between the person in question and the subject matter at hand, and what sort of corroboration and evidence is available to back up their statement.
My experience is that there's a lot of BS out there coming from a lot of different sources, and that you're far better off having tiers of knowledge in between The Truth and compete BS to cover things like "This seems likely based on what I've read" or "Bob's never lied to me before, so he probably did catch a pretty big fish there even if it wasn't as big as he says", and the level of how true a nugget of knowledge needs to be to act on it depends a great deal on how important the action will be. As for pundits, Facebook memes, and anybody involved in politics, I don't believe a word of it without non-human evidence and corroboration.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:20PM
I believe that careful examination of the data will reveal that social/emotional maturity (itself roughly correlated with chronological age) will roughly correlate with a decrease in know-it-all-ism. But, being a stale fart myself, I'm not sure of that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:54PM
Didn't notice the first time around.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:02PM (6 children)
The captain of the Titanic knew more about ships than almost any passenger.
Certainly he knew more than some nervous Nellie who "had a bad feeling" about it.
Definitely knew more than some old chap who said, "Maiden voyage, eh? Biggest ever? Maybe I'll book the second trip if she has one".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:07PM
That right there is the problem. Whether or not Joe Blow understands this stuff is of minimal impact on policy. Nobody is really taking those folks seriously. The problem is that the people who are making the decisions have a naive sense of what's going to happen as a result of these decisions.
Certain classes of genetic modification are unlikely to result in problems, but the motivation for the modification is rather short-sighted and often not well understood. We've already got genes that couldn't previously get into weeds getting into weeds because they were moved from one completely unrelated organism to another that can share genetic materials with weeds. This is a particular problem with pesticides that no longer work on the weeds they were supposed to affect.
OTOH, taking a gene from one variety of apple and putting it into another is unlikely to have significant negative impacts, so long as the nutritional value is monitored. This is something that could have been done previously with non-GM methods, but can now be done in a much more controlled and precise way.
At the end of the day, this research about the views is important, but it does serve as cover for the corporations that are behaving in an irresponsible way. We can't way until an entire region is covered in super-weeds to be more careful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:31PM
Please don't tell me this is a White-house metaphor.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:47PM (2 children)
The Titanic would have been totally fine had there not been a lot of screw-ups (going too far north, going too fast especially at night, not having enough lifeboats on board for everybody, and the ship nearest to the sinking not responding at all to what was happening) and bad luck (hitting the iceberg in exactly the wrong way). Her near-identical sister ship the Olympic did just fine and was decommissioned 24 years later, and some of the engineering ideas used in the Titanic were substantial improvements over previous designs and are still in use today.
However, a more general rule of life is that you don't want to be the first penguin off the ice floe. Letting someone else risk their butt to see if something is safe rather than testing it yourself first is a wise move.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:09PM (1 child)
The reason for all those "screw-ups" was that the owners wanted to make "fastest transatlantic crossing" - an enormous marketing boon.
If the captain had put his foot down and refused these dangerous expediences (at the cost of his job, pensoon, and reputation), the Titanic would never have sank. Insider trading and corporate greed killed all those people.
At least the company survived; the ship was fully insured.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @11:04PM
The screw-up that has nothing to do with that was the actions, or more precisely inactions, of the Californian: They were stopped close enough to the sinking to see the ship's rockets being launched as a last ditch effort to try to get help, and did absolutely nothing about it for hours.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday January 16 2019, @12:30AM
Well, yes, confirmation bias and post-hoc reasoning are the key to good science!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bussdriver on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:05PM (2 children)
Waste of time; probably just to bolster support with the corporate sources of their institutions funding... (if not already getting promoted, big PR firms know the playbook... one doesn't have to pay off people to get useful results.)
We already have plenty on tribalism and identity psychology showing the facts do no good when emotions are running high. Better to put time into how to address human nature. Do we need to go around picking subgroups identifying them with the label so we can smear the larger groups? No. We need to know how to prevent and cure human flaws. Alienating groups does not fix the problem. There is a time and place for shaming but it's not that often.
I know Genetic Engineers and I remember the old script kiddies who didn't know jack about computers; the two are way too similar and over confident if not arrogant in their understanding of the systems they hack around with. Script kiddies just infected themselves, did little harm, maybe jailed... but Genetic Engineers can do so much more harm without repercussions it SHOULD legitimately scare people...(even when it works out perfectly, serious issues still emerge.) That is, if you can even get "consensus" on the damage they cause because PR firms have proven obvious problems like global warming can be held up decades getting overwhelming consensus even then it is still held up. It is so bad we have to change the label because "Global Warming" has become Pavlovian.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:41PM
And, before that, we need to know how to correctly define: what is a flaw vs. what is an evolutionary feature which improved our survival in the past and will improve our survival again in the future.
The present modern world is insane and unsustainable. Just because a particular behavior might be logically, rationally flawed in today's world doesn't mean much at all when looking at the longer picture of, say, mammalian existence on Earth.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:57PM
just look at cancer rates and try to prove various industry is responsible. it will be the same with these arrogant fucks. no accountability.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:07PM (5 children)
One of the problems here is who defines "correct" information. Some of those with extreme views "know" things that those working in the field don't. Example: Airline professionals largely agree that chemtrails conspiracies are nonsense since they work on the planes and don't see any spray tanks or detect any added chemicals in the fuel.
The chemtrail believers "know" that this is a lie and that those in the airline/aerospace industry are either deceived or part of the plot.
Similarly, the extreme anti-gm types "know" that researchers in the field and those working for agribusiness are blinded by their monetary interests, part of the plot or being deliberately kept in the dark.
So, it depends on who defines "truth" when determining who is best or least informed.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:39PM (2 children)
Also, the important question is not how much one knows, but whether one knows the relevant facts. You don't need to know how exactly a nuclear weapon works, or how to build one, or how they are secured against unauthorized launch, in order to know that exploding one over New York would be pretty destructive.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:44PM (1 child)
Calling the realDonaldTrump - would love to hear about the pros and cons of exploding nukes over New York.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @12:34AM
While we wait for his elucidation, how about a nice film? Fail Safe [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:14PM (1 child)
Your examples are weird, there is point in putting quotation marks around "truth" when the question is something that can be resolved by e.g. making photos of planes or whatever.
Most questions around GM are not that clear-cut at all. Questions like how sure we can be whether some gene editing might have long-term risks, or how likely the modifications are to spread into non-GM or even wild plants.
Thus it would be nice to see the actual questions and expected answers, it's definitely not unheard of that things disputed among scientists are (intentionally or not) biasing such knowledge checks.
My favourite is always the question "is the sun circling the earth or the earth circling the sun". Well, there is no "true" one, you can set your frame of reference arbitrarily. And you might well want to use the center of the galaxy instead for some calculations. Or some other point.
Only point speaking for one answer over the other is that for simple visualization or coarse, approximate calculations, the sun provides the more suitable point to choose as center.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:49PM
"Your examples are weird"
The plane contrail example was intended to be. By making an outlandish example it draws the point to the type of thinking rather than risking getting hung up on a less whimsical subject that people care more about.
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:13PM
The fine Article sounds just like what a genetically modified organism would say in defense of genetically modified organisms. Must be a FrankenArticle!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @07:21PM
...fanboys & trolls are clueless blowhards. Who knew?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:13PM (1 child)
Shouldn't everyone know less than they think by virtue of it being highly likely that some of the information you have is wrong?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:37PM
That depends, of course, on how you measure "how much you think you know" and the compared "how much you know".
For example, the internet favorite Dunning-Kruger experiment asked people to place their understanding of 4 subjects as a percentile score, compared to their fellows in the room taking the same tests. People in the bottom 3 quartiles of actual performance almost always overestimated their knowledge of a subject area(proportionally overestimating more if they knew less), whereas the the top quartile was an inflection point where people started to underestimate their own performance and overestimate their peers.
In that sense, you could very much argue that the people who understood those 4 subject areas knew more than they thought they did, compared to other people.
So it may seem logical to say that, but it's an intuition that doesn't hold for all frames of analysis
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:16PM
I wonder if this is related to the Dunning-Kruger effect, but incorporating strong bias and addressing knowledge rather than skill. Although maybe it's just one of those standard logical fallacies/cognitive biases (subjective validation [wikipedia.org]?)?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @08:19PM (6 children)
My opposition to GMOs has nothing to do with genetics, or even science for that matter. It has everything to do with my strong position against industrial agriculture, and the idea that a handfull of mega multinational corporations want to possess absolute control over food production for the entire population of the Earth, effectively controlling all of humanity. And GMOs are the ultimate tool (I would even say weapon) with which they will tighten their grip even more.
Industrial agriculture is the most destructive form of food production, both environmentally and socially. And history has shown again and again and again that the worst that can happen to humanity is that a very small number of entities acquire near absolute power.
Agrochemical sociopathic giants like Monsanto (now Bayer) or Syngenta must be combatted at all cost.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:06PM
While this post is leaning towards a conspiracy theory, the basic point is true. That is,the reasons you have an opinion on something might not be the reasons that other people assume you have, or the reasons they regard as important themselves.
To take a less "conspiratorial" example, I might say to someone that I don't like a certain restaurant. Then the person I am talking to immediately starts droning on about how good the food is there really, and I must fail to appreciate what good food is etc etc. When all the time the reason I don't like it is because it is too noisy, something they regard as of no importance whatsoever, or even a positive point because they find it "vibrant".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 15 2019, @11:04PM
Don't forget things like modifications to produce Bt toxin will mean selective pressure to make that ineffective. And there will be Bayer with a patented replacement for the low low cost of your first born.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by NotSanguine on Wednesday January 16 2019, @12:34AM (2 children)
You are so right. Those evil middle easterners genetically modified (you know, selective breeding) wheat to create the horrible FrankenGrain we see today [wikipedia.org]. and those thrice-damned Meso-Americans did the same thing with corn [wikipedia.org].
What were they thinking? Yes, they wanted to destroy the world of course.
What's that? Selective breeding isn't genetic modification? Sorry, that dog won't hunt, as that's exactly what it is. Just compare a Grey wolf to a Schnauzer or a bulldog or a shi'tzu.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:51AM (1 child)
You're a moron, conflating slow knockout-style mutations with entire genes being copied between organisms.
If you weren't a moron, you'd say "oh but viral vectors for interspecies gene transcription exist", which is a mostly-flawed argument becaue a virus with a plant host isn't likely to leap species and certainly not kingdoms, so you'd never see eg. dinoflagellate phosphorescence genes in tobacco in nature. But humans have done it!
Now what happens when it's a smallpox, HIV, ebola, or influenza gene that Monsanto finds works great to discourage pests from potatoes? Do you think that gene would ever have evolved in potatoes without human intervention? (If you're such a moron as to think "yes" to that, please go read about "the pocketwatch on the mantle" and aleph degrees of infinity, and comeback if and only if you can grok these simplest of facts about probabilities and infinities.)
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:38AM
Apparently, my point went right over your head. I won't speculate as to why, but you might consider your own weak attempt at insult as applying to you.
I'll explain, and I'll use small words so you'll be sure to understand, you warthog-faced buffoon:
Genetic modification isn't just CRISPR-style gene splicing. Any *purposeful* act to modify organisms via DNA manipulation (and selective breeding certainly counts there) creates GMO organisms.
Introducing "desirable" traits into organisms, whether that be through gene splicing (ala golden rice [wikipedia.org]) or through selective breeding are both examples of genetic modification.
As to whether or not any particular modification is safe and/or beneficial is specific to each instance of such activity.
Get it now? Or are your reading comprehension skills that poor?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @01:57AM
GMOs seem like the kind of technology that we might want to put on hold until the means of production are brought under democratic control.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ilsa on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:17PM (5 children)
The Dunning-Kruger effect is sneaky and affects literally everyone, without exception. Wisdom lies in realizing you have fallen into the trap and adjusting yourself accordingly.
Unfortunately, a lot of our societal norms are set up to encourage the exact opposite. Knee jerks reactions are much more newsworthy than well-thought out arguments. A lot of people think that "my opinion is just as valid as your facts", which completely derails a lot of discussion before it's even started.
The million dollar question is how to address it effectively, because the research that has been done has shown that a lot of these issues are emotion-based rather than reason-based, so a reason-based response is useless and will only serve to entrench the existing opinion instead of educate.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 15 2019, @10:38PM
I think the other aspect, that hasn't been touched on, is the filter bubble.
It can seem like you're doing a bunch of research when in fact you're just going down a rabbit hole full of bullshit....
(Score: 2) by danmars on Tuesday January 15 2019, @10:56PM (2 children)
The most interesting part of this is that it's apparently way beyond Dunning-Kruger. Normally if a person knows less they realize that they know less. But in this case people who know the least actually rank themselves as experts, even though a person with average knowledge wouldn't rank him/herself as an expert.
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/dunning-kruger-and-gmo-opposition/ [theness.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @02:33AM
I had to check the survey they use, so I followed the links to the study published in Nature [nature.com] and from there to the link in the "Data availability" section (isn't a permalink).
The questions are easily high school level, which is grades 9-12 in the US. We are witnessing the first signs of our capitalist-controlled educational system's mass failure. We must dramatically increase funding to schools while placing education back into local control by the teachers themselves.
The fact that teachers have been among the first in a recent wave of strikes is significant. We have every reason to believe that they understand the societal consequences of austerity on education, which are presently manifesting in a qualitative manner (as opposed to quantitative).
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:10PM
Actually, that's exactly how Dunning-Kruger works. People who have insufficient expertise in a subject by definition do not have the skills required to objectively understand how little they understand. So people can learn a little bit and think that they are experts when they arn't. Hence the phrase "Know just enough to be dangerous".
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday January 16 2019, @12:18AM
I think I have hybrid Dunning-Kruger/Imposter syndrome - I'm convinced that everybody else is much better at pretending they know things than I am...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by XivLacuna on Tuesday January 15 2019, @10:48PM
It really isn't because that the plants are genetically modified, but that they've been altered to resist stronger herbicides and insecticides which said GMO plants are sprayed with. Wash them off as much as you want. There will still be some herbicides and insecticides contained within.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 16 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)
The problem I have with GMO's is the thinking behind it and others:
Lets fuck with food for profit.
Lets fuck with the environment for profit.
If we kill a few people, it's okay because lawsuits are cheap, we won't probably go to jail and look at the profit!
We don't even need to think about consequences, so long as there is PROFIT!
We need to be thinking about more than just profit.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Kalas on Wednesday January 16 2019, @11:34AM
More than that, like you said I think the biggest problem is that corporate law seems set up to let companies literally get away with murder if they just pay the requisite fines and/or bribes. If the people standing to make the most profit also stood the biggest chance of real jail time we'd see a lot less blatant supervillainy these days.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @12:11AM
And don't get me started on vegan millennials...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:43AM
The study is interesting because it has implications re: how to get facts to people.
It's frustrating because it's being taken as "lol GMO is good stupid people say no", which says nothing about the arguments in question, ie. the facts of the matter on which we should base public policy.
(Score: 1) by helel on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:12AM
Here are the objective questions, concerting GMO's. There are others concerning things like the earths core but cut n' paste wasn't working well so I stuck to the core subject.
True / False questions:
All plants and animals have DNA.
It is the father’s genes that decide whether the baby is a boy or a girl.
Ordinary tomatoes do not have genes, where as genetically modified tomatoes do.
Yeast for brewing beer or making wine consists of living organisms.
The cloning of living things produces genetically identical copies.
By eating a genetically modified fruit, a person's genes could also become modified.
It is possible to find out in the first few months of pregnancy whether a child will have Down's Syndrome.
Genetically modified animals are always bigger than ordinary ones.
More than half of human genes are identical to those of a chimpanzee.
It is not possible to transfer animal genes into plants.
Human cells and human genes function differently from those in animals and plants.
Embryonic stem cells have the potential to develop into normal humans.
Risks Below are some possible negative consequences of genetic modification technology. How much risk do you think each poses for society? Rate from No Risk (1) to Great Deal of Risk (9)
Genes from genetically modified plants spreading to other plants or animals, contaminating the environment.
Genetically modified food being more toxic or less nutritious, harming people who consume them.
Genetically modified crops giving big corporations too much power over small farmers.
Genetically modified food having unknown side-effects, increasing risks of cancer or other diseases for people who consume them.
Benefits Below are some possible positive consequences of genetic modification technology. How much benefit do you think each promises for society? Rate from No Benefit (1) to Great Deal of Benefit (9)
Genetically modified plants requiring less fertilizer and fewer pesticides. - note they specifically leave out herbicide who's increase with GMO's has been drastic and who's increase could easily be confused for pesticide by someone reading quickly or only partially familiar with agricultural sciences.
Genetically modified plants increasing crop yields.
Genetically modified food being more nutritious for consumers.
Genetic modification increasing animals' milk or meat production.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:39AM
I'm not sure about nuclear power. The ignorant are clearly opposed but there are plenty of ignorant people that are adamantly for nuclear power yet they don't know the details. It's kind of like little knowledge is dangerous scenario, except in nuclear power little knowledge is a wide swath of the population. And trying to explain it, is like explaining rocket science.
For example, I often see people claiming "just make thorium reactors" and there would be no waste and/or risks. In fact, they are basically the same wastes and risks but try explaining that to people that don't know anything about nuclear fuel cycle or reactor design and its inherent problems. Anyway, any nuclear power is sooo much better in terms of risk profile than fossil fuels (think long term damage and risks) but you can't really explain that to people that close their heads to reality. And knowing a little (they often think a lot) tends to make experts.