The vast majority of scientist, by your standard, don’t really understand science. Humans have certain built-in biases and consistently make certain kinds of bad judgements. Even statisticians and mathematicians make common errors of judgement. The fact is that people are often not rational and are driven by emotion, biases, and other non-rational factors.
While it’s useful to study and understand these biases and it’s healthy to try to avoid commoon errors of judgement, it’s not accurate to declare that anyone who acts irrationally is not truly a scientist or doesn’t actually understand science. You are merely observing that they are human.
I apologize for responding to this where you are highly unlikely to see … but you seem to be missing an essential point. It is not necessary to understand science to do science any more than it is necessary to understand control theory to balance on one leg. What is disappointing is that even the population of scientists—who would appear the most likely to understand science—make errors that demonstrate that they do not.
Even so, we rationalists ought not to be deterred from improving our minds by their failure to. That would be an improper use of humility.
The vast majority of scientist, by your standard, don’t really understand science. Humans have certain built-in biases and consistently make certain kinds of bad judgements. Even statisticians and mathematicians make common errors of judgement. The fact is that people are often not rational and are driven by emotion, biases, and other non-rational factors.
While it’s useful to study and understand these biases and it’s healthy to try to avoid commoon errors of judgement, it’s not accurate to declare that anyone who acts irrationally is not truly a scientist or doesn’t actually understand science. You are merely observing that they are human.
I apologize for responding to this where you are highly unlikely to see … but you seem to be missing an essential point. It is not necessary to understand science to do science any more than it is necessary to understand control theory to balance on one leg. What is disappointing is that even the population of scientists—who would appear the most likely to understand science—make errors that demonstrate that they do not.
Even so, we rationalists ought not to be deterred from improving our minds by their failure to. That would be an improper use of humility.
Comments like the parent are the reason I’m glad we don’t have a norm against responding to ancient comments.
Indeed.