On 07/07/2014 12:01 AM, Savinainen Antti mentioned:
Theory of Knowledge
OK, that's interesting. That is a broad topic. It includes
"how science is done" plus a great deal of other stuff.
To make things concrete, here is a subset of what I am
talking about today. Even within this subset, there are
two variables, and four possibilities:
true untrue
___________ _________
persuasive: A B
unpersuasive: C D
ToK traditionally includes things like "faith", which Mark
Twain defined as "believing something you know ain't true"
i.e. item (B) in the foregoing table.
Scientists often focus just on the horizontal variable
in this space, i.e. truth versus untruth. That's OK
as far as it goes, but it's not the whole story.
Scientists gravitate toward situations where there is
no incentive for deception. In the lab, the facts
will catch up to you sooner or later, probably sooner.
HOWEVER ... not all of life is in this category. For
example, in futbol, deception is part of the game,
such as pretending to be the victim of a foul, so that
the other team gets penalized. The US World-Cup team
was criticized for not being very good at deception.
As an even more obvious example, poker requires some
deception. You might lose due to clumsy and/or
excessive deception -- if somebody calls your bluff --
but that's part of the game. My point is, if you win
by bluffing, nobody can claim you won unfairly.
As another example, consider public-opinion polling.
There is not the slightest incentive for telling the
truth. Instead, people give whatever answer they think
will confer the greatest partisan advantage to their
side. We see this all the time, e.g. when people are
polled about climate change, or about who is the worst
president since WWII. People give unscientific answers,
but it is *not* because they are ignorant. Most of
them know the facts perfectly well; they just don't
base their answer on the facts.
Note that in futbol, poker, and polling there is no rule
against attempted deception. This stands in contrast to
science, where intentional deception -- or even reckless
indifference to the facts -- is a career-ending offense.
As an interesting intermediate case, consider politics.
Suppose a politician reads Machiavelli _The Prince_ and
is profoundly influenced by it. Later somebody asks,
what book influenced you the most? Ironically, the
appropriately Machiavellian answer is not _The Prince_.
The Machiavellian answer is _The Bible_.
However, it's not that simple. Unlike in (say) poker,
there is "some" penalty for lying -- some small but
nonzero penalty. People expect politicians to lie more-
or-less incessantly, but sometimes they get fed up and
throw the bums out. Example: 40 years ago this summer.
Even then, it's not that simple. Again there are multiple
variables. Simplifying to two variables we have:
good policy bad policy
______________ ______________
political strength: A B
political weakness: C D
Item (B) corresponds to dirty politics, but keep in mind
that not all politics is dirty. Furthermore, transitioning
from item (B) to the diametrically opposite item (C) is a
bonehead move. You want to find a politician who has good
policies /and/ enough charisma and political strength to
get people to go along with those policies.
Of course "policy" itself is a huge multi-dimensional space.
This is relevant to education in a number of ways.
For one thing, all too often, people who are trained to
be scientists wind up with insufficient appreciation for
the vertical variables in these tables, i.e. the non-
scientific variables. They prepare a nice steak or
other product, and then fail to advertise it, perhaps
because they are ashamed to advertise, or just don't
know how.
Conversely, all too often, people trained as lawyers and
politicians wind up grotesquely indifferent to the truth.
In many cases they are keenly aware of the scientific
facts, but they give zero weight to facts that don't
suit their purposes.
One problem with teaching Theory of Knowledge is that
the subject is so broad. The /scientific knowledge/
part is a small subset that tends to get lost in the
noise.
Another problem is that it is considered a branch of
philosophy. That's a problem because for most philosophers,
teaching a course on "how science is done" would be almost
as hard as teaching a course on "Martian language and
culture". It's something they have no experience with.
I'm not saying that a ToK course is a bad thing; I'm
just saying it's never easy to find somebody who can
teach how science is done.
==============
The central science-related question in ToK goes like this:
How do you know that the scientific method works?
My answer is simple:
Generally speaking, it /doesn't/ work.
For persuading scientists, it works great ... but for
persuading the other 99.99% of the people, not so much.
It's ironic, but if you apply the scientific method to
testing "the scientific method" you have to conclude
that it doesn't work, except in certain narrow special
cases.
You can use this to your advantage in any situation
where you are competing against somebody who believes
stuff that isn't true.
For example, find somebody who truly doesn't believe in
climate change, and get him to insure your beachfront
property, or buy it outright. He will underprice the
insurance or overprice the purchase, either of which
works to your advantage.
OTOH this is more difficult than it sounds, because
very few of the deniers /actually/ disbelieve in climate
change. They just pretend to disbelieve when it suits
their purposes, for instance when they want to block EPA
regulations. The inconsistency doesn't bother them.
Inconsistency is only a problem if you care about the
truth, which they don't.
As perhaps a simpler example, suppose you are playing
poker against some guy who is constantly bluffing, and who
assumes you are constantly bluffing. Just wait until you
have an exceptionally strong hand, then take all his money.
This only works in a casino or similar situation where
somebody can /force/ the guy to face the truth and pay up.
Combining these two ideas, you could call the polluters'
bluff by imposing civil liability for any harm caused by
their emissions. This would force them to internalize a
bunch of costs that they have been externalizing for many
decades. Hypothetically, if they truly believed the
emissions were harmless, they would have no objection.
Non-hypothetically, they would violently object, thereby
exposing the rampant inconsistency and hypocrisy.
Again this only works if you have a strong, dispassionate
authority who can force them to pay up.