Believe nothing of what you hear
and only half of what you see.
-Edgar Allen Poe
Should we believe what we hear? Why is
it so easy for us to believe what people have to say? We like gossip,
we like hearing stories, it makes us feel good. The problem is that
the human mind is so easily fooled. Now, I don't claim to be above
being fooled, I will admit that I have been fooled many times, and
fallen prey to the shortcuts of our mind. I believe this is one of
the most important aspects to learn in being able to make good
decisions based on reliable evidence. Because of the many different
ways our mind can be fooled, we should never take eyewitness
testimony, or anecdotal evidence as truth, or reality. I'm not saying
that everyone is a liar, but that we are easily fooled into believing
something that is false.
Think back to elementary school. I'm
sure many of us remember playing the telephone game, where the
teacher would whisper a phrase into the fist persons ear, and then it
had to be passed on down the line. If you never played this game, I
encourage you to look it up and try it. As I'm sure was the case, the
last person to have this phrase passed to them would then say it out
loud, and I'm sure it was never the same as the original. This is a
great example of how information gets corrupted being passed on
orally, or through eyewitness testimony.
There are many ways we can be fooled
into thinking something false. Our being prone to believe in
anecdotal information is one of them. If anyone has facebook, this is
a great example, if you're anything like me, I see weekly someone
sharing some information that is false, but they believe to be true.
There is a few websites dedicated to debunking a lot of these
Internet “urban myths”. So lets talk about all the different ways
our brains can be fooled, and why we shouldn't believe what we hear.
Lets start with confirmation bias. This
happens when we want to believe one way, we tend to find information
that confirms our beliefs, and discredit information that disagrees
with our beliefs. This is a well documented phenomenon. We are all
prone to confirmation bias, even myself. This is something we should
all work to be aware of. So if you're talking to someone who believes
a certain way, chances are they have looked and trusted all the
information that agrees with the way they think, and won't tell you
any contradictory information.
Lets talk about some logical fallacies.
These are ways our brains get tricked into thinking something sounds
logical, when really it isn't. I've posted a list of these in an
earlier post, but I will cover some more here.
Argument from ignorance. This is when
one goes from a statement of uncertainty to a statement of certainty.
For example, I don't know what those lights are in the sky, they must
be aliens from another planet. Or I don't know what that noise was in
the house, therefore it must be a ghost. You can see where the logic
is failing in this. You cannot go from an abject statement of
uncertainty, to an abject statement of certainty.
Argument from authority. Just because
someone claims they are an expert, or has initials after their name,
doesn't always make them right. One of the times we see this is when
a PhD in one field, makes statements or assertions about a field they
know little about. Just because someone has a PhD in physics, it
doesn't make them an expert in biology.
Argument from popular belief. Just
because a lot of people believe it's true, it must be true. It
doesn't matter how many people believe in something, it doesn't make
it true. Also it doesn't matter how few people believe in something,
it doesn't make it false. The Earth will continue to travel around
the Sun, regardless of how many people believe it's true or not.
These are common arguments that can
lead to false beliefs. They can trick people into believing something
that might not be true. We have had an entire culture of UFOs spring
up because of people making an argument from ignorance. Now with the
advent of everyone having a cell phone with a camera and the
Internet, these sightings are being recorded and quickly identified.
I'm going to go quickly into the
placebo effect, as I covered it in my last post. People can think
something makes them better, when the reality is that it did nothing.
The placebo effect can work both ways though. If someone thinks
something is bad for them, they will get sick from it. This is
referred to as the “nocebo” effect. The nocebo effect is one of
the common arguments against electromagnetic radiation, and people
getting sick from it.
Cum hoc ergo propter hoc. I've
discussed this before as well. It states that a correlation between
two variables implies causation. There are a lot of people, always
falling for this in many situations. We have evolved great pattern
recognition ability. However this great ability sometimes sees
patterns and connections that aren't there.
This brings us to patterning. Because
we are so good at seeing patterns, we tend to see patterns in true
randomness. Many conspiracy theories come from us noticing patterns
in random events. Or connecting things that have no relation. Most
people have trouble recognizing a random pattern as random. The
reason for this is that randomness naturally has clumping. We tend to
see this clumping as a pattern.
In conclusion, there are lots of ways
we can be fooled into believing something false. This doesn't make us
dumb, or liars. This technique of using anecdotal evidence to get you to believe something is used extensively by the people peddling pseudoscience and pyramid scams. Beware, if someone is trying to convince you of something and all they're presenting you is success stories, chances are they are scamming you. I know we've all seen this sales pitch before, don't fall for it, demand real evidence for the efficacy of a product or system. Before we believe what someone tells us, we should
look at the evidence backing this up. Now, we can get into a
philosophical discussion of what needs evidence, and when we should
trust someone at their word, but we won't.
Remember,
extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence – Carl Sagan
No comments:
Post a Comment