This one:
Isn’t the cartoon a simple answer to a serious problem? Does that make it wrong?
I also thought about the revolutionary ideas in science, like evolution. Darwin’s answer is not complex — it’s fundamentally very simple — but it has deep implications and complex consequences, and yes, it’s a long and winding road if you try to follow all the details that flow from it. But it’s not the complexity that makes people reject it. If complexity were an objection, there would be no Catholics or Muslims in the world.
It’s the mismatch between simple and wrong perceptions and simple but right reality.
Evolution says that biological change is a property of populations — that every individual is a trial run of an experimental combination of traits, and that at the end of the trial, you are done and discarded, and the only thing that matters is what aggregate collection of traits end up in the next generation. The individual is not the focus, the population is.
And that’s hard for many people to accept, because their entire perception is centered on self and the individual. That’s why they invent stories of life after death and eternal life, because what’s the point if you just live for a brief time, and then die? The point only emerges when you step away from it and see the world from a different perspective, that of the population.
So I have to reject the premise of the cartoon. People are willing to avidly embrace difficulty and complexity if it conforms to their personal biases, if it affirms what they want to be true.
It appears to me as though the sciency guys in the cartoon still walk off the cliff, but it just takes a bit longer.
I don’t see it there either. To me the population level looks like the individual level in slow motion: species are born, survive for a while, then go extinct and what’s the point? Or evolve, optimize your phenotype and have the world shift out from under you and suddenly go from “fit” to “disasterously unfit” in a single generation. Where’s the point, exactly?
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
– H. L. Mencken
I agree that the basic idea of evolution doesn’t seem that complicated once you become familiar with it, but I don’t think it appears simple to most people. I have interviewed a lot of people with HIV (I’m a medical sociologist) and it’s very rare that people grasp the idea of viral drug resistance resulting from Darwinian evolution. And it isn’t easy to explain it to them either. And other oft-rejected scientific theories, from cosmology to climate, really are complicated. It takes a lot of background knowledge to get them, and the evidence for them is complex and requires a long train of inference. So I don’t really agree. Scientific understanding has gone well beyond intuition and is a lot of work to assimilate. I do think that the competing, unscientific ideas are generally much simpler and more satisfying. God did it! Now you don’t have to make your head hurt thinking about it.
yeah Darwin gave a “simple” answer to a complex question, yet not as simple as “goddidit”. easy peasy.
Problem is, science provides easy answers that require ever deeper levels of more simple answers.
Like “where will this cannon shot hit?” Easy answer is “wherever God guides it” vs the complicated maths required to precisely calculate its end point.
[I appreciate the pun of the right answer being the right arm of the T. *smirk*]
Sometimes I think that part of the problem is that people actually have too much faith in science.
If you look at most woo, it comes in really sciency language and with all the progress we have made people believe that there IS an answer and there HAS to be an answer and that they DESERVE that answer NOW.
And then their dentist tells them about some globuli you take twice a week which will stimulate your immune system, using actual science terms that you might remember from highschool and get rid of your tooth problem…
I agree. Science gets things wrong all the time. Arguably, a basic tenet of science is that it is always wrong, though slightly less so than the previous version. It drives me nuts when people say things like, “Science proves X.” No, it doesn’t. There is no such critter as “science” that can prove or disprove X. The currently available evidence may support X, indeed, the vast majority of the evidence may support X, and it may be that only truly extraordinary evidence could convince experts in the field that X isn’t true, but that doesn’t change the fact that X is only a provisional theory until/unless we come up with something better. (Or more complete, as in Newtonian mechanics versus relativity: Newtonian mechanics isn’t wrong, exactly, it’s just a special case of the more general theory…which is possibly itself only a special case of…you get the picture.)
Anyway, in sum: Have no faith in science. Test its hypotheses and believe only what you think the evidence supports. Here ends my rant.
But if you’re willing to invest what is really a very minor amount of effort, you can learn the calculation and then the canon shot goes where you want it to, not where “god” sends it.
I find the “simple vs complex answers” thing to be pretty true. Whether it be science or politics or whatever, people tend to prefer solutions that are easily explainable and can fit into a sound bite. Using the Republicans as an example: most people who vote Republican would rather hear a simple, direct, completely meaningless solution like “I will cut the head off ISIS and defeat it” rather than “The politics of the Middle East are a complicated situation, and we need to ferment economic and social reform if we expect anything to actually change, so simply ‘defeating’ ISIS is futile because another group will simply fill the void unless…” and so on and so on. People don’t want to hear about the complexities of big problems, they want something direct that they can understand without actually having to learn anything.
(When I say people I’m referring to people as an aggregate, obviously individuals differ.)
>The individual is not the focus, the population is.
In the popular Fallout 4 game, boss bad guys “mutate” and bcome more difficult to kill. {face paw}
Exactly. “Faith” and “Science” are mutually exclusive. To think one is part of the other is a profound error.
Science requires doubt. when given an answer it requires the response to be, “Is that so? Verify it”. And not just the simplistic “believe me it’s true”. Which (contradictorally) I’ll just leave that here, saying believe me, it truly is what science demands.
re OP:
I don’t see the argument you had with the cartoon. Your description of the issues was quite clear and did not represent an argument. The cartoon presented a simplistic image representing the issue, that required a complicated description… so I see the problem. The cartoon is simple but right, while it says simple is wrong. self contradictory. paradox embodied. I see…
“The point only emerges when you step away from it and see the world from a different perspective, that of the population.”
But doesn’t that, taken incorrectly, lead to the false attitudes behind Social Darwinism, or the distinct tribalist attitudes we see taking over the country today?
Thus, it becomes not a simple solution but a very complicated one, because the simple solution requires understanding the very complex and varied idea of what is a population.
“Simple Wrong” and “Complex Right”. This is only two of multiple options.
First off, the concept of ‘Wrong’ vs ‘Right’ is too binary. The better question: Is the answer useful? Science and reason dependably provide more useful answers than other approaches. Complexity vs simplicity is a poor guide.
or to clarify: just like “theory”, the word “population” to biologists has a very different meaning to the use of the word by everybody else on the planet.
Well, I get your point but think maybe you’re using a too complicated version of “simple” here. There’s simple … and then there’s simple. Instincts, intuitions, “folk” theories, and an “entire perception … centered on self and the individual” seems to be our species’ default baseline for what’s considered plain, ordinary common sense. Science, as professor Alan Cromer once said, is uncommon sense. It’s not just the discoveries: asking outside critics to check our tribe’s conclusions goes against the grain of human nature.
The basic algorithms of evolution fight an even more basic tendency to interpret our experiences and observations at face value and see design. It looks as if the sun rises on one stationary horizon and sets on the opposite side: are astronomers telling us that what we can plainly see is wrong? Shifting perspective is a more complex move than sticking with the original position.
I think it’s also worth differentiating between “complex” and “complicated”. To me, the former implies that the intricacy and difficult-to-understand-ness is intergral to the nature and functioning of the thing. The human brain is complex, because if it wasn’t it wouldn’t work. There’s a baseline beyond (below?) which it can’t be simplified.
Theology on the other hand is complicated, in the same way that we’d call a poorly designed user interface “complicated”, not “complex”. It’s a needlessly circuitous and inefficient system of thought.
But, but it’s a -cartoon- Dr. Poopyhead!
I would say the cartoon accurate overall. The idea doesn’t just apply to science but all issues. Like “how do we fix the drug problem?” has the simple/wrong answer “build a wall and arrest everyone” and the complex/right answer which is too complex to write down here. The root of western religion is “God did it”. That’s simple. The complexities PZ mentioned are a house of cards resulting from efforts to support the main tenant. It’s forced complexity that’s optional and irrelevant so it shouldn’t count.
Well, this is another nice mesa you’ve gotten us onto!
dianne:
If there isn’t such a thing, then there’s nothing which has that basic tenet. You presumably only mean to claim that the “critter” which does exist isn’t of the sort that it (typically) has the option to demonstrate a conclusion with a logical proof. But it isn’t like logic is completely tossed out the window either, so it (that is, scientists practicing it) can do that in some circumstances, although of course it doesn’t always need to.
If the sciences became less wrong, then in what sense is it not the case that they’re not wrong about something? There may still be mistakes about other things, but something had to give if there’s actually any less wrongness at the end of whatever process it is that updates us to a new “version” of the science in question. So, you must not mean it’s always wrong about everything, or that it’s not always wrong about any particular thing.
I’m not sure I really do get the picture. Is it supposed to look like a never-ending sequence of “provisional” or “more complete” theories, or is there some claim that “something better” could eventually appear? That is, I’m not asking whether it should eventually come about that we should take a “better” theory on faith, since that’s a completely different kind of issue and is awfully suspicious that those seem to be equated, but whether we could conceivably have something that isn’t just offering provisions (and is supposed to be understood as “wrong” yet instrumentally useful) until the next thing comes along. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to know in advance either way, whether or not such a thing will ever come along.
PZ:
I don’t think you meant it this way, but “what matters” is not just evolution or populations. That matters to biologists when they study biology. If you were offering a replacement for a folk biological theory that’s “centered on self and the individual” (or the whole metaphysical picture, if “life after death” isn’t strictly speaking something you’d consider a biological concept), then I’d have no complaint.
But it’s not like everything that matters to us as human beings could be answered by biology. The question “what’s the point if you just live for a brief time and then die?” simply isn’t one that biology is equipped to handle…. obviously, right? I mean, if I’m not reproducing (and I’m not, at least for now, if it makes any difference to anyone), then no matter how that looks evolutionarily or biologically, I still have some value as a person and still have plenty of other things to care about. What that amounts to, I don’t really know most of the time, but it certainly is something biology isn’t prepared (or even attempting) to address. And you wouldn’t change a thing about it by shaking a biology textbook in my face and telling me about the vast amounts of evidence that support it.
I’m sure you’d agree, but it does read as if you’re insisting on only having a biological perspective, as opposed to encouraging people to include that perspective along with other kinds of perspectives that aren’t in conflict with the sciences. Perhaps it’s not the most charitable reading, but if you’re going to nitpick at a comic strip which doesn’t even contain complete sentences, then it seems like a reasonable standard in this thread, to at least flag this as a sloppy or confusing way to express the point you apparently wanted to make.
Sorry, the second blockquote in #20 is just part of my own comment, not something to which I’m responding.
I think the cartoon would’ve worked better if the sign on the left had read, “Confirm your existing beliefs and biases,” & the sign on the right had said, “Challenge your existing beliefs and biases,” except, for most people doing the former, they seem to do well.
Of course, that’s only good until climate change causes catastrophe for civilization.
Amusingly I had a similar discussion with myself today when I saw this (slightly cropped) cartoon in the International New York Times (formerly IHT). First, it’s a cartoon, so I don’t necessarily expect it to reflect reality; albeit like Doonesbury, this particular cartoon only “works” if a moderate suspension of disbelief is required.
So, suspending disbelief slightly, the problem I had is the sign pointing to the right (curvy path which may or may not end with an opportunity to fall off the cliff — if you look closely, there is a character at the end of that path who, it seems to me, is starting to climb down a ladder) is the sign ought to read something like “learning required, mistakes made, changes made, not as easy, not as fast, usually not as wrong.” A few broken ladders and discarded parachutes, some clearly of poor design, by the side of the curvy path would help, as would a few mostly-abandoned dead-ends, and characters constructing alternative paths and/or holes / tunnels.
@dianne #8:
And if you use what you’ve learned to write out a set of tables, a person with no mathematical knowledge whatsoever can quickly look up a firing solution to place their first shot on or very close to their target, and subsequently use their own experience to adjust for better hits — sticking two fingers up to God in the process.
I saw this cartoon yesterday in the Melbourne ‘Age’, and I was going to send a copy of it to my AGW denialist brother.
I think it’s a matter of familiarity.
You see people building things every day, but there is no fucking way you will see the decades long statistical trends in a population.
“Big person in the sky did it” is much more familiar than “things change big over the course of several times a human lifespan”. The latter requires you to appreciate things you don’t see daily, things you have to actually study to know they even happen. The former instead just requires you to apply what you know already.
“Do what you’re told by The Authority.” What’s complex about that?
People are certainly happy to embrace complexity, even counter-intuitive contorted convolutions, if it props up what they’ve long ago decided is true.
Look at the entire field of theology, for crying out loud – a thick veneer of deepitude and “study” and intellectualism and even university degrees, grafted on top of something so simple and two-dimensional that they teach it to children on Sunday mornings.
There are some counterexamples to the embracing-complexity generalization. The one that comes to mind is the explanation of stomach ulcers as being due to “stress” and acidic foods. That was satisfyingly complex, and massive studies were underway exploring it. Then it turned out that two little-known doctors in the upside-down part of the world had proved that most ulcers are the result of infection by Helicobacter pylori. A major “oops”. In fact, a Nobel-Prize-winning “oops”.
@27
I study a lot of ancient philosophy – you’d be surprised the hundreds of books single authors in the islamic traditions put out to create a metaphysical system that worked with their version of god.
It’s kinda like how people had to keep adding epicycles within epicycles to explain the growing number of celestial bodies we could observe, until star maps were unreadable messes. “We rotate around the sun elliptically” is significantly easier.
I look at the cartoon and see two complementary binaries: [simplicity|complexity, correctness|wrongness] — so, there are four possible combos, only two of which are featured:
* Simple and correct
* Simple and wrong (featured)
* Complex and correct
* Complex and wrong (featured)
So yes, the cartoon is wrong, by omission.
[um, I mislabeled above. Sheesh!]
Simple but right vs. Complex but wrong:
• Requires HTML5/scripting enabled; may spike CPU usage.
• Animated GIF.
Note that the “complex but wrong” may have been more appealing because it supports the egoistic fallacy.
Vivec @30:
The key problem is What people think versus That people think. People who go for simple-but-wrong or complex-but-wrong answers were never taught how to find answers, never learnt or were discouraged from learning the basics of logic and problem solving. Facts taught as rote learning are easy to ignore (or more tempting to ignore) if you don’t know and can’t understand how they were achieved.
On the other hand, an example of “simple but wrong” is similia similibus curentur (like cures like); the main doctrine of homeopathy.
It is simply not true at all. It has no basis in reality. It is fundamentally bullshit. There is no reason to believe it; not only is the tenet unevidenced, there are plenty of evidential counterexamples.
And yet dilution and succussion continue. It’s simpler than double-blind clinical trials.
Owlmirror:
Ah, yes… succussion.
“Shaken, not stirred” — Bond – James Bond.
(Gotta be stylish!)
It’s a cartoon, it’s funny! It does not merit a plunge into vast seas of philosophy.
jack16 #38
simple but wrong
John Morales #31
Does your substitution of ‘and’ for ‘but’ make a difference?
chigau, nope. They’re logically equivalent.
Comprehensibility is important. Gay rights have lagged behind the struggle against racism and sexism because differences in sexual orientation are harder to wrap one’s head around. Bill Maher and Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld still complain they can’t use “faggot” when addressing their “politically correct” college crowds.