Agnotology and Epistemology

KomradeBishop

Peoples epistemological beliefs (i.e. their beliefs on what knowledge is and how to determine what is/isn't valid), affect how they go about learning topics, and there seems to be a great variety in peoples beliefs here, and how they go about learning (which can affect things like, deferring to an authority on a topic, instead of questioning them).

My own approach to learning topics, is to first look for everything that is wrong with a topic, and to use the criticisms that I find as a starting point - giving criticism maximum benefit of the doubt, until I can find something that discredits that criticism; this seems to be a very reliable way of (obliquely) learning topics in detail (it's similar to my work as well: programming, where I find ways of exploiting/breaking games - i.e. look for faults in logic first - and then secure them).

I don't know what this approach to learning, focused on faults, would be called - some kind of skepticism probably - but I notice that it's not the approach most people take to learning; most people defer to the knowledge of an expert on a topic (unavoidable really), without searching for criticisms/faults in that knowledge (avoidable).
This is pretty much how people are taught, through school and right up through college - there's often not a great deal of room for critical thinking along the way.

I think this creates a lot of opportunity for false-knowledge and widescale spreading of cognitive-bias in people (even incredibly intelligent people - I don't think anybody is immune to it), and that peoples lack of skill in this area puts them heavily at risk of influence, by marketed/propagandised (or even just spread through ignorance) misinformation - the field of Agnotology, is the study of this kind of culturally spread ignorance/doubt.


This is even a central problem in the most respected/prominent field of science, physics, because (in a field where you'd expect scientists to have a rigorous/solid epistemological belief system) there are massive epistemological problems with the study of string theory.
The central problem with string theory, is that it shows no hope of being tested anytime within the next millennium(!), and shows no hope of any theoretical breakthroughs which may bring it closer to testing - so we have some of the best scientists in the world, working on a theory that (as far as we know) may have no application to reality whatsoever.

There has been a similar problem with economics now too, for a very long time - neoclassical economics is the base of mainstream economic teaching, yet while it has been thoroughly debunked by many people, and does not apply well to the real world, it is still the dominant form of economic thought, and (as a field) it is incredibly resistant to reform, despite plenty of examples of theories which better fit empirical data (which is why economics is known as the 'dismal science').

String theorists do not seem to be aware or accepting of the very simple/basic/obvious criticisms in their field, and how the dominance of string theory is unjustified, and economists likewise, often are not even aware of the deep faults/criticisms in the foundations of neoclassical economics (many aren't even aware that that is what they were taught), and how its dominance is also unjustified.


What is it, that leads people into thinking this way, and why also do so many (even very intelligent) people, seem to get heavily stuck in faulty ways of thinking like this (holding onto a lot of false knowledge in the process), and become so resistant to challenge/change?

Black Swan

KomradeBishop wrote: »

My own approach to learning topics, is to first look for everything that is wrong with a topic, and to use the criticisms that I find as a starting point - giving criticism maximum benefit of the doubt, until I can find something that discredits that criticism;

Do you approach new topics using Karl Popper's scientific convention of falsifiability? It's a view that all philosophies and theories are subject to being falsified in that none are completely correct, but useful so long as empirical studies suggest their validity when used to measure, describe, and explain our natural world. That's why we do not test the research hypothesis that suggests something is true, rather the null hypothesis of no significance. If the null is rejected, then the research hypothesis receives support. Caution in the exercise of this scientific method specifies that nothing is proven, rather supported so long as significance is found.

KomradeBishop

That would definitely be one of the principles I apply, but then the problem is when theories are not practically falsifiable, as in string theory and a lot of economic theory.

Then the problem becomes, matching theory to describe/explain available data, and then trying to make (often limited) future predictions based upon that, while also having consistency in the theory so that it accurately describes things that we do know about.

My approach though, wouldn't just be looking for falsifiability though - but looking for the edge-cases/weak-points in any theory, and the most significant criticisms of it, and exploring that first, in great detail.

There's also the problem of the faults we do know about in theories - a lot of economic theories plainly do not apply consistently in the real world, yet are often treated as good 'approximations' - but cumulatively, all of the inaccuracies/faults add up to an overall theory, which is just false in the real world.
Economics as a field (particularly mainstream economics), is particularly bad at overlooking stuff like this - holding on to a lot of theories that should just be discarded, and which often even have significant empircal support against them.

Black Swan

KomradeBishop wrote: »

My approach though, wouldn't just be looking for falsifiability though - but looking for the edge-cases/weak-points in any theory, and the most significant criticisms of it, and exploring that first, in great detail.

Jacques Derrida has a deconstruction methodology for philosophical and theoretical perspectives you may be interested in (Of Grammatology, 1974).

KomradeBishop

Black Swan wrote: »

Jacques Derrida has a deconstruction methodology for philosophical and theoretical perspectives you may be interested in (Of Grammatology, 1974).

Ya have to say, that seems to delve into philosophical ideas that are vague enough, that it'd be hard to get a good grasp on them - and risk tying myself in knots trying
That's how I feel about a lot of philosophy - it's hard to tell what may be worth exploring, and what may just lead me in unproductive circles - particularly when people like to reference/quote philosophers from more than a hundred years ago (not the case here though), when there may be good reasons why some of their views may have since been altered/discarded.

I think I read about deconstruction at some point before though, about it being applied to literature - after searching up on it more, it appears to tie into postmodernism, and I think a lot of that isn't very well founded, and can lead to a lot of silly ways of thinking (I don't know if that applies to deconstruction though), e.g. the belief that reality is subjective (and thus, if you believe strongly enough that gravity repels instead of attracts...;)); for that reason, I tend to avoid anything touching on postmodernism.

Am I getting that wrong though, in the case of deconstruction? What's your view of it? From what I can see, it seems very hard to read up on, but am open to the idea that there's merit to it.

Black Swan

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Ya have to say, that seems to delve into philosophical ideas that are vague enough, that it'd be hard to get a good grasp on them - and risk tying myself in knots trying

I tend to favour an eclectic approach, cherry picking those concepts, and an occasional paradigm contained within a larger work, that appear to have merit.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I think I read about deconstruction at some point before though, about it being applied to literature - after searching up on it more, it appears to tie into postmodernism, and I think a lot of that isn't very well founded...

Am I getting that wrong though, in the case of deconstruction? What's your view of it? From what I can see, it seems very hard to read up on, but am open to the idea that there's merit to it.

Jacques Derrida was a deconstructionist. Although some place deconstruction within postmodern philosophy, I doubt that Derrida would consider himself a postmodernist. Furthermore, I really do not believe that Derrida was a philosopher either, rather a methodologist who deconstructs philosophies and theories.

How does one label deconstruction a philosophy, much less a postmodern one? Can a deconstructionist construct a philosophy? Derrida didn't construct one, and he was credited as starting deconstructionism.

I find Derrida a hard read. Although he was fluent in both French and English, often something was lost in translation from the French. All too often he steps quickly through his arguments only touching upon a host of philosophical concepts without clarification, assuming that you know the definitions. I cannot read him word-for-word, sentence-for-sentence, or paragraph for paragraph. My approach was to quickly skim through his works a chapter-at-a-time, note questions as I go, capturing the larger thrust of his arguments, then go back and examine the details.

I find his criticism of dichotomies of merit. He suggests that few things in nature are so simple as to be placed in either-or mutually exclusive categories. Further, we tend to treat them in a hierarchy, preferring one over the other, either intentionally or not being conscious of doing so. Something to think about?

During a conference I had stumbled into a biographic-documentary film showing made about Derrida (filmed before his 2004 death). It was basically a series of interview questions with changing backdrop. The first third of the film was so dry that I almost left the theatre, but stayed because it was raining outside and I had no car. All of sudden I was hit by the meaning of the film and became engrossed. While being interviewed, Derrida was subtly deconstructing his own film, essentially observing that the film was more about the interviewer, cameraman, scripted questions, film editor, director, producer, etc., than about him: an extraordinary message about the meaning of things we view that were constructed for us.

KomradeBishop

One criticism I saw of deconstructionism, was when it was applied to literary criticism, it would be used to take two related words (usually a dichotomy, i.e. male and female), and kind of try to 'deconstruct' them in a semantic way, to the point that words were redefined as overlapping and rendered almost meaningless - it seemed an odd approach to take, one that's overly literal (ignoring the intent behind the authors use of words - it directly states that on Wikipedia), and which just tries to reduce the amount of useful information in a text - unnecessarily.

Actually reminds me too well, of many unconstructive (or I guess 'deconstructive' now ) Boards debates, that get bogged down in semantics - where someone picks at words and ignores the wider point.

I think it would take me too much time to examine Derrida's writings, if I had to systematically go through and re-review his work like that - might there be good sources that distil the bits of his work you find relevant/interesting (such as on dichotomies), and present them in an easier to read/learn way?


Another way I approach learning - a very important one I think, for avoiding false knowledge: If I come across texts like Derrida's, that are not well written and which (probably unintentionally) are a bit obfuscated in the way you describe, I'm very very careful about reading them (probably opting to avoid them - not even risking skimming them), because if there are parts of the text that are overcomplicated and hard to read, what's going to happen is that the reader will be 'fatigued' intellectually, by trying to interpret what the author is saying, and then this creates a trap where the reader will stop trying to analyze/pick-apart what is being said (making me unable to use my skeptical/find-faults-first approach to everything), and then the reader will gradually transition from giving-up on picking it apart, to learning it by repetition/osmosis, until it has been repeated so many times that the reader starts to consider it as true (in a sense, bypassing the stage where the reader checks the concept for flaws).

That - giving up on picking-apart/discrediting highly obfuscated concepts/texts, and then unintentionally learning them and accepting them as true by repetition/osmosis - is something that I don't think anybody is immune to (it's basically how ads on TV work, even when what is presented is not complex at all, and propaganda news channels - nobody is immune to being affected by them, as nobody can keep their guard up 100% of the time), and can affect even the most intelligent of people; that's very relevant to my OP actually, as I think it's one of the primary ways that people end up unintentionally 'deferring to authority' on a subject (because it is made unnecessarily complex/obfuscated), and then can get slowly indoctrinated into believing false knowledge.


This is why I would, rather than read a philosopher from decades/centuries ago directly, prefer to - like I search for above - read distilled/more-readable descriptions of philosophers concepts first, and understand them clearly - and only then consider going back and reading original works (where I'll then have enough of an overview/knowledge of the concepts already, to be able to spot flaws).

Black Swan

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I think it would take me too much time to examine Derrida's writings, if I had to systematically go through and re-review his work like that - might there be good sources that distil the bits of his work you find relevant/interesting (such as on dichotomies), and present them in an easier to read/learn way?

Derrida (1999) by Christopher Johnson is a quite readable work on Derrida's deconstruction of Claude Lévi-Strauss's "writing lesson," which later informed the foundation of the Lévi-Strauss structuralist position. Derrida step-by-step deconstructs Lévi-Strauss, along with relevant comments about errors found in the thinking of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Ferdinand de Saussure. It's a mini-book in The Great Philosophers series of Routledge, NY, that's only 59 pages long. You might check it out for free from a university library that has a good philosophy section.

KomradeBishop

Two interesting things I came across recently, relating to agnotology (which is the study of culturally induced ignorance/doubt) - one was 'System Justification Theory' - which is a pretty fascinating way of trying to understand psychologically, how people come to hold beliefs which justify the 'status quo' (be that in politics, or even in e.g. academic fields), even given significant reason to believe the 'status quo' is wrong and unjustified. Good article touching on it here, where I first read of it:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/05/the_right_has_fked_up_minds_meet_the_researcher_who_terrifies_gop_congress/

The other interesting thing, was this article explaining how some people (most especially religious people) are prone to trying to render certain facts 'untestable/unfalsifiable', when they conflict with their personal beliefs - how people 'fly from facts':
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-fly-from-facts/

These would both tie into the topic, both as part of agnotology, and as evidence of many peoples poor grasp of epistemology/philosophy-of-science - and wider, a lack of critical thinking.

KomradeBishop

A good article here, which relates to 'System Justification', explaining how people are often indirectly taught that when something bad happens to someone, it is down to some kind of character flaw, rather than bad luck - and that when something good happens to someone, it is down to merit rather than good luck:
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/04/deny-luck

A very good point that, and it's a bias that's particularly noticeable if you watch almost any kind of TV show or movie (or any story in general, from TV or otherwise) - rarely, is anything left down to luck in a story - usually, there is a reason put forward for something happening (good or bad).

zeffabelli

KomradeBishop wrote: »

A good article here, which relates to 'System Justification', explaining how people are often indirectly taught that when something bad happens to someone, it is down to some kind of character flaw, rather than bad luck - and that when something good happens to someone, it is down to merit rather than good luck:
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/04/deny-luck

A very good point that, and it's a bias that's particularly noticeable if you watch almost any kind of TV show or movie (or any story in general, from TV or otherwise) - rarely, is anything left down to luck in a story - usually, there is a reason put forward for something happening (good or bad).

This is why games like Snakes and Ladders and Monopoly are good for kids.... chance has a lot to do with outcomes...it can also mitigate feelings of failure if we take it on board young.

We can't have too much chance in story, because story is about our need to place order on things, so we can have some chance, but we can't have it dominated or it defeats the purpose of story.

zeffabelli

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Actually reminds me too well, of many unconstructive (or I guess 'deconstructive' now ) Boards debates, that get bogged down in semantics - where someone picks at words and ignores the wider point.

.

This is a very typical aspergers trait...to focus in one detail and lose the over all picture.

I tend to ignore and keep going when I see this because it's pointless...you will just get on an obsessive loop with the writer.

Ha ha ...look I just did it myself!

KomradeBishop

zeffabelli wrote: »

This is a very typical aspergers trait...to focus in one detail and lose the over all picture.

I tend to ignore and keep going when I see this because it's pointless...you will just get on an obsessive loop with the writer.

Ha ha ...look I just did it myself!

Ha - oh I wish it were that innocent there are posters that seem to do it, to try and obstruct debate.

It would be nice to ignore, but well, often that would be giving someone the ability to control debate - because (and this relates to the thread topic well), people are often easily convinced by deceptive/superficial arguments, unless you make an effort to point out the flaws in them (hell - even when you do make the effort, people are often still convinced - especially if dealing with a topic with any amount of complexity).

KomradeBishop

Good article here, on how our brains are pretty much hardwired to react to immediate threats to survival, and ignore 'long-term-threats' to survival - such as climate change - which are more abstract and hard to see as a definite or immediate threat, yet which are still among the biggest dangers we face in the near future:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/apocalypse-neuro-why-our-brain-cant-process-the-planets-gravest-threats

Makes a lot of sense, especially when applied to the topic of economics - which is largely abstract enough, that the vast majority of people don't seem to have an interest in or be willing to develop the knowledge required, to see what is wrong with economic practice or what needs reform - opting for simplistic/wrong economic reasoning, based around moralizing that justifies the present system staying in place, despite readily available alternatives (which is especially relevant, as this type of reform is key/critical to fighting climate change).

KomradeBishop

Another really good article, this time on political propaganda and getting the public to turn against protesters - touching on some key things that I see on a regular basis online (on Boards for instance), such as the GamerGate stuff and how advantaged groups who support discrimination against a less powerful group, try to make the advantaged group look like they are the victims instead:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-powerful-people-trick-you-into-hating-underdogs/

You see this a lot in debates on Boards, whenever posters start talking about 'political correctness' (and a lot of mens rights posters use this tactic as well - to defend attacks on feminism) - e.g:
1: Make a bigoted comment towards a group.
2: Someone calls you out on the bigoted comment.
3: Cry foul and accuse people of political correctness and censorship, to try and make yourself look like the victim instead - make a big fuss about free speech and oppression.