| Understanding
evolution is one of science's most important insights. Obesity
used to give an evolutionary advantage. But the world is not simple
and changes happen. Science has brought abundant food.
Simplemindedness is a dangerous human failure to take advantage of the human evolutionary paths which have led to science, our most potent product of evoltuion--and our most effective response to complexity and change. Science recognizes that seeking disconfirmations is absolutely necessary, and that ignoring disconfirmations in favor of pleasant confirmations is a "fatal error" in information use. Obesity is powerfully encouraged by advertising, a profession based on passionate pursuit of pleasant confirmations. And so advertising, our most prevalent form of propaganda, has become a poision to science. It teaches that PAP is acceptable. Avoid PAP like the plague! |
Evolution is one of the keys
to understanding ourselves.
Coping with complexity involves
some of the highest of human evolved skills.
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| "PAP,"
the "Prove Anything Ploy," is also known as "confirmation bias."
It's an error that's more likely the more our interpretation of what we
see is oversimplified. In the most simplistic of views, finding a
bit of confirming evidence is all we need to "prove" our hypothesis.
Or so it seems. In reality, one, or a few confirmations, are
likely to be offset by a large number of disconfirmations. The single
lottery ticket that wins the big prize, is offset by tens of millions that
pay nothing.
Statistics is one the most powerful tools
of science. Gulling people who don't understand
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| Science has given us many powerful ways to do things that work. Evolutionary theory is one of the most powerful tools of modern biology. It works. But understanding evolution requires that we understand how to identify multiple, interacting influences and how to sort the relevant from the irrelevant--in short, we must have a sense for Boolean relationships. We need not be able to name them, or write Boolean equations, or use truth tables or Venn diagrams, but we need to develop a sort of sixth-sense of how they work. |