In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Frank Bruni bemoans the ubiquity of unfounded belief in a piece called “True believers, all of us.” Criticizing Rick Perry’s Christian Prayerfest for its reliance on magical thinking, he adds that that thinking isn’t limited to religion:
Seeking relief from the country’s woes through a louder, more ardent appeal to God strikes us as too much hope invested in too magical a solution. It suspends disbelief and defies rigorous reason.
But if we stick with this honesty thing, don’t we also have to admit that to varying degrees and with varying stakes, there’s magical thinking in secular life, and that it springs from a similar yearning for easy, all-encompassing answers? Didn’t the debt-ceiling showdown show us that? . . .
Faith-based is right. We all have our religions, all of which exert a special pull — and draw special fervor — when apprehension runs high and confusion deep, as they do now. And if yours isn’t a balanced-budget amendment and a government as lean as Christian Bale in one of his extreme-acting roles, it might well be a big fat binge of Keynesian stimulus spending. Liberals think magically, too, becoming so attached to a certain approach that they wind up advocating it less as option than as panacea.
He goes on to criticize the Head Start project (which according to a recent study produced few benefits for its participants), the policies of corporations, and even the reliance of baseball on statistics—the new “sabermetrics” approach.
Bruni’s right to decry policies enacted without supporting evidence, as well as their persistence in the face of counterevidence. Those are, of course, aspects of religion. But one can’t claim that every government policy is a complete shot in the dark. Medicare, of course, was enacted that way, as well as Obamacare, but in such cases we rely on reasoned judgment, and the odds are that giving medical care to people who lack it will help them. Whether alternative policies might provide better care is, of course, another question, but we can’t simply enact one big policy after another and then judge their results post facto.
But at least Bruni admits that religion is useless in the financial crisis we face now:
To get us out of this mess, we need a full range of extant remedies, a tireless search for new ones and the nimbleness and open-mindedness to evaluate progress dispassionately and adapt our strategy accordingly. Faith and prayer just won’t cut it. In fact, they’ll get in the way.
When we–as rationalists–try to understand other people, we do so by reducing their mind to a series of cause and effect processes and motivations otherwise known as beliefs.
Once we understand other people’s ‘minds’ in terms of beliefs, it makes us feel safe and comfortable, because we think we can predict their behavior. We can all then get along happily together in society.
This is a fiction of course. Humans are mostly irrational in their every day life, and are programmed by society to behave, think and experience the world around them. Even danger and irrationality are programmed in by society in their various ways as to minimize violence (through sports, celebrations, leisure, drugs, food and so on.) and maximize social cohesion, which is about survival of one group (or nation) over another.
If we looked at others as ‘other’ or as people with motives unknown to us and devoid of control, as incomprehensible or unfathomable, we might see them as potential enemies or dangerous. Our fears might grow uncontrollable.
Hence why we maintain the fiction that people are easily understood through their beliefs, and therefore safe and predictable. This explains why social pressure to conform to society is overwhelming, and that authentic individuality is nay almost impossible and impractical to achieve.
authentic individuality is not possible to achieve indeed
but awareness of “beliefs out of institutionalized ignorance” in one’s own thinking is of paramaunt importance
the ability to “rise above the woo of institutionalized ignorance” is at the center of seeking others such and eventually coalescing into government and a properly heuristic oversight of ‘the human condition’ -currently underway in any case -sub- speciation of Homo sapiens into Homo cogitans.
it gets so tiring to see one more attempt to redefine a word so the theists don’t feel so bad about their ridiculous faith. It all comes down to their wanting to say “but but everyone does it toooo!”
This dovetails nicely with a recent post at Friendly Atheist asking if the focus of the skeptical movement should be broadened beyond questions of god and creationism to advocate critical thinking in all aspects of life, including public policy (spoiler alert: the answer was yes). This is perhaps the greatest thing we have to offer the world — reliance on critical thinking, reason and evidence leads to better results than giving in to our learned biases.
That would indeed be a good step in the right direction.
Any ideas why “critical thinking” did not yet make into public policy and what we should do about it?
We train children against critical thinking. It seems to be the easier and thus more favored approach.
It’s a common weapon used by believers. They don’t wanna be left alone being the only ones having to resort to faith, so they claim we all use faith in our believes one way or another, by doing so, missing the point. Faith is a 100% positive belief with 0 evidence or even conflicting evidence.
Plus you must be using evidence deliberately. We all might incur in honest reasoning mistakes once in a while and accused of attempts to faith. But faith is faith when it’s deliberately and consciously embraced. Non-deliberate faith is not faith if not intended as such. Just honest reasoning mistakes that can be repaired.
Human brains, and other animals, are hyperbolic discounters, pattern seeking and prefer magical beliefs over evidence-based.
All brains are cognitive misers so the less brain work the better. The “weaknesses” and shortcut heuristics of our brains are codified in ideologies. Magical-religious-spiritual beliefs are just ideologies. It appears that internal consistency and sales effectiveness are the only priorities of ideologies.
Some (most?) human brains are impaired in processing daily experience in a way that soothes fear responses. Since these brains don’t have the internal capacity to manage fear, they seek external and institutional make believe ways to tamp down their fear.
Ideologies ultimately are sales and marketing tools to gather others and direct their behaviors. It also appears that ideologies “pay” adherents in emotional comfort in whatever (silly) way needed so adherents become dependent on the emotional numbing for uncomfortable experiences ideologies provide. Individuals will go to self-harmful ends to protect the ideologies and the emotional self-medication benefits they deliver. WWII is a great example.
Evidence, proof, logic and empirical reliability are anathema to ideologies and seen as enemies. That is why (effectively) everyone hates science and evidence-based knowledge.
Science and evidence are always potential threats to the self-medicating fear-repressing usefulness of ideologies and make believe so ultra-threatening – thus death threats.
I like your ideology.
Kidding, kidding! This is very close to my current model of “beliefs, and why they stink”.
many people share your position on “ideology” being incompatible with “science”
why do you think these people (including you) have not yet formed a group with the view towards making science ‘the sole guidance of human condition’
given that continuos survival of all is dependent upon science permeating policy making shouldnt scientists like you make an effort to form such a seed group?
why do you think there is very little action in this direction?
Probably because group think is about power, while individual free thought is about knowledge. Of course knowledge is also power and so there is an inevitable conflict.
While group thought is forced together by social pressures, there is no such social force pushing individuals together. Rather, that very force pushes individuals into being individuals.
If individuals got together as a social force, then you’d think they would easily defeat others because of their knowledge, but the reality is, as soon as individuals start grouping together, they lose their sense of self for the collective. It’s like a catch-22.
It’s laughable in a tragic sense.
i love your grasp of how things work
but what if there are evolutionary pressures that would select for individuals able to “group together” because they will _properly_ see that their self-interest of survival can _only_ be achived thru implementation of “survival for all”
i argue that eventually enough of individuals will assimilate enough of “belief-free science” to do exactly that and form a seed group of scientists
as soon as such group forms the process of institutionalization will take care of the rest
that is what i mean by sub-speciation in to homo cogitans
and i think you may be one of such individuals
I think it may be possible, although I think such unions would be fairly temporary and ever changing.
I think many atheists show signs of this free spirit, but their egos tend to be fairly fragile, unless they’re successful (as society measures success) which is why I am hopeful that an atheist movement can still be a positive force.
I also think we need to start liberating ourselves from group thought, before that is possible. And that is what I hope to try and provoke.
The problem with the liberals so called enlightened policies is that all the conservatives need to do is reck the liberal policies and they win. It’s a conservatives of gaps ideology.
“This is a fiction of course. Humans are mostly irrational in their every day life”
And this is,of course, why economics isn’t science.
Or rather why economic theories that do not take irrationality into account are flawed.
not really
economics deals with conjured subject-matter like “invisible hand”
“theory” and “irrationality” do not go together
economics is not a science and the fact that scoiety allows economists “advise” politicians is telling a lot about the institutionalization of ignorance
it is blind leading blind
Are you saying that scientists can’t study irrational behavior? There’s an entire subfield of Economics called Behavioral Economics that studies just that, how people behave in their economic decisions. Again, you really need to get out more and learn more about the subject before making absurd claims.
“behavioral economics” is trying to wiggle out of the fact that standard economic model assumption of “rationality” of economic agents does not work anymore
economists always come up with “explanations” how and why things happened in the past but they do not have the tools to make any hypothesis or devise the policy that would achieve the intended results
scientists do study behaviour
a good example would be evolutionary psychology
“And this is,of course, why economics isn’t science.”
That isn’t a sufficient reason. Many aspects of science rely on assumptions that aren’t actually true, because these assumptions greatly simply the way we think about certain problems. For instance, the ideal gas law. While no gas actually matches the assumptions that the law presumes, often they are close enough that accurate results are possible.
For economics, the question is whether the assumption of a rational consumer is close enough to the truth that useful conclusions are possible.
There is absolutely no reason why economics can’t be a science. The problem is not with the subject matter, but with the traditional approaches.
economics can be science only when science begins to guide “all phenomenon and things human”
at the moment we are very far from this inevitable outcome
therefore “economics” in the meaning of the word that is presently used in academia and general public alike is not “science”
the same can be said about most humanities
this is a situation that proper scientists will have to deal with
there will be time when scientists will absolutely have to _impose_ science on the rest of the society – a matter of _continuos_ survival of homo species
Economics, properly conceived, is just a branch of sociology and/or psychology, both of which are sciences. Behaviour is behaviour, whether one looks at it as a whole or restricts one’s view to those behaviours involved in exchange of value.
i would argue that economics, psychology and sociology should be considered within the context and as part of the larger scope ‘science of all things human’
this larger scope theoretical framework should trace the evolutionary origins of ‘all things and phenomenon human’ and establish proper criterion of _validity_ for all human endeavours including activities for production and distribution of goods and services (economics)
there is genetic imperative that guides every life-form (human inluded) to live as long as possible
current socio-economic system completely ignores genetic imperative and as such creates problems faster than is possible to comprehend them let alone to address with policy making
the subspeciation of homo sapiens into homo cogitans is under way: we will fill up carrying capacity of the planet and give up unscientific beliefs eventually – the conclusion that flows out of the properties of the system and the whole body of science
That is empirically false.
what do you mean by “impirically false”?
isn’t it true that “keep-on living and reproducing” is _intrinsic_ of life as biologists define it?
what an ugly false equivalence: Keynesian textbook macro actually works.
And the “debt-ceiling showdown” simply confirmed that the far right will do anything for their agenda; at any cost.
“But one can’t claim that every government policy is a complete shot in the dark. Medicare, of course, was enacted that way, as well as Obamacare, but in such cases we rely on reasoned judgment, and the odds are that giving medical care to people who lack it will help them.”
One of Rosling’s early TED talks shows how wealthy nations tend to go either the “market first, health later” route (say, Sweden) or the “health first, market later” route (say, China).
Much as I don’t know the reason, the health route is more efficient according to him as I remember it. Perhaps because an efficiently larger and more productive market (more healthy participants) is better than just a productive market, even if it kicks in later.
Correlation isn’t causation, but there seems to be these two prominent factors. (And a context of a modicum of democracy, to keep warfare and income inequality down.)
Making public policy on the basis of Macroeconomics isn’t magical thinking, nor is making health care policy based on health care policy studies. This article should be titled “False Equivalency by Frank Bruni”
Macroeconomics is “fiction” as the whole body of economics is a conjecture based on the ideology
Virtually all of government policy is being based on ideology and not on belief-free science
From this perspective Frank Bruni is correct but I bet he himslef harbors plenty of “magical thinking” in the forms of “beliefs” especially on the subject of “how things came to be the way they are and what are evolutionary origins of all things and phenomenon human”
Baloney. Academic economics (as opposed to the stuff done at the AEI, etc…) is about modeling economic systems. It’s about data, statistics, and theories (i.e. Science).
I can’t tell what particular ideological investments have led you to dismiss an entire branch of science, but it’s just ignorant.
science is accumulation of knowledge in such a way that each addition is consistent and non-contradictory to the whole body accumulated to date
economics is about production and distribution of goods and services
as it stands today economics revolves around the idea of “value”
the idea of “value” is an artifact of the times when science has not yet reached the stage at which it can explain “all things human” in terms of their evolutionary origin (about 1950ties – 1960ties)
i do not dismiss economics as a “branch of science”
i merely say that at the moment it is almost entirely based on conjurational stuff and is so “soft” that hardly qualifies to be a science when science is broadly defined in terms of non-ambiguity and preservation of self-consistency
Wha? What in Ceiling Cat’s name are you talking about? “Value”? Do you mean prices? Things have prices. It’s an observable quantity you can determine by looking at transactions. I have no idea what Evolutionary baloney you are talking about. Please do yourself a favor and get a clue before you embarrass yourself any further.
I also have no idea what you think is “conjectural” about economics that makes it different from other sciences. Science is not monotonic. Scientists form theories and sometimes they are rejected later when more data or better theories become available. That’s true in Physics, Biology, Economics, and every science. In that sense, all science is “conjectural”. That’s not a flaw; that’s the way it’s SUPPOSED TO WORK.
you are mixing up apples and oranges
the fact that economics talks about “prices” by proclaiming law of supply and demand (“market prices settle down at such a level as to equate supply of goods and services with demand of good and services”) does not make it _science_
you simply do not see connection that exist among consepts of
“matter” (physics, cosmology, chemistry, mathematics)
“life as the property of matter” (biology)
and
“nature and course of human evolution _as the basis_ for economic policy”
for what i mean by using “congurational” see a short essay and the table at
http://www.condition.org/organiz.htm
“conjurational” is material in the top-right corner of the table
That Godel’s Proof link you provided is Loony Tunes pseudoscience of the highest order. Somehow I thought you were a run-of-the-mill anti-Social Sciences crank, but clearly your crankitude is much greater.
i am not anti-social-sciences
i am pro-science in general
i wish the discoveries in “hard” sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) have permeated “soft” social sciences faster
to the point that they actually have full blown predictive and prescriptive powers of hard sciences
unfortunately the speed of this inevitable process cannot be affected much by any one person
but new ideas always start with someone and if they advance science they live within the whole body of knowledge that keeps on growing
science continues on its own regardless of whether we understand it or not and only time wcan test what is scientific and what is not
No, economics is the study of production and distribution of goods and services. Don’t confuse the academic discipline of economics with its topic, the economy.
even if we define economics as “study of economy” what criteria one would use for _validity_ of economy in the present form
economic theories try to infuse “meaning” into economics and instantly make it into “ideology”
this is what i am focus at when i say that economics is not a science, it is a description of “how things always been” without understanding the evolutionary origins of “things” that come from such sciences as biology
Economic theories are valid if they are true. That’s the same as theories in any other science. We find out whether they are true by looking at whether they correctly predict future observations.
it is sad that you lable material that you do not understand “pseudoscience”
i wish you have retained curiosity of a student who when presented with something new and not previousely assimilated would examine it and try to connect to what he already knows
the material flows from two basic assumptions:
1. there is matter (or energy that takes form of matter)
2. everything we can ever learn is the property of matter
the rest is pur logic that builds on the findings in biology, linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience
if you were patient enough and willing to listen i could take you through the reasoning but you are not interested
anfd it is fine with me: the material has the life of its own – it has been discovered by someone and with time people will turn to the material for important connection from “matter” to “human condition”
Bruni’s comments see way off the mark to me. There is no empirical evidence that prayer affects the weather – this is what makes it (prayer) an act of faith.
We have direct observational evidence that changing government policy will materially affect the prosperity of people in this nation. Now, we might get that policy *wrong* (regularly and often) because we are making decisions under uncertainty as to which policy will do what. But unlike religion or faith, public policy as it relates to (for example) health care is a case where we are pretty certain that if we wiggle the knob, the needle will move.
Neither Joe Klein nor Leonard Mlodinow (great thinker), nor Mr. Bruni- all recent trashers of Head Start- are Early Childhood Education specialists. Where do such otherwise intelligent people get off reading one or two studies and then sounding off on a national program as if every local program were equivalent? I have no doubt some programs may not be working; but some are.
http://www.publicpolicyforum.org/Matrix.htm
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200609000210
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200609000210
Perhaps, like economists, we are just reading different research to believe our different truths while all touching different parts of the elephant.
Faith and prayer just won’t cut it. In fact, they’ll get in the way.
Worse yet – religion is a cancer in human history. The cure: http://www.secular.org
If secularism is a cure, then why is America still so religious? Secularism is a great idea, and I promote it, but it’s not going to cure religion. Also, there are many more problems out there, religion is only one of them.
The United States has state secularism, but is more religious than any other advanced economy. So, in that sense of secularism, we haven’t really ever tried being secular.
The United States of America is truly amazing country
Everything is taken to the extreme
The brightest minds are lured with the financing and freedom – hence the most of Nobel prizes 326 out of 840
The United States of America also has taken democracy and capitalism as far as it can get in terms of oligarchy that is called democracy and paying only lip service to the “common good”
This resulted in the education system that is “dumbing down” the average child and making the children to feel “special” at very young age raising political elite that prefer to side with “faith” for popular vote instead of science for analysis and “solutions” to inevitable consequences of rising global population
But I still think that the United States of America will be the first country where scientists will ultimately take science to government.
China of course may beat the US on that account because they have bigger challenges than the US and they started to pay attention to them earlier.
Still my bet is on the US leading mankind to the time when science and only science guides the existence.
@23:20 “David Hume and Bertrand Russel, who think…obviously”
Listen to it yourself, read Dialogues yourself and you tell me if you agree with Quinten Skinner. I for one do not. I you’re going to call Hume an atheist (which I do -basing myself anachronistically on the Teapot example-, even though he -once explicitly -didn’t), you cannot put him in that category.
#36 was in bold. So I assume the author of this blog agrees with his statement.