Thursday, October 02, 2014

An Elaboration

So, let's say you are a creative and passionate person, maybe a poet or a musician, who is "inept at science". You have two young children. You read on the internet that vaccines cause autism. Since you are inept at science, you read this and you believe it. You don't investigate this claim any further because science is hard and you don't understand it. You believe this claim, however, because it meshes with your social views that large pharmaceutical companies are evil. You believe it because you think that taking drugs is putting poisons into your body, or at least, the drugs that you don't like because alcohol and caffeine are not drugs, right? You believe it because you saw something about this on TV but you can't really recall the details. You believe it because your sister-in-law, whom you really like, sent you the links. So you don't get your kids vaccinated. Measles is a disease that is entirely preventable when vaccines are administered. I could spin some tale about your child making another one sick, or you having to declare bankruptcy when your child has to be hospitalized for a preventable disease, but I won't do that. Instead, I'll just say this: it doesn't matter whether you are passionate and creative or not, in the flat, globalized world we live in today, unless you live naked under a freeway overpass and live on tubers and fungus that grow in your own shit, every single day you are responsible for making decisions that can affect others' lives. And even if you do live under that overpass, your shit is probably polluting some water source.

I would argue that making those decisions using critical thinking criteria is your duty as a citizen of the 21st century.

Let's consider another example. I'm sure that Texas Republican congressman Steve Stockman is really passionate about continuing to get re-elected. He may even be creative, possibly emulating Bush II by painting or practicing the difficult prose format of the short story in his spare time. Stockman also sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. On September 17, 2014, in reference to his difficulty in understanding how sea level will rise due to melting ice sheets, he stated that "if your ice cube melts in your glass, it doesn't overflow." I'll leave it to the reader to learn why that statement is problematic.

One might think that Stockman has an even greater duty as an elected representative to consider the problems he is confronted with in his elected role in the most rigorous and thorough manner, even if it means he has to deal with some hard math or science ideas in the process. But in truth, is his burden as a citizen in our modern world any more or less than yours or mine?

How about another example? Here in Oregon in November, we will be asked to vote on a proposition that could require all foods containing GMO to be labeled. There is plenty of shouting going on from both sides which obscures the real issues. The ballot, if passed, would require that foods, raw or processed, that contain components that were produced by genetic engineering be labeled as such. It exempts plant hybridization from its definition of genetic engineering, which is nothing more than special pleading. And for that reason, I will be voting against this ballot measure. 

Our lab techniques are not doing anything that people and microbes haven't been doing for many thousands of years in the case of the former and millions of years in the case of the latter. Yes, today we are doing it faster. But there is nothing new going on here. The ballot initiative is selectively anti-science and purposefully playing on emotions rather than encouraging critical thinking about the issue (because after all, the big agriconglomerates follow closely behind big pharma in the evil-doing department).

Oregon contains lots of creative and passionate people. Should we forbid those folks to vote on this ballot initiative in November if they are "inept at science"? Well, no, that isn't how democracy works. But I would certainly argue that everyone who chooses to cast a vote has a responsibility to try and understand the issues they are voting on. Maybe that means they need to learn about food labeling. Maybe they need to learn what a GMO is. It's a deceptively simple proposition with a complex set of related but obscure issues attached to it. 

It takes effort to sort out these issues, to find sources that provide background for them, and effort to not apply confirmation bias to everything we might read or hear about the issues. All that effort, well, that takes work. Are creative and passionate people not able to expend that effort? Are they too busying being creative? That's of course just as ridiculous as claiming that scientists are too busy being rational to be creative. Posing this as a dichotomy reinforces stereotypes. Emotion is easy, it's hard-wired into us. Critical thinking requires effort and a lot more time. But they are not either/or states of being. You don't suddenly wake up unable to write poetry or music after you learn how to think critically.

My post of yesterday had this point: we need to do a better job at teaching our young people relevant science and critical thinking skills, emphasis on relevant and critical. No, they don't need to become scientists. But they need to learn how to deal with the problems our world faces today. It doesn't matter what they grow up to be--poets or politicians or physicists.

3 comments:

Rover Mom said...

Don't they teach critical thinking in school any more? We had to take a class just on critical thinking in order to graduate.

lilspotteddog said...

We certainly don't teach critical thinking in middle school and high school. As long as things like creationism, abstinence-only sex ed, and revisionist American history (slavery was good for the slaves, dontchaknow) remain in curricula, our young people are not being taught to think. They are being taught to accept what they are told, and to get the right answer on the test.

There are classes that might teach you how to think critically in university. But consider that not everyone goes to university, not everyone currently in university should be there, not everyone is required to take such classes, and by the time you are 18, it's going to be damned hard to turn around years of lazy thinking with one class.

Furthermore, today most of those classes have become lumped into the "freshman experience"--how much learning of any kind goes on in classes with 300, 400, even 500 students? Gameification is a significant trend in these kinds of classes, a trend that I abhor.

Ellen Ingraham said...

Hi, Just want to tell you I am really enjoying your blog and wish you lived close so we could be friends.:) Love your sense of humor.
I started reading it as I am looking into working at Aramco.
Sorry about the Old Man.
That is all.
Don't worry about the friend comment; I am not a stalker.
Best wishes,
Ellen