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Scientific Encounters
Using practice tests as a teaching tool has been criticized for emphasizing memorization over reasoning and for being narrowly focused on knowledge goals rather than the learning process. No doubt practice tests can be misused, overused, or poorly designed. But they are also one of the most effective ways to reinforce knowledge and improve our ability to think about that knowledge.
In a variation on the “Wason selection task”, students in a research study were asked to test the rule “if a card has D on one side, it has a 3 on the other”. They were then shown four cards, which had either a letter (D or F) or a number (3 or 7) on them, and were asked which cards they would turn over to validate the rule. The correct answer was ...
In their analysis of survey responses regarding proposed federal policies, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page compare the policy preferences of “average citizens” versus “economic elites.
In their paper Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens (2014), Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page analyze survey data on public support for proposed federal policies.
“Good research is cautious about drawing conclusions, careful to identify uncertainties and avoids exaggerated claims. It demands multiple types of evidence to reach a conclusion. It does not assume that association (things occur together) proves causation (one thing causes another). Bad research often contains jumps in logic, spurious arguments, and non-sequiturs (‘it does not follow’).” Todd Litman
“What is the core, immutable quality of science? It's not formal publication, it's not peer review, it's not properly citing sources. It's not "the scientific method" (whatever that means). It's not replicability. It's not even Popperian falsificationism... Underlying all those things is something more fundamental. Humility.”
Move your right foot in a clockwise circle. Now move your right hand clockwise on the table at the same time your right foot is moving clockwise…. Pretty easy....
Oceans are my biggest worry. Covering 70% of the earth’s surface, oceans absorb a huge amount of CO2. A few chemical processes later and we have ocean acidification, scourge of coral reefs and who knows what else. We’re not sure what else, but such quick change will surely challenge the capacity of sea life to adapt. Evolution’s not used to working on such short time scales.
Here I am thinking about the type of beliefs much discussed in clinical psychology, such as the following “irrational” beliefs identified by Albert Ellis: It is a dire necessity for adult humans to be loved or approved by virtually every significant other person in their community. One absolutely must be competent, adequate and achieving in all important respects or else one is an inadequate, worthless person....
... anxiety and fear are more responses to the absence of comforting beliefs than the presence of uncomfortable beliefs.
What lets fear in is the uncertainty, not the belief. Uncertainty without the compensation of belief - that ultimately it will work out, that there is a secure harbor, despite the present confusion – creates a vacuum that is filled by alarm.
There is a time to give into temptations and a time to resist them. Whenever there’s a tug-of-war among competing goals, and you have to override one behavior or goal in favor of another, self-regulation is involved. Enjoying what the moment has to offer is a worthy goal. When to honor that goal is the question.
Self-regulation is a internal goal management process where we override or preempt one goal in favor of another. By ‘goal’ I mean an outcome and the forces marshaled by that outcome: behaviors, emotions, and attention. Don’t do that, calm down, look the other way, think of something else.
Self-regulation is often defined as a homeostatic process: you’ve got the set point (goal, standard, value, or ideal); you detect a discrepancy in your “system” (e.g., goal-incongruent behavior, goal-undermining internal state – like feeling rage when you’re trying to be nice); and then you take corrective action (e.g., shut the fuck up, take a deep breath, walk away). Just like how a thermostat works. According to one time-sampling study, we are self-regulating about half our waking hours.
Basic Rule of Thumb #1: if the person you are trying to persuade doesn’t like or trust you, continuing to insist that catastrophic climate change will definitely happen will get you nowhere...Basic Rule of Thumb #2: don’t assume all climate change skeptics are the same…Basic Rule of Thumb #3…
The immediate future looms large in human psychology. People tend to care more about near-term payoff or danger than what might be coming down the pike in a few years. This tendency to downplay later rewards or threats – called hyperbolic discounting – probably evolved because prehistoric conditions were too harsh for long-term calculations to be of much benefit. Live for today because tomorrow may never come.
Like scientists, medical doctors appreciate their own limitations. Yet they are tasked with making important decisions – possibly life-and-death decisions – despite not knowing for sure they’ve got it right. Wait and see? Try something? Try something else? All the while observing and thinking and investigating further. Doctors need to be willing to act boldly, willing to do nothing, and willing to change their minds.
Problem-solving when we’re in a good mood tends to be quick, flexible, creative, and intuitive. Problem-solving when we’re in a bad mood tends to be information-based, detail-oriented, systematic, and cautious. Then there’s problem-solving when we’re on the rebound from feeling bad to feeling good ...
Behavior is motivated by desire to do or have something, either for pleasure or the relief of discomfort. Conflict is the perception that there’s a reason not to act on the desire. Temptations are desires that conflict with one or more of our goals. We resist temptations through exercising self-control.
I work in scientific research and have seen its dirty underbelly. Diving in headlong, full of idealism about the scientific method and its inherent humility.