Why are people so oblivious to how the world works?

[rousseau]

I wanted to stage that question, and also propose my own answer. I think there are a few reasons why most people are oblivious:

1) We start out as a blank slate and need to be given wisdom

- When we're born we literally know nothing, and need to be educated on how the world works. Given that the vast majority of education systems in the world aren't that great, and higher education almost always has massive entry barriers, most people are simply not exposed to wisdom, and so don't have the wisdom to.. well.. seek out more wisdom

2) The world is incredibly complex, and difficult to understand

- Have you ever tried to understand economics? It seems that a lot of economists barely understand economics. And that's just one field amongst a plethora of other fields, all with a huge number of sub-disciplines. Even if you were to dedicate all of the time you had in your life where you weren't just eating, sleeping, exercising, and going to the bathroom, to learning about a field, it might take you multiple years before you gain any type of wisdom about that field, and then you have hundreds of other disciplines left to learn

3) Many people have weak logical skills

- Not only is the world almost limitlessly complex, a vast majority of people don't seem to have the brain power necessary to map out greater frameworks about the world out of the plethora of facts that come at them. They're all smart enough to thrive, sure, but getting beyond knowing how to type, fill up a car with gas, and budget in groceries is a very slow process.

4) Caring about knowledge isn't 'normal'

- All over media we see images of sex, alcohol, whatever, but rarely do we see a nerdy guy with glasses reading a book. I don't know about anyone else, but when I was growing up I don't recall a lot of people I knew telling me they were just going to 'stay in and read' over the weekend. Everyone would have given them a pretty weird look.

5) Our ego usually takes a stance against criticism

- Ever tried to give someone advice? Sometimes it works, usually you find yourself in a defensive argument as whoever you're talking to tries to save face. What could have been a great learning moment and transfer of knowledge, becomes another person still being shrouded in darkness.

Those are a few barriers that I can think of. Is there anything else to add?

 

[dx713]

Your example for number 2 isn't perhaps the best one.
Some economists do like to make their field look more complicated than it is, and most politicians love to because it enables them to look smart with little contradiction risk, so they support those economists.

 

[Togo]

Mostly we learn without thinking about it. Most of our learning isn't formal, or requiring effort, it's picking up rules of thumb, biases, heuristics and 'that's how it's always been'. You can break down your existing beliefs if you think about it, but that requires extraordinary effort, and extraordinary effort requires some kind of motivation or reason to do so.

Also, evidence is useless outside of context. It doesn't change anything until it is put into a framework of more general understanding. That's why people seemingly don't update their notions when they are faced with new information - they simply label that as an aberration to the general rule and carry on. Science goes to great lengths to come up with testable propositions, including setting up criteria for what counts as a yes or a no before the test is run. Even then, an unexpected result is not treated as a disproof - it's a reason for further study and investigation to work out why the result was different. Similarly, if you believe, for example, that people holding opinion X are stupid, and you run across one who isn't, that won't be taken, by you or anyone else, as proof that the original belief is wrong, without some further conformation. If you're curious and not terribly bothered about the outcome, you might investigate further. On matters of religion, politics, opinions on humanity in general, the usual arguement topics, you can't easily investigate further. On matters close to your heart in terms of the structure of your more general beliefs about the world, you may not want to investigate further, and certainly working out the consequences of several hundred interlocking beliefs might take more time than you have. So there are good solid practical reasons to ignore evidence contradicting your own existing beliefs.

 

[Kharakov]

Science goes to great lengths to come up with testable propositions, including setting up criteria for what counts as a yes or a no before the test is run. Even then, an unexpected result is not treated as a disproof - it's a reason for further study and investigation to work out why the result was different.

Uhuh. You have people who are willing to use "science" in order to gain wealth and power, which leads to people being skeptical of claims that will have a negative impact on their or their peer's wealth and power.

Why do you think that most of those who have become wealthy from the usage of fossil fuels are slow to acknowledge climate change? Why do you think that those who gain little from oil profits (poor Republicans) are slow to acknowledge it?

Simple: they think that the whole thing is a ploy to take power from others. Climate change scientists are viewed as wolves, coming after the flock.

On a side note: Have you ever meet an old person who didn't secretly hope that it would be a little warmer everywhere?

 

[Under the Rose]

Why are people so oblivious to how the world works?

This statement would be an assumption from your personal perspective? I am not aware of any specific research along those lines and I might counter with the observation that the world has always worked in much the same manner. It is the pace of technological change which is the current driver and stratification factor. Historically, it has been geography, resources and the ability of various individuals and groups to control how those resources are made available to the rest of the population.

We are a far greater sized population now and we are placing ever greater pressures on the ability of this planet to provide for us all. We are no different than any other species that has expanded beyond the carrying capacity of it's habitat. How cognizant an individual might be of this observation will greatly depend upon the circumstances of where they were born and the opportunities that have been made available to them.

As far as logical processing skills go, most species will opt for the path of least resistance and humans are no different. For that reason, most individuals will learn what skills they can to survive and possibly thrive, yet to actively lobby for change can be costly to the individual, at all levels, even in danger for their life in many countries.

Individually, I think many are aware of our precarious point in history. Collectively, we are largely still in denial.

 

[Random Person]

Carl Jung said, "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

 

[Shadowy Man]

- All over media we see images of sex, alcohol, whatever, but rarely do we see a nerdy guy with glasses reading a book.

And when you do see someone reading a book it's a nerdy guy. Everyone should read books. If you propagate the idea that reading is associated with social issues, you're bound to have fewer people reading.

 

[rousseau]

Why are people so oblivious to how the world works?

This statement would be an assumption from your personal perspective? I am not aware of any specific research along those lines and I might counter with the observation that the world has always worked in much the same manner. It is the pace of technological change which is the current driver and stratification factor. Historically, it has been geography, resources and the ability of various individuals and groups to control how those resources are made available to the rest of the population.

We are a far greater sized population now and we are placing ever greater pressures on the ability of this planet to provide for us all. We are no different than any other species that has expanded beyond the carrying capacity of it's habitat. How cognizant an individual might be of this observation will greatly depend upon the circumstances of where they were born and the opportunities that have been made available to them.

As far as logical processing skills go, most species will opt for the path of least resistance and humans are no different. For that reason, most individuals will learn what skills they can to survive and possibly thrive, yet to actively lobby for change can be costly to the individual, at all levels, even in danger for their life in many countries.

Individually, I think many are aware of our precarious point in history. Collectively, we are largely still in denial.

Excellent post.

 

[Perspicuo]

Evidence is hard to get by.

You see the sun rise. How do you know the sun doesn't rise, but instead that the Earth is a spheroid that rotates? Pretty hard stuff this figuring the world out!

So then you rely on the the stories your society feeds you. How then can you be expected to know the truth? Give a guy a break!

 

[Kharakov]

Evidence is hard to get by.

You see the sun rise. How do you know the sun doesn't rise, but instead that the Earth is a spheroid that rotates? Pretty hard stuff this figuring the world out!

So then you rely on the the stories your society feeds you. How then can you be expected to know the truth? Give a guy a break!

How'd I get this sandwich? Who mowed the lawn? Why do cars go? How did these letters get on this screen? What causes the tides?
Who knows?

 

[bilby]

Most people arrive at most of their beliefs not by weighing up the evidence; but by deciding who to trust, taking on that person's opinion for themselves, and then defending that opinion to the death.

Of course there are exceptions; cases where people realise that someone they trusted is not trustworthy at all, resulting in a change of mind; But often the change is to supporting the ideas expressed by someone else that they now trust, rather than to following the evidence to a conclusion.

The answer to the OP question therefore lies in the poor ability most people have to decide who is trustworthy. Most people trust their parents and other family ahead of non-family members; they trust people they see frequently ahead of those who are strangers or who they meet rarely; they trust people who are good looking rather than those who are ugly; they trust people who are popular with others, ahead of those who are less popular; and they trust those who appear confident ahead of those who appear doubtful.

Actual evidence rarely gets a look-in.

When Gwyneth Paltrow announces that she believes in this or that quack cure, her total lack of qualifications to make such a pronouncement is of little import; What matters is that she is well known, good looking, popular and confident. Some stammering nerd nobody has ever heard of, who has a stack of degrees in a relevant field, has no chance against Ms Paltrow, when it comes to the general public deciding who to believe.

And once that decision is made, it is almost impossible to shake, unless the original celebrity promoter of the idea is not only discredited, but is discredited by someone similarly famous, good looking, popular and confident.

 

[Kharakov]

Most people arrive at most of their beliefs not by weighing up the evidence; but by deciding who to trust, taking on that person's opinion for themselves, and then defending that opinion to the death.

Of course there are exceptions; cases where people realise that someone they trusted is not trustworthy at all, resulting in a change of mind; But often the change is to supporting the ideas expressed by someone else that they now trust, rather than to following the evidence to a conclusion.

The close of the con? Is there really any reason not to trust a good con artist?

 

[Togo]

And once that decision is made, it is almost impossible to shake, unless the original celebrity promoter of the idea is not only discredited, but is discredited by someone similarly famous, good looking, popular and confident.

So Scientology has been disproven by someone more charismatic than Tom Cruise?

 

[untermensche]

1) We start out as a blank slate and need to be given wisdom

- When we're born we literally know nothing, and need to be educated on how the world works. Given that the vast majority of education systems in the world aren't that great, and higher education almost always has massive entry barriers, most people are simply not exposed to wisdom, and so don't have the wisdom to.. well.. seek out more wisdom

No. We are born with incredibly complex programming that allows us to grow language within us and helps us survive in the world we evolved in.

We do not live in the world we evolved to live in. Most of us at least. It was a pre-farming, pre-metal world.

We live in artificial worlds of our own making now.

Which explains a little of why people are oblivious to how it works.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Evidence is hard to get by.

You see the sun rise. How do you know the sun doesn't rise, but instead that the Earth is a spheroid that rotates? Pretty hard stuff this figuring the world out!

So then you rely on the the stories your society feeds you. How then can you be expected to know the truth? Give a guy a break!

How'd I get this sandwich? Who mowed the lawn? Why do cars go? How did these letters get on this screen? What causes the tides?
Who knows?

Bread goes in. Toast comes out. Who can explain it?

 

[Perspicuo]

How'd I get this sandwich? Who mowed the lawn? Why do cars go? How did these letters get on this screen? What causes the tides?
Who knows?

Bread goes in. Toast comes out. Who can explain it?

Toast is at the soul of bread. What comes out is the true soul revealed. Toasters are merely dressing booths for toast to shed its former self into its real self.

It's like hamburgers and cows. Butchers help the poor things bring out their inner hamburger.
Now, bacon burgers... why, those are unnatural hybrid spawn of the devil.

 

[Kharakov]

Why am I thinking about a bacon cheeseburger melt on toasted ciabatta, with fresh lettuce, tomato, red onion, ketchup, light mustard w/horseradish and mayo?

 

[DBT]

Why am I thinking about a bacon cheeseburger melt on toasted ciabatta, with fresh lettuce, tomato, red onion, ketchup, light mustard w/horseradish and mayo?

The mention of food got the brain into the 'pleasure of food, it's time to eat mode' and the thoughts flowed from that stimulus. Pavlov, et al.

 

[Perspicuo]

Why am I thinking about a bacon cheeseburger melt on toasted ciabatta, with fresh lettuce, tomato, red onion, ketchup, light mustard w/horseradish and mayo?

The mention of food got the brain into the 'pleasure of food, it's time to eat mode' and the thoughts flowed from that stimulus. Pavlov, et al.

Or: the devil.

Simply apply Ockham's razor. End of story.

 

[bilby]

I stumbled across this interesting article about how people fail to think:

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/remembrance_of_apocalypse_past