Edge Question of the Year

One of the more interesting places to go on the internet is a website I have recommended for a couple of years now, edge.org. There are fascinating places to go to discover the latest scientific findings, sciencenews.org being a good one, and other places where you can simply find interesting things to discover and think about but what makes edge.org different is that it is a place to find out what brilliant people, particularly scientists, think outside of the limitations of academic rigor. here you can find out what scientists think about how scientists should behave, how future discoveries might be made, whether they are hopeful or not about the future.

The biggest thing this site does is ask a question each year of luminaries of the intelligentsia. As an aside, the moments I was most impressed with in Obama's State of the Union speech were calls for teachers to be given greater respect and for the winner of the science fair to be considered as important as the winner of a sports match. There have been some fascinating questions previously such as, "What will change everything?" and "What have you changed your mind about?"

This year's questions is,

"WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?"

How about thinking about that for a little while? Feel free to give your answer in the comments section.

My answer is, I think, a sort of meta-answer to the question. It is simply the scientific concept of when to use reason to determine truth. There are times when it is foolish to attempt to use the scientific method in order to determine truth, such as the tenth of a second before a car crash, or to in picking a spouse, or when listening to music and deciding whether you like or not. There are other times when of course scientific thinking is useful, such as an architect deciding whether his design for a bridge will stay up, or whether a plane will be able to fly.

The problem is that the majority of people do not do anything like a good job of deciding when to use rational, evidence-based thinking to make a decision. Most people make important decisions about measurable events based on social pressures, by what tribe they identify with, and from initial feelings on the matter. In a recent poll in the USA 80% of people think prayer helps healing and that 63% of doctors should pray along with their patients if asked to do so. This is despite scientific double-blind studies that shows no statistically significant result. The majority of people wish their doctors to do something useless at healing them in order to be healed.

In politics in the USA there is a substantial group of people who support small government and no budget deficits. These people almost universally vote Republican, even though over the last several decades Republicans have expanded government and increased deficits more than Democrats.

In personal life why do most people decide to have children? This is actually hard to determine since having children is such a basic assumption of people that the question of why you would have a baby is never asked (why not is asked with much greater frequency). However, I must assume that a big part of the answer is to make people happier, or because one would regret not having a baby. Scientific evidence shows that while you are raising children it makes you somewhat less happy, and afterwards it makes no difference.

In your work would you choose a job paying you ten percent less if it was twice as close to your home? Many would not despite money being a minor effect on your happiness and commuting being shown to be the most miserable daily activity for people.

Socialized medicine costs less money for businesses, helps people miss less days as a result and reduces corporation's human resources bureaucracy. Are business people for or against socialized medicine. Who contributes more to the productivity of businesses, managers or workers? Who gets paid more?

I have seen many people outraged about illegal immigration and the terrible crime it produces. The problem is that illegal immigration if anything reduces crime.

Ask people around you if things are getting better or worse. I bet you get a lot of answers that things are getting worse, despite increased wages, health, freedom, and decreased poverty, hunger, crime.

I think the most useful scientific concept that the general population could use but presently doesn't is simply when to think rationally.