Elizabeth Kolbert Discovers Flatland (Sort Of)

In an article called Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds which appears in The New Yorker this month, Elizabeth Kolbert discovered Flatland (sort of).

Did she actually read my Flatland essays, especially the 3rd one, which directly addresses the issues she writes about? Hell, no! That would be way to much to expect.

However, in reviewing three books on predictable human irrationality, Kolbert actually discovers (or at least writes about) the salient Flatland point, which is emphasized in the reprint below.

I will reference and quote this article in the 4th essay. I'm not going to express false humility here. I'm way, way ahead of Kolbert and the researchers she quotes. I daresay it will stay that way because they live in Flatland and that's what Flatland dictates.

— Dave

In “Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us” (Oxford), Jack Gorman, a psychiatrist, and his daughter, Sara Gorman, a public-health specialist, probe the gap between what science tells us and what we tell ourselves. Their concern is with those persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false but also potentially deadly, like the conviction that vaccines are hazardous. Of course, what’s hazardous is not being vaccinated; that’s why vaccines were created in the first place. “Immunization is one of the triumphs of modern medicine,” the Gormans note. But no matter how many scientific studies conclude that vaccines are safe, and that there’s no link between immunizations and autism, anti-vaxxers remain unmoved. (They can now count on their side—sort of—Donald Trump, who has said that, although he and his wife had their son, Barron, vaccinated, they refused to do so on the timetable recommended by pediatricians.)

The Gormans, too, argue that ways of thinking that now seem self-destructive must at some point have been adaptive. And they, too, dedicate many pages to confirmation bias, which, they claim, has a physiological component. They cite research suggesting that people experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong,” they observe.

The Gormans don’t just want to catalogue the ways we go wrong; they want to correct for them. There must be some way, they maintain, to convince people that vaccines are good for kids, and handguns are dangerous. (Another widespread but statistically insupportable belief they’d like to discredit is that owning a gun makes you safer.)

Here is the point, which we might call Flatland futility.

But here they encounter the very problems they have enumerated. Providing people with accurate information doesn’t seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science. “The challenge that remains,” they write toward the end of their book, “is to figure out how to address the tendencies that lead to false scientific belief.”

“The Enigma of Reason,” “The Knowledge Illusion,” and “Denying to the Grave” were all written before the November election. And yet they anticipate Kellyanne Conway and the rise of “alternative facts.” These days, it can feel as if the entire country has been given over to a vast psychological experiment being run either by no one or by Steve Bannon. Rational agents would be able to think their way to a solution. But, on this matter, the literature is not reassuring.

No, it's not

Comments

[Brian Sheller]

I enjoyed her bit about the 'anticipation' of the rise of alternative facts as though the truth of a matter relating to political power has ever seen daylight; as though political theatre produced for the peasantry has ever aligned usefully with realpolitik conducted by the powerful. What planet is she living on?

A lifetime of intense, driven filtering would have to take place for someone living in the United States for several decades now to write, let alone believe that 'alternative facts' have lately risen.

At the end of her article, I'd say indeed the country has been given over to a vastly illuminating psychological experiment, but that pernicious signal has been broadcast into homes and later headphones starting long before Steve Bannon was born.

Her whole article seems to be written in order to ultimately address and disparage the 'phenomenon' of the Trump administration as though anything has truly changed in the imperial capital. Should we really sit here thinking to ourselves that Hopey-Changey, Orange-y, and even the Two Shrubs are distinguishable from one another in any meaningful category?

'These days...', she says. Elizabeth seems given to the illusion of progress as a straight line driving ever forward rather than subsequent clicks of a rolling hamster wheel, but so does every human.

Flatland futility and politics makes us stupid, indeed.