> I get the sense that what he wants us to walk away with is "look how hard the truth can be to accept if you don't know it",
I felt his point was that people have a position, and when they listen to you they accept things that support their position and automatically question things that undermine their position.
(Although I agree the article is unclear and not particularly well written.)
This is problematic because smart people tend to know they're smart; tend to believe they're rational; and tend to feel that they cannot fall victim to the same irrationality that allows people to believe in astrology; and that when they explore ideas they're not going to come up with weak, unscientific, flawed, explanations.
Some things are clearly nonsense, and we tend to reject those quickly. (Homeopathy; ghosts; astrology; fan death.)
But other things have a veneer of respectability. They're presented by real doctors in real hospitals and they have a sensible plausible mechanism behind them. Knee arthroscopy is a great example of this. Many people went through operations (with the risks involved of infection and anaesthesia) when there wasn't any good science showing any benefit. When controlled trials were done, with one group getting the real surgery and the control group getting a sham surgery, we saw that knee arthroscopy had little benefit above placebo.
I strongly agree with your post; especially the parts about persuading people that they might be wrong. "Huh, you're a scientologist, and thus you're an idiot!" is satisfying but futile. (If the desired result is to weaken scientology by reducing their numbers and converting people back from scientology. (And where scientology can be replaced by creationism or anything.))
I felt his point was that people have a position, and when they listen to you they accept things that support their position and automatically question things that undermine their position.
(Although I agree the article is unclear and not particularly well written.)
This is problematic because smart people tend to know they're smart; tend to believe they're rational; and tend to feel that they cannot fall victim to the same irrationality that allows people to believe in astrology; and that when they explore ideas they're not going to come up with weak, unscientific, flawed, explanations.
Some things are clearly nonsense, and we tend to reject those quickly. (Homeopathy; ghosts; astrology; fan death.)
But other things have a veneer of respectability. They're presented by real doctors in real hospitals and they have a sensible plausible mechanism behind them. Knee arthroscopy is a great example of this. Many people went through operations (with the risks involved of infection and anaesthesia) when there wasn't any good science showing any benefit. When controlled trials were done, with one group getting the real surgery and the control group getting a sham surgery, we saw that knee arthroscopy had little benefit above placebo.
I strongly agree with your post; especially the parts about persuading people that they might be wrong. "Huh, you're a scientologist, and thus you're an idiot!" is satisfying but futile. (If the desired result is to weaken scientology by reducing their numbers and converting people back from scientology. (And where scientology can be replaced by creationism or anything.))