Do not be troubled—this is the default experience of learning about virtually anything. Consider this: if common wisdom agreed with the most current findings in research, what would the point of research be? Everyone would know it already.
You should brace yourself especially strongly on this point if you ever do any serious reading in history, because this is true of almost everything. It happens to be a general pattern that the reasons the public will know about history virtually guarantees that it will be warped and summarized in predictable ways, with the net result being that almost everyone is totally wrong about almost everything.
Consider this: if common wisdom agreed with the most current findings in research, what would the point of research be? Everyone would know it already.
There are plenty of “known unknowns” where learning the unknown doesn’t challenge existing beliefs. You can always work on nailing down more decimal places in physical constants, or finding which specific chemical is used in xyz biological process, or taking more detailed pictures of all kinds of stuff. (Some of these could turn up new discoveries that challenge existing beliefs, but the people funding the research to do it might not expect that.) It would be interesting to know what fraction of existing research is of this type.
I agree. The distinction I am trying to draw here is keeping the perspective of the layperson moving from zero to moderate understanding; I expect the researchers themselves to. . . sort of maintain the ‘direction’ of their understanding but deepen or broaden it along the way, if that makes sense.
But furthering your point, there are also a bunch of cases where common wisdom has a belief, which is basically correct, about which research is totally silent (or was until pretty recently). I have in mind here mundane findings like the physics of tying your shoes. This is mostly because researchers did not think it worth their time to investigate.
No that’s expressly NOT what he’s saying. For example—obesity is dangerous. Everybody thinks obesity is dangerous, and they’re correct.
He’s just saying that some of the public wisdom seems totally wrong. That [everybody thinks it] has turned out to be much weaker evidence than he originally thought, though still evidence in favor, and certainly not evidence against.
Do not be troubled—this is the default experience of learning about virtually anything. Consider this: if common wisdom agreed with the most current findings in research, what would the point of research be? Everyone would know it already.
You should brace yourself especially strongly on this point if you ever do any serious reading in history, because this is true of almost everything. It happens to be a general pattern that the reasons the public will know about history virtually guarantees that it will be warped and summarized in predictable ways, with the net result being that almost everyone is totally wrong about almost everything.
Addendum: welcome to LessWrong!
I probably mostly agree, but, about this:
There are plenty of “known unknowns” where learning the unknown doesn’t challenge existing beliefs. You can always work on nailing down more decimal places in physical constants, or finding which specific chemical is used in xyz biological process, or taking more detailed pictures of all kinds of stuff. (Some of these could turn up new discoveries that challenge existing beliefs, but the people funding the research to do it might not expect that.) It would be interesting to know what fraction of existing research is of this type.
I agree. The distinction I am trying to draw here is keeping the perspective of the layperson moving from zero to moderate understanding; I expect the researchers themselves to. . . sort of maintain the ‘direction’ of their understanding but deepen or broaden it along the way, if that makes sense.
But furthering your point, there are also a bunch of cases where common wisdom has a belief, which is basically correct, about which research is totally silent (or was until pretty recently). I have in mind here mundane findings like the physics of tying your shoes. This is mostly because researchers did not think it worth their time to investigate.
So, the more popular, the more false?
In the matter of history, I say yes.
No that’s expressly NOT what he’s saying. For example—obesity is dangerous. Everybody thinks obesity is dangerous, and they’re correct.
He’s just saying that some of the public wisdom seems totally wrong. That [everybody thinks it] has turned out to be much weaker evidence than he originally thought, though still evidence in favor, and certainly not evidence against.