I’m thinking about this, and right now I think belief in astrology is the best test:
Theism correlates with where and when you grew up more than anything else. (ISTM that in Italy, people from the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies are far more likely to be religious than people from the former Papal States; and I think that in the Republic of Ireland younger people are less likely to be religious than older people. More generally, there are many more atheists in Europe than elsewhere.)
As for anthropogenic global warming, I just don’t think the typical person has encountered enough evidence (of the kind they can understand) to have strong grounds to decide one way or the other, so different beliefs will mostly be due to different priors and/or motivated cognition, the former telling us nothing and the latter telling us the person’s political affiliation more than anything else.
In the case of marijuana legalization (apart from the issue of value judgements), what I see confuses me: ISTM that most people above a certain age are against it and most people below a certain age (except politically right-wing ones) are in favour of it, but that would mean that either 1) support for marijuana legalization advances one funeral at a time, and hence ought to be larger now than 15 years ago than 30 years ago than 45 years ago, or 2) most people change their minds at a certain point in their lives, neither of which I’ve observed. I suspect that there’s some kind of selection bias in the young people I know and the old people I know. (Also, signalling probably plays a helluva part in this, so maybe the old people who claim they never supported marijuana legalization are just lying.)
I can think of no social, geographical, or political factor which would substantially correlate with belief in astrology, like, at all. (Maybe I just lack imagination, though.)
BTW, I’ve noticed that among people I know, belief in God and belief in AGW appear to be strongly negatively correlated among physics professors, but not among the general population (any more than you’d expect from them correlating with right- and left-wing political views respectively, at least). Maybe that’s just statistical noise from small sample size (and/or cognitive biases of mine—it’s not like I’ve given out surveys or made statistics).
In the case of marijuana legalization (apart from the issue of value judgements), what I see confuses me: ISTM that most people above a certain age are against it and most people below a certain age (except politically right-wing ones) are in favour of it, but that would mean that either 1) support for marijuana legalization advances one funeral at a time, and hence ought to be larger now than 15 years ago than 30 years ago than 45 years ago, or 2) most people change their minds at a certain point in their lives, neither of which I’ve observed. I suspect that there’s some kind of selection bias in the young people I know and the old people I know. (Also, signalling probably plays a helluva part in this, so maybe the old people who claim they never supported marijuana legalization are just lying.)
Yeah, I had forgotten about population aging, though I’m not sure how big an effect it is. I’d guess the median age (in Italy) has increased between 5 and 30 years in the past 45 years.
From the abstract:
the direction of [intracohort] change is most often toward increased tolerance rather than increased conservatism
That’s what happens in diachronic linguistics too: when adults change the way they speak, that’s usually towards the way younger cohorts speak rather than away from it (just google for Queen vowels). In absence of any population aging, that would only accelerate linguistic changes among the population as a whole.
In the case of marijuana legalization [...] ISTM that most people above a certain age are against it and most people below a certain age (except politically right-wing ones) are in favour of it [...]
A common error people make when they see an old vs. young split in opinion is assuming that it must be an age effect rather than a cohort effect. Thank you for avoiding that mistake by noticing that it could be either! (Maybe I could use that as a rationality litmus test, ha ha.)
I can think of no social, geographical, or political factor which would substantially correlate with belief in astrology, like, at all. (Maybe I just lack imagination, though.)
You got me curious! I pulled up a chapter from the NSE’s latest Science & Engineering Indicators report; it links a spreadsheet of survey results from 1979 to 2010 on how scientific US adults think astrology is. (Strictly this isn’t the same thing as believing in astrology but I’d expect it to be a fair proxy.) In the 2010 sample, people who were young, female, less educated, or knew fewer science facts were more likely to think astrology was scientific.
I should say that this doesn’t automatically mean astrology is a worse rationality test than atheism. Atheism itself correlates with sex, race, age, and education level, at least in the US.
It would amuse me if there was a sizable population that thought astrology was scientific and rejected it on that basis because they don’t trust science.
This is actually similar to the medieval Catholic church’s position on astrology, at least if you understand “scientific” to mean “what passed for scientific during the middle ages”.
It would amuse me if there was a sizable population that thought astrology was scientific and rejected it on that basis because they don’t trust science.
This is actually similar to the medieval Catholic church’s position on astrology, at least if you understand “scientific” to mean “what passed for scientific during the middle ages”.
What evidence are you aware of that the Church condemned those particular propositions for being “science” (natural philosophy), rather than for being “errors” (falsehoods)?
What evidence are you aware of that the Church condemned those particular propositions for being “science” (natural philosophy), rather than for being “errors” (falsehoods)?
My point was that the church considered the evidence for the propositions suspect since it was merely “science” (natural philosophy).
This reminds me of an old priest who pointed out that people who don’t believe in God tend to believe in astrology and other superstitions, and said that was because “people have to believe in something or another”. However weird that might look now, I still think that among the demographics he was familiar with (people growing up in a smallish town in Italy in the early 20th century) his observation (about the correlation, not about its cause) was likely not wrong.
I wonder if it ever crossed his mind that “What I believe is equivalent to astrology and other superstitions.” Did he just think he was lucky to have slotted the truth into his belief-hole?
A common error people make when they see an old vs. young split in opinion is assuming that it must be an age effect rather than a cohort effect. Thank you for avoiding that mistake by noticing that it could be either! (Maybe I could use that as a rationality litmus test, ha ha.)
Actually, as for this particular issue, a cohort effect was what I used to consider obvious, and I didn’t hypothesize an age effect until I looked for a long-term trend and failed to see one. (Maybe I haven’t looked in the right places, though.)
people who were young, female, less educated, or knew fewer science facts
Assuming by “young” they mean (say) younger than 18 rather than (say) younger than 50 (and that they’re talking about age effects rather than cohort effects), and with the possible exception of gender, that does sound like a description of the groups of people who I’d expect to be less rational. Hence, that doesn’t sound like as strong a reason to doubt the effectiveness of belief-in-astrology as a test for rationality as finding that people from South Examplistan are more likely to believe in astrology than people from North Examplistan.
“Young” is my own way of summarising the results for the different age subgroups; I saw no correlation with age for ages >34, but people aged 18-24 thought astrology was more scientific than people aged 25-34, who in turn thought it more scientific than people aged 35+. (The sample had no under-18s, unfortunately.) In any case, astrology seems like a good item to add to a potential list of rationality probes.
I’m thinking about this, and right now I think belief in astrology is the best test:
Theism correlates with where and when you grew up more than anything else. (ISTM that in Italy, people from the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies are far more likely to be religious than people from the former Papal States; and I think that in the Republic of Ireland younger people are less likely to be religious than older people. More generally, there are many more atheists in Europe than elsewhere.)
As for anthropogenic global warming, I just don’t think the typical person has encountered enough evidence (of the kind they can understand) to have strong grounds to decide one way or the other, so different beliefs will mostly be due to different priors and/or motivated cognition, the former telling us nothing and the latter telling us the person’s political affiliation more than anything else.
In the case of marijuana legalization (apart from the issue of value judgements), what I see confuses me: ISTM that most people above a certain age are against it and most people below a certain age (except politically right-wing ones) are in favour of it, but that would mean that either 1) support for marijuana legalization advances one funeral at a time, and hence ought to be larger now than 15 years ago than 30 years ago than 45 years ago, or 2) most people change their minds at a certain point in their lives, neither of which I’ve observed. I suspect that there’s some kind of selection bias in the young people I know and the old people I know. (Also, signalling probably plays a helluva part in this, so maybe the old people who claim they never supported marijuana legalization are just lying.)
I can think of no social, geographical, or political factor which would substantially correlate with belief in astrology, like, at all. (Maybe I just lack imagination, though.)
BTW, I’ve noticed that among people I know, belief in God and belief in AGW appear to be strongly negatively correlated among physics professors, but not among the general population (any more than you’d expect from them correlating with right- and left-wing political views respectively, at least). Maybe that’s just statistical noise from small sample size (and/or cognitive biases of mine—it’s not like I’ve given out surveys or made statistics).
You may find http://www.gwern.net/docs/2007-danigelis.pdf interesting although unfortunately the survey data does not include questions about marijuana or drugs in general.
(I haven’t finished reading it yet.)
Yeah, I had forgotten about population aging, though I’m not sure how big an effect it is. I’d guess the median age (in Italy) has increased between 5 and 30 years in the past 45 years.
From the abstract:
That’s what happens in diachronic linguistics too: when adults change the way they speak, that’s usually towards the way younger cohorts speak rather than away from it (just google for
Queen vowels). In absence of any population aging, that would only accelerate linguistic changes among the population as a whole.A common error people make when they see an old vs. young split in opinion is assuming that it must be an age effect rather than a cohort effect. Thank you for avoiding that mistake by noticing that it could be either! (Maybe I could use that as a rationality litmus test, ha ha.)
You got me curious! I pulled up a chapter from the NSE’s latest Science & Engineering Indicators report; it links a spreadsheet of survey results from 1979 to 2010 on how scientific US adults think astrology is. (Strictly this isn’t the same thing as believing in astrology but I’d expect it to be a fair proxy.) In the 2010 sample, people who were young, female, less educated, or knew fewer science facts were more likely to think astrology was scientific.
I should say that this doesn’t automatically mean astrology is a worse rationality test than atheism. Atheism itself correlates with sex, race, age, and education level, at least in the US.
It would amuse me if there was a sizable population that thought astrology was scientific and rejected it on that basis because they don’t trust science.
This is actually similar to the medieval Catholic church’s position on astrology, at least if you understand “scientific” to mean “what passed for scientific during the middle ages”.
TheOtherDave:
Eugine_Nier:
What evidence are you aware of that the Church condemned those particular propositions for being “science” (natural philosophy), rather than for being “errors” (falsehoods)?
My point was that the church considered the evidence for the propositions suspect since it was merely “science” (natural philosophy).
I’m pretty sure I understood your point. I was asking for some reasons to think your point is true.
This reminds me of an old priest who pointed out that people who don’t believe in God tend to believe in astrology and other superstitions, and said that was because “people have to believe in something or another”. However weird that might look now, I still think that among the demographics he was familiar with (people growing up in a smallish town in Italy in the early 20th century) his observation (about the correlation, not about its cause) was likely not wrong.
I wonder if it ever crossed his mind that “What I believe is equivalent to astrology and other superstitions.” Did he just think he was lucky to have slotted the truth into his belief-hole?
Actually, as for this particular issue, a cohort effect was what I used to consider obvious, and I didn’t hypothesize an age effect until I looked for a long-term trend and failed to see one. (Maybe I haven’t looked in the right places, though.)
Assuming by “young” they mean (say) younger than 18 rather than (say) younger than 50 (and that they’re talking about age effects rather than cohort effects), and with the possible exception of gender, that does sound like a description of the groups of people who I’d expect to be less rational. Hence, that doesn’t sound like as strong a reason to doubt the effectiveness of belief-in-astrology as a test for rationality as finding that people from South Examplistan are more likely to believe in astrology than people from North Examplistan.
“Young” is my own way of summarising the results for the different age subgroups; I saw no correlation with age for ages >34, but people aged 18-24 thought astrology was more scientific than people aged 25-34, who in turn thought it more scientific than people aged 35+. (The sample had no under-18s, unfortunately.) In any case, astrology seems like a good item to add to a potential list of rationality probes.