I guess in the average case, the contrarian’s conclusion is wrong, but it is also a reminder that the mainstream case is not communicated clearly, and often exaggerated or supported by invalid arguments. For example:
it’s not that “dieting doesn’t work”, but that people naively assume that dieting is simple and effective (“if you just stop eating chocolate and start exercising for one hour every day, you will certainly lose weight”, haha nope), even when the actual weight-loss research shows otherwise;
it’s not that “medicine doesn’t improve health”, but while some parts of medicine are very useful, other parts may be neutral or even harmful, and we often see that throwing more money at medicine does not actually improve the outcomes;
it’s not that “education doesn’t work”, but if you filter your students by intelligence and hard work, of course they will have better outcomes in life regardless of how good is your teaching, so the impact of education is probably vastly overestimated, and this also explains why so many pedagogical experiments succeed at a pilot project (when you try them with a small group of smart and motivated students) and then fail in mainstream education (when you try the same thing with average or below-average students);
it’s not that “opening the borders completely is a good idea”, but a lot of potential value is lost by closing the borders for people who are neither fanatics nor criminals and could easily integrate to the new society.
There is also an opposite bad extreme to contrarians, the various “I fucking love science… although I do not understand it… but I enjoy attacking people on social networks who seem to disagree with the scientific consensus as I understand it” people. The ones who are sure that the professor or the doctor is always right, and that the latest educational fad is always correct.
I guess in the average case, the contrarian’s conclusion is wrong, but it is also a reminder that the mainstream case is not communicated clearly, and often exaggerated or supported by invalid arguments.
This enables sanewashing and motte-and-bailey arguments.
I guess in the average case, the contrarian’s conclusion is wrong, but it is also a reminder that the mainstream case is not communicated clearly, and often exaggerated or supported by invalid arguments. For example:
it’s not that “dieting doesn’t work”, but that people naively assume that dieting is simple and effective (“if you just stop eating chocolate and start exercising for one hour every day, you will certainly lose weight”, haha nope), even when the actual weight-loss research shows otherwise;
it’s not that “medicine doesn’t improve health”, but while some parts of medicine are very useful, other parts may be neutral or even harmful, and we often see that throwing more money at medicine does not actually improve the outcomes;
it’s not that “education doesn’t work”, but if you filter your students by intelligence and hard work, of course they will have better outcomes in life regardless of how good is your teaching, so the impact of education is probably vastly overestimated, and this also explains why so many pedagogical experiments succeed at a pilot project (when you try them with a small group of smart and motivated students) and then fail in mainstream education (when you try the same thing with average or below-average students);
it’s not that “opening the borders completely is a good idea”, but a lot of potential value is lost by closing the borders for people who are neither fanatics nor criminals and could easily integrate to the new society.
There is also an opposite bad extreme to contrarians, the various “I fucking love science… although I do not understand it… but I enjoy attacking people on social networks who seem to disagree with the scientific consensus as I understand it” people. The ones who are sure that the professor or the doctor is always right, and that the latest educational fad is always correct.
This enables sanewashing and motte-and-bailey arguments.