11. Dr. Andrew Shtulman — Scienceblind: Why Our Intuitive Theories About the World Are So Often Wrong
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2017
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why do we catch colds? What causes seasons to change? And if you fire a bullet from a gun and drop one from your hand, which bullet hits the ground first? In a pinch we almost always get these questions wrong. Worse, we regularly misconstrue fundamental qualities of the world around us. In Scienceblind, cognitive and developmental psychologist Dr. Andrew Shtulman, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Occidental College, where he directs the Thinking Lab, shows that the root of our misconceptions lies in the theories about the world we develop as children. They're not only wrong, they close our minds to ideas inconsistent with them, making us unable to learn science later in life.
So how do we get the world right? We must dismantle our intuitive theories and rebuild our knowledge from its foundations. The reward won't just be a truer picture of the world, but clearer solutions to many controversies—around vaccines, climate change, or evolution—that plague our politics today.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is your host, Michael Sherman, and you're listening to Science Salon, a series of conversations |
| 0:10.4 | with leading scientists, scholars, and thinkers about the most important issues of our time. |
| 0:17.0 | So in a way that's a good seg to our session today because you know Bill Nye's got a new show out |
| 0:26.8 | Which is why we did the the interview with him you know Bill Nye saves the world saving the world from what? Well, really, the kind of obvious elephant in the room, |
| 0:35.4 | science denial, science denialism, alternative facts, |
| 0:39.4 | which yesterday, as I said in my speech, |
| 0:41.2 | there are no alternative facts. |
| 0:43.1 | There's what you call alternative facts with evidence |
| 0:45.7 | or facts. |
| 0:46.8 | Like alternative medicine with evidence is medicine. |
| 0:50.6 | You know, there's just a word for saying there's stuff we don't know about yet and there's stuff we're pretty |
| 0:55.0 | confident we do know a lot about and that's what science does so well. |
| 0:58.3 | So the obvious problem has been, and it's not new at all, the denial of evolution for example you know we've been this |
| 1:05.2 | is our 25th year and we've been hammering that point for this is the first issue and |
| 1:09.2 | it's still around and then you know you know, the vaccine, |
| 1:12.7 | autism, vaccination denial and Holocaust denial |
| 1:16.2 | and, you know, GMO denial, you know, |
| 1:19.2 | it sort of cuts across the board both left and right. |
| 1:22.4 | So it's not just one problem with |
| 1:25.2 | one administration you know there's always been issues like that which is why we |
| 1:28.6 | have to be vigilant and march for science and you know the obvious ones that we've been targeting for a long time |
| 1:34.3 | are religious and political worldviews that that you know we think bias people well we're all |
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