Is ignorance bliss?

Is ignorance bliss?

Frank Keil is a Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His research asks how adults and children track the causal complexity of the world around them and how they work with only partial understandings of that complexity. There are many Webdiarists interested in science and technology and this article may appeal to them alone, but I was also interested in the metaphor vis a vis our understanding of political economy and human nature. In Keil's words, "we are not nearly modest enough about our ignorance." Hamish.

by Frank Keil

The age of the Renaissance man is long gone. No one thinks it is possible anymore for an individual to grasp, fully, all areas of science and technology. Popular software contains millions of lines of code. Mechanisms of the immune response for just one kind of lymphocyte take up thousands of pages of scholarly journals. An iPod's elegantly simple appearance masks underlying technology that is understood by only a tiny percentage of its users.

But, despite the vast incompleteness of our knowledge, recent research suggests that most people think that they know far more than they actually do. We freely admit to not knowing everything about how a helicopter flies or a printing press prints, but we are not nearly modest enough about our ignorance.

The easiest way to show this is to have people to rate the completeness of their knowledge on a seven-point scale. For any question, a “7” denotes the equivalent of a perfectly detailed mental blueprint, and a “1” implies almost no sense of a particular mechanism at all, just a vague image. People happily, and reliably, assign numbers to their understandings of everything from complex machines to biological systems to natural phenomena such as the tides; but these ratings are usually far higher than their actual knowledge.

We can measure the discrepancy between what we think we know and what we actually know by simply asking people, after they have given their initial ratings, to tell us how some things work in as much detail as they can and then to rate their knowledge again in light of their attempt to explain.

Similarly, we can ask them to answer critical diagnostic questions (for example, “How does a helicopter go from hovering in place to flying forward?”) Or we can simply provide them with a concise but meaty expert explanation. In all of these cases, people somewhat sheepishly confess that their level of understanding was far worse than they originally thought.

People are often surprised and dismayed at their ignorance, but we are not generally bad at estimating how much we know. Instead, we have a special deficit with regard to our explanatory understandings. We are good at estimating how well we know simple facts (such as the capitals of countries), procedures (such as how to make an international phone call), and narratives (such as the plots of well-known movies). But we seem to have a specific “illusion of explanatory depth” – the belief that we possess a more profound causal understanding than we really do. We can be appropriately modest about our knowledge of other things, but not so about our ability to explain the workings of the world.

Several factors converge to create this illusion of knowledge. When Leon Rozenblit and I uncovered the illusion and its specificity, we ran an extensive series of studies exploring why explanatory understanding is so vulnerable to a false sense of knowing. All of the factors that we identified are less influential for facts, procedures, and narratives.

One important factor underlying the illusion of explanatory depth arises from the richly hierarchical nature of most complex systems, which means that they can be understood at several levels of analysis. One can understand how a computer “works” in terms of the high-level functions of the mouse, the hard drive, and the display while not having any understanding of the mechanisms that enable a cursor to move when a mouse is moved, or allow information to be stored and erased, or control pixels on a screen. This hierarchical structure of complex causal systems seduces us into a sense of understanding at a high level, which is then mistaken for having an understanding at a lower level.

A second factor is the false comfort we derive from seeing the parts of a system. The more parts you can see, the more you think you know how those parts actually work. Thus, the illusion is stronger for objects with easy-to-inspect parts than it is for objects with more invisible, inaccessible, or microscopic parts. For example, we may think that we understand the mind much better than we do when we see images of glowing brain regions.

Finally, we often figure out things on the fly when they are in front of us, but then falsely assume that we came to the object with a full understanding in our heads rather than using and manipulating the object to decipher its mechanism.

There may be a silver lining to our inflated sense of understanding. The world is, of course, far too complex for any lone person to fully grasp. If a gnawing sense of ignorance kept us diving deeper in our quest to understand everything we encountered, we might suffocate in the details in one area and miss other areas completely.

The illusion of explanatory depth may stop us at just about the right level of understanding, one that enables us to know how to get more information from others when we really need it without being overwhelmed. It would perhaps be better if we recognised the limits our own explanatory ability, but there may be some adaptive value of those limits as well.

[ category:

Science and Technology

]

High On Stupidity

Submitted by Michael Coleman on February 11, 2006 - 8:05pm.

I am a political atheist. In my opinion, there isn't a political party or politician alive worthy of any trust and it is a citizen's duty to expose their corruption and incompetence, regardless of the political persuasion of the bunch with their grubby mits on the levers of power.

My suspicions from years of debating partisan ideologues of every colour are finally confirmed. It is pointless trying to reason with those who will not reason. However, I didn't know the bastards got a high from forming irrational opinions!

See Political bias affects brain activity:

[extract]

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning.

Perhaps, this is the biological basis for Carlo Cipolla's definition of human stupidity.

Knowledge and wisdom

Submitted by Jay Somasundaram on February 7, 2006 - 8:21am.

Perhaps more important than what we know is how we think. Academics have made a meal of it, with a cornucopia of theories. One that I like is William Perry's scheme of intellectual and ethical development. He argues that people find it hard to move from a stage of certainty to one of uncertainty. Movement to higher stages causes a loss of drive and motivation (think of the French philosophers), which needs to be recaptured.

A parallel concept is that of a propensity to think critically, which may be partly individual and partly environmental.

One is left with a final question – does society really want its citizens to think critically?

Scientific research

Submitted by Trevor Kerr on February 6, 2006 - 3:50pm.

Julian Cribb, science communicator, addresses similar questions, in Why Australians dislike academics at On Line Opinion:

... Could it be that Australians just don’t know what goes on behind the ivy-clad, razor-wired ramparts of their universities and science agencies?
Most universities and science agencies are not about to tell the public what they did with its money (though they can certainly crow loudly enough when they get it). Check their websites today, if you don’t believe me. Of the 10,000-odd research projects now under way in Australia, how many publicly-available outcomes do you see? A couple of dozen? Fewer?
There are many reasons for this, including institutional and individual inability to communicate, lack of resources and skills, lack of understanding by management of what is now referred to as “third stream” (where academia meets society), a misguided frenzy over commercial-in-confidence and IP, over-reliance on institutional braggadocio at the expense of factual communication, bans which prohibit free speech in researchers, or plain disinclination by some to rub shoulders with the wider community.
Whatever the cause - and it is generally an amalgam of the above - there is little doubt that academe does not enjoy the sort of popular respect (and so, support) in the Australian community and electorate that it does in other countries. This converts into less political pressure on governments to fund research and tertiary education and reduced inclination by philanthropists to donate. Hence the current stampede to market both education and research, in order to make good the shortfall. ...

As far as I know, there is not an accessible register of Australian research. If there was, it would be possible for citizens to see how their money was being spent.

There is a hint that funding for public schools (in Victoria) may be sought from private enterprise, as observed in some letters to The Age, Feb 5th. It is possible that local authorities may be encouraged to take more responsibility for the government schools in their municipality.

If it is important for the future of the continent, that more students go into the fields of science and mathematics, then the science establishment has a clear duty to make their business known to primary and secondary schools.

I suggest that when the monthly local council meeting has a regular snapshot of the latest findings from research being done in Oz, then Julian Cribb's passion may be starting to have effect.

No matter, never mind

Submitted by Phil Moffat on February 4, 2006 - 11:21am.

One suspects the good professor is trying to tell us in a very gentle (and polite) manner, that we are all, a little bit full of ourselves. Hard not to agree.

C Parsons, not sure where you were going with the rationalists and empiricism thing in relation to the piece you quoted, but it brought to mind the saying “no matter, never mind” which, I have read, may have originated from that particular battle of minds.

Funny thing though, in that particular debate, both sides were in a way correct. Where does our knowledge come from, experience or the mind? Kant dealt with and reconciled that a long time ago. He killed off god in the process and got clobbered for it (by the usual suspects), but that’s another story that I’m sure CP would enjoy (if he has not already).

Graeme Hastwell states that self confidence provides the motivation to attempt new and difficult challenges. However, I would be more inclined to suggest the real motivation for acquiring knowledge may have more to do with our basic emotions, needs and wants than simply self confidence.

Somehow knowledge, or the lack of it, may be less of a problem than what we bloody well do with the knowledge we have and what really motivates our use of same. But that is another far more complex story that goes to the heart of the human condition.

Expert knowledge

Submitted by Graeme Hastwell on February 3, 2006 - 11:04pm.

I'm largely in agreement with C Parsons on this one. I've spent a lot of time with academics and professionals over the last decade. From my experience - which seems to parallel Ross Chipendale's - there is an inverse relationship between expertise and certainty. In my book, an expert is someone who can cogently outline the areas of doubt and dispute within their field of knowledge; someone who will divulge an often astonishing amount of information, while also detailing the conditions under which the information is likely incorrect, or expressing uncertainty over it's quality.

C Parsons raises the interesting tension between self doubt and self confidence. Self doubt drives us to check, validate and verify our results. So self doubt is often an essential element of quality control. On the other hand, we rely on self confidence to provide the motivation to attempt new and difficult challenges which, in the face of self doubt, we might otherwise not undertake.

I'm not so sure about C Parson's comments on Hitler, who I suspect had significant insights into the venal side of human nature. My guess is that Hitler understood more about humanity (and inhumanity) than C Parsons has acknowledged here.

Don't understand

Submitted by Ross Chippendale on February 3, 2006 - 6:47pm.

I just don't understand anyone who claims more knowledge than they have. They are only really deluding themselves if anyone does think that. But it's one of the most used tactics in communications.

Unfortunately though our world is full of people who do claim to be expert in a given area of knowledge. This has been very well demonstrated by a number of people on this site over a sustained period despite the evidence of lack of knowledge, bluffs called etc. No amount of proof against things written has or will be accepted and maybe this is what intelligence is really about, knowing your limits and abilities and accepting them.

I suspect they think an opinion is a fact.

Politicians are of course great claimers of knowledge they don't have, aren't they. They make much pretense of knowing plenty about a given topic but that info is usually obtained from a briefing paper written for them by the troops. Reading from a paper does not prove knowledge.

As an example let me suggest the topics of the Middle East problem and the Iraq war.

How can anyone be definite about these issues? There is so much shadow on these topics. The truth, whatever that is, doesn't seem relevant and may never really be known, as is the case for many issues. Yet these two topics are probably the most discussed on this site, to the boredom of many who have read so enough of that and don't need another regurgitation.

The precision and security of a sleepwalker

Submitted by C Parsons on February 3, 2006 - 2:56pm.

"We can measure the discrepancy between what we think we know and what we actually know by simply asking people, after they have given their initial ratings, to tell us how some things work in as much detail as they can and then to rate their knowledge again in light of their attempt to explain."

How does he know this methodology is sound, though? (Ha ha.)

Intuitively, I bet he's right, nonetheless. But is he saying anything more than David Hume and those many others who critiqued rationalism?

If we can safely assume only that we know less than we think, this puts a premium on self doubt.

For some reason, the idea that self doubt should be taught as a virtue, as an actual technique to developing understanding, surprises and even offends people in this selfish age.

Those who lack self doubt rely on their judgement and intuition without recourse to evidence or criticism.

The alternative to self doubt is, of course, self confidence.

Perhaps the most terrifying manifestation of self confidence in the last 100 years was Adolph Hitler, an ignorant philistine whose profound self assuredness was expressed in his claim to follow his course "with the precision and security of a sleepwalker".

Now there was a lad who knew less than he thought.

Self doubt is the underpinning of empiricism.

Empiricism is the bane of the doctrinal enthusiast.

That's why the very word 'empiricism' is employed as a general term of contempt by true believers ranging from Catholics to Moslems to Marxists and Idealists.

But, hey? What would I know?

Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Navigation

The Issues

Comment viewing options