[banmeagaindan2]

I get where you're coming from but there is a general frustration out there about physics that a lot of nerds share. We need kicks as well as truth or the heart won't be in it. People invest a lot of energy into something if they feel they are involved with the general effort because it gives meaning and we enjoy that. Our lay ideas will be incorrect - but the urge to ask questions being stifled by a existing body of understanding we don't understand makes us apathetic and prone to leveling.

Somebody like Graham Hancock is actually delivering more people to the pipeline of scientific understanding than Richard Dawkins. We don't want to hear it but it's true. Similar things are true of WebMD and doctors, Elon Musk and space research. All the time the domain experts are shooting themselves in the head because the true opposition isn't a cruder wrong idea - it's apathy. Creationists at least give a shit about what version of events took place, the population that doesn't care is much larger. There is no critical mass of creationists that is going to undermine scientific research but the universities being defunded by an apathetic public turning hostile because they believe we're a waste of dollars - that is only a matter of time.

Science and expertise are an ecology - the people on the edge only exist because of a bigger enterprise capable of providing support. So it's not great that the stories the general public and scientists tell themselves are starting to sound like a protagonist antagonist relationship.

[SenorTibbs]

This is a really great point and I believe it is (at least partially) driving the anti-science rhetoric that seems to be metastasizing. When a topic is inaccessible to the general public, and only experts in the field can understand it and hold a monopoly on information, then you inevitably start to see pushback against it.

That being said however, making certain fields more accessible to the populace often comes with the price of a false sense of understanding. You see this a lot in medicine with WedMD, where heuristics that largely ignore the deeper pathophysiology have empowered some to believe they are more knowledgeable than their doctors.

This must be doubly true for the more abstract forms of physics - where any simplified analogy is going to give rise to false notions via extrapolation. I think there has to be some sort of balance between the two

[banmeagaindan2]

Here is a example solution for the WebMD problem - I think it's about empowerment and tribalism - in positive senses of those words.

In Japan there exists an institution called Ningen Dock. Almost nobody in the West has heard of it outside of Randox Research which is astonishing as most Japanese people visit it once a year. I believe this is a psycho-social-medical institution. It purports to be a medical institution but it's something more.

Youtubers describe their experiences of Ningen Dock if you're curious.

It works like this - most people in Japan visit the 'dock' - a metaphor from shipyards. There is a brain dock, a heart dock, a lung dock and so on. Every major hospital has this department where the patient is checked head to foot once a year. Here is the important part. They are given a grade sheet - the sort a schoolteacher awards students. Here you see your kidney was given a B-, a liver a C-. These are hints about your lifestyle choices. Perhaps you should feel bad. In one more year there will exist another Ningen Dock. I believe this institution is responsible for a superior resilience against lifestyle disease that overwhelms healthcare in other developed states. It's preventative healthcare taken seriously instead of mouthing platitudes about lifestyle choices while back in Western reality you're never far from a fatty who knows they're making mistakes. It could be you or me!

Now Sir Gwern and other analytical thinkers of HN will have spotted the problem. False positives leading to needless surgeries. This is how Western doctors are trained to think and they find Ningen Dock incomprehensible. If though we assume Japanese MDs are not idiots and positive externalities exist from the Ningen Dock then it could easily be paying for itself. The hypochondriacs don't menace the healthcare system. Their energy is redirected to superior choices. For everybody the locus goes away from the doctor and analysis and toward being responsible on your health to the best of your ability - guided by timely medical advice. The system also develops a giant database of longitudinal information which can be used to spot health patterns across populations - to enhance targeting of the analytical process. I'm sure there are lots of other tangible advantages I haven't mentioned.

So that is patient empowerment - but the tribalism aspect is important too. The system is saying to the people - we're on your side, we're on the same team, we are in your corner, we are working for you. A lot of people don't feel that way and it needs to be said. Think of the rise of ASMR videos. Hundreds of millions of people watching supposed doctors treating them. There's something there. Just the insistent affirmation would be positive for mental health.

[cthalupa]

>Somebody like Graham Hancock is actually delivering more people to the pipeline of scientific understanding than Richard Dawkins. We don't want to hear it but it's true.

This is a pretty bold statement. You are arguing that psuedoscience is resulting more people being scientific than actual science is?

Such an extraordinary claim needs some significant evidence behind it.

[banmeagaindan2]

Is it really an extraordinary claim? In your own experience have you never settled for a poorer model of something, a lower resolution because you feel either you didn't have the cognitive resources to get there or you felt unmotivated? When the topic becomes more complex - this happens to more and more people.

If you have a compelling story you may be motivated to sip on the subject. After a time you probably shrug off the old understanding and get to something more robust and probably more scientific.

I acknowledge some people will head into annoying dead ends - but you have to respond to the question of whether you prefer some people to be wrong and some people get to better places - or if you want most of those people to have checked out altogether. After all it seems to me that longer people ponder on it the more it is they converge on something - often something true or useful. Those are your choices. If you want to call me a liar then I suggest taking this seriously means getting a whole lot better at telling stories that go in the direction you approve of instead of what to the inside looks like doubling down on accuracy but to the outside looks like obfuscation.

Practical test - A lot of scientists are concerned about CO2 emissions and climate change. A lot of the population thinks they're full of shit because of politics. Some people have noticed though - that there doesn't exist a conflict of interests in getting improved technologies that happen to reduce CO2 emissions. Just as many right wingers are going to buy passive houses, closed loop energy, solar panels, Teslas as left wingers. Instead of perusing this thought a lot of people veer off into sermonizing on the topic - but I have to wonder why anybody gives a shit about the means when it seems like pushing on one lever gets instant blowback and pushing on the technology lever wins friends every time. It's almost as if all these groups have ulterior motives different to the public facing ones.

[cthalupa]

I don't quite understand how we go from "Ancient aliens" to "real science" - I've never spoken to someone who believed in that stuff as the jumping off point that later went on to being curious about actual science when they weren't previously.

>Just as many right wingers are going to buy passive houses, closed loop energy, solar panels, Teslas as left wingers.

I also don't know that this is actually true. I as only able to find "what do you want to buy" polling for cars, but in a study surveying actual solar usage, it's 34% democrat and 20% republican.

https://www.autoblog.com/2016/10/26/democrats-tesla-republic...

https://grist.org/article/republicans-are-buying-rooftop-sol...

But I think this is also a false premise - that somehow conspiracy theory nuts have the same impact on public perception of science as one of the most public scientific issues with consensus from tens of thousands of scientists including basically 100% of the leading experts in the field. And the fact that there are long term economic advantages for things like solar, etc. that don't take into account at all whether or not you believe in man made climate change.

[banmeagaindan2]

True - but most people never become scientists - not even amateurs - but there exists a flourishing industry of science books for people who are a bit science curious. Scott Alexander used to be a giant Hancock fan - anecdotal I know but he later realized it was sort of bullshit - but still was interested in deep archaeology. I'll call that a win.

On the stats - that's a rabbit hole I won't go down today but every time I've seen people talk about alternatives to the system the left and right become like a long married couple ending each other's sentences.

>And the fact that there are long term economic advantages for things like solar, etc. that don't take into account at all whether or not you believe in man made climate change.

Sure.

> But I think this is also a false premise - that somehow conspiracy theory nuts have the same impact on public perception of science as one of the most public scientific issues with consensus from tens of thousands of scientists including basically 100% of the leading experts in the field.

There I think you're making a mistake. Literary people think Proust is awesome. A lot of people have read Dan Brown. Who is having more impact? You're making a face now - I can see through the interneticals.