Being Wrong - Kathryn Schulz [210]
* This story about Neptune presents something of a challenge to my earlier claim that tortured theorizing is often a sign of being on the losing end of a bet. Specifically, it suggests that tortured theories only seem tortured when they turn out to be wrong. If Neptune didn’t exist, explaining away deviations in Uranus’s orbit by positing a giant undiscovered planet in the outer reaches of the solar system would seem like a pretty desperate move. Or consider a still unresolved example: physicists currently think that 96 percent of all the matter and energy in the universe is invisible—so-called dark matter and dark energy. The virtue of this highly counterintuitive (not to say cockamamie) proposal is that it makes sense of scientific findings that would otherwise call into question the theory of gravity. This is a classic example of extremely strong prior beliefs (we really believe in gravity) trumping extremely strong counterevidence. It remains to be seen whether the dark-matter theory will ultimately seem as foolish as proposing that Orion loiters in the sky every fifty-two years or as prescient as predicting the existence of Neptune.
* Even by a far more conservative estimate, dating only to the establishment of Switzerland’s modern federal constitution in 1848, the nation smashes the global average at 143 years. The only women in the world who waited longer for the right to vote than those of the Appenzells were those of Kazakhstan (1992) and Kuwait (2005), and the black women of South Africa (1994). Then there are the women of Saudi Arabia, who are still waiting.
* To be clear, Gilovich, Surowiecki, and Sunstein all acknowledge serious limitations to this follow-the-crowd logic. Among other problems, Gilovich points out, we tend to assume that most rational people believe what we believe, so our sense of the consensus of the crowd might itself be in error. Surowiecki believes strongly in the wisdom of crowds—he is the author of a 2004 book by that name—but only if their decisions reflect the aggregation of many independently developed beliefs, rather than the belief of a few people snowballing into the belief of the masses. Sunstein, meanwhile, acknowledges the potential utility of conformity largely as a preamble to exposing its dangers, and especially its political dangers—which is the central theme of his own book, Why Societies Need Dissent.
* A case in point: the single best predictor of someone’s political ideology is their parents’ political ideology.
* But not everyone. Here’s the right-wing gadfly Ann Coulter: “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
* This man’s reaction is an example of what psychologists call the insult effect. Studies have shown that if you and another person are debating the merits of a particular idea and the other person suddenly insults you, you will instantly retreat further into your own position, and your conviction that the other person is wrong will intensify. This seems like a natural reaction—but, of course, your interlocutor’s manners have nothing to do with how right or wrong he is. (On the other hand, his manners might have a lot to do with whether or not you want to be a member of his community.) This suggests an annoying but immovable fact of life: sometimes, disagreeable people are right.
* One notorious example of this is lysenkoism, the practice of establishing scientific truths via political diktat.