The chapter Evidence, in Kathryn Schultz’s book “Being Wrong”, thoroughly describes how evidence is central to human cognition (way of thinking). Evidence takes huge part—if not, is the utmost, defining aspect of forming personal perceptions, beliefs, and or theories about the world. Shultz introduces a series of situations and defined concepts to illustrate, that in order for one’s theories to be the most accurate and fair, they must have a fair and consistent relationship with evidence. Through using this model of cognitive thinking, defined as “Inductive Reasoning” although brilliant at times, it has quite some weaknesses that we should be aware of, and therefore can use this model better.
Before we begin, let us define a few terms.
What are …?
Beliefs- One’s acceptance that a statement or concept is true and or exists.
Theory- A collection of ideas which describe and or justify an action or subject.
Evidence- A body of facts, confirmation, or “proof” that something is true and valid.
Counter evidence- Evidence which contradicts evidence, a hypothesis or claim.
To bring us to Shultz’s first concept, evidence is central to human way of thinking, and consequently, creates beliefs. This means that from womb to tomb, humans gather such evidence accordingly to form who they are as a person. Such gathered evidence can be defined as human experiences, such as feelings, senses, and learning from an environment.
Evidence is also central to institutional entities: public entities such as politics, science, journalism, and medicine. Each institution has their own specific way to gather and evaluate evidence— to bring them to a final conclusion.
Now how exactly do we arrive to a conclusion? Neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe, emphasizes that humans share this standard that beliefs are formed after a logical, objective assessment of facts. However, by “rough consensus”, even though this is how we should form our beliefs, we don’t actually do so— assess enough evidence objectively. In addition to this, French philosopher, Descartes, defined such as, “error”, not believing something that is not true, but to believe something based on insufficient evidence.
The model of thinking we do follow however, is defined as “inductive reasoning”, and operates quite poorly. Unlike Descartes, humans are not interested in whether or not we possess qualitative nor quantitative evidence, but rather if the presented evidence supports one conclusion (our own) better than the other. This presents the weakness of this human cognitive operating system—a series of biases, and therefore, presents us to the fact that drawing conclusions through induction is untrustworthy and prone to error.
To first and foremost demonstrate a weakness of I.R. (inductive reasoning) and how one does not necessarily gather enough evidence, take the aspect of learning the English language. The theory that one adds the suffix “-ed” to create a past-tense verb is brilliant, one would think—at first. Then they infer through inductive reasoning that the past tense of “drink” is “drinked”, “run” is “runned”, “think” is “thinked”, so on and so forth. Believing a theory based on insufficient evidence clearly illustrates Descartes’s definition of “error”. This specific example is assumed that one learned the basis of English within their household. This situation is considered quite trivial and insignificant, but this system of predictable bias, also known as, “choosing the best guess” has its shortcomings.
The brings Schultz to another representation of “predictable bias” and more specifically, how it can cause complete embarrassment of to our self-image as reasonable “ideal thinkers”. Lawyer Don Leka hosted a volunteer event to help a PTA fundraiser. Don commenced a legal advice booth, charging 25 cents (I’m assuming per piece of advice or per inquirer?). He then became “alarmed” when a guest had advised him that they received medical legal advice about a healthcare issue, from “Jim’s wife” (where did Jim come from and who is he, I have no idea). Having staffed his council accordingly with only his colleagues, Don was concerned with the fact that “people’s wives were just going around giving advice”- despite the lighthearted-ness of the fundraiser event. As soon as he could, he located Jim and filled him in about what his wife was doing, to then be informed (I’d assume rather defensively), that Jim’s wife was general counsel of the largest HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) in the city. How embarrassing huh? Don’s conclusion was unfortunate and inaccurate, all thanks to inductive reasoning and the lack of sufficient evidence. This clearly demonstrates the method’s untrustworthiness. Now what led him to execute such a conclusion? Don’s prior experience and evidence— or lack there of. He went to Harvard Law with 525 classmates, and out of the 525 students, only 5%—approximately 26 of them were female. In continuation of Don’s predictable bias, inductive reasoning produces stereotypes, and pertaining to his experience, he made a sexist one.
This brings Schultz to the next concept of “confirmation bias”. “Although small amounts of evidence are sufficient to make us draw conclusions, they are seldom sufficient to make us revise them.” Elizabeth O’Donovan got into an argument with her friend about whether or not Orion was a winter constellation. Elizabeth insisted that it was a summer constellation; since “everyone knows that every 52 years Orion appears for 18 months (1 year and a half) straight. The “embarrassing part” she stated, was that during the conversation— or let us say argument—she pointed out Orion in the sky, and during this time it was December. “Hm that’s weird, Orion is a summer constellation”. One would believe Elizabeth would have “revised” her claim, but she did not. She instead insisted that, “..it was some sort of crazy astronomical phenomenon.”
Then, there are instances when one is confronted with counter evidence, we see it and acknowledge it just fine, however we decide (either consciously or unconsciously) that is absolutely holds no weight or ability to change our beliefs. A case which reinforces this was The Copernican Revolution. During this revolution, astronomers began to observe and record the heavens, or the skies. They noticed new stars appearing and disappearing, these discoveries shocked the Church community, they “went reeling”. Copernicus’s model of “the heavens” greatly contrasted Christianity’s belief that it is eternal and unchanging. This is a similar case to Elizabeth’s. Sometimes when we encounter counter evidence, we refuse to see it, or we simply disregard it.
Another example confirmation bias is the Iraq War. Directly quoted from Shultz’s chapter, “…when conditions on the ground were plainly deteriorating,” President George W Bush argued otherwise, by stating that the increased violence in Iraq was somehow the nation’s frustration with America’s success.
A final example, the killing of seven onboard astronauts of the space shuttle, Columbia. They insisted (I’m assuming NASA) that the damage on the space shuttle was proof of the aircraft’s ability to withstand the damage it did, rather than the damage being a design flaw. As we see here, this is what we do when contrasting evidence is presented to one’s theory— we then use the counter evidence to reinforce the preferable existing belief; furthermore, President Bush, NASA, and Elizabeth considered the counter evidence as “The exception proves the rule” or “Despite this counter evidence, it still proves my theory.”
The first thinker to grasp both the significance and limitations of “Inductive Reasoning” was famous philosopher, David Hume. While inductive reasoning of course having strengths, it has weaknesses—which is what one should focus and improve on. In turn, this will save us from committing error, embarrassing ourselves and our ideal of a reasonable thinker, and avoid cognitive stubbornness from rejection of contrasting evidence.
Platinum thoughts... 