How little we know

[Surlethe]

I think it's well-established that one of the reasons uneducated people tend to be anti-intellectual and anti-elitist when it comes to the sciences is because they simply don't realize how little they actually know. I've noticed it in myself; I've been studying mathematics at the collegiate level for a year and a half, and I am only beginning to grasp at the magnitude of difference between what I now know and the sum total of mathematical knowledge. I can only imagine how much is out there in, say, physics, a subject in which I've had only a cursory high school education to date.

So, what I'm looking for are analogies, descriptions, anything that I can pull out and show to the average person just how little he actually knows in a variety of subjects, from evolution to mathematics to physics to whatever the hell else is out there. Ideally, it'd be something like, "Imagine your knowledge as a bucket of water. Then all the knowledge we've discovered through science is like the amount of water that goes over Niagara Falls in five minutes."

[DPDarkPrimus]

I really have a rather pathetic grasp of advanced mathematics. Things like coming up with calculations based on visual evidence is beyond me. That's a main reason I usually observe the SW/ST debates and such.

Who was it that said the true mark of an educated person was that they admitted how little they know?

[Haruko]

Who was it that said the true mark of an educated person was that they admitted how little they know?

"True mark" reminded me of this quote:

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

-- Aristotle

Perhaps you mean this one:

"Wisdom is knowing that you don't know."

-- Socrates

If not, close enough, I guess.

[darthbob88]

According to legend, Socrates stated that if he was the wisest man in Athens, it's only because he is aware he knows nothing. That's a stupid example, though.

Most people with graduate degrees that I know seem to feel that you go to college to find out how little you really know, and that when you get your Phony Doctorate, you realize you know nothing. (Nothing against PhDs, utmost respect for them)

My personal favorite is one from Bertrand Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

"How come he didn't put 'I think' at the end of it?" - Anonymous

[Haruko]

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

Nitpick:

Are you certain of its phrasing? I am aware of that quote but have it this way:

"This is the greatest tragedy; the illiterate, uneduacted masses are so sure and certain of themselves and the educated, literate ones are so full of doubt"

-- Bertrand Russell

Whatever, the point is made.

[darthbob88]

Haruko: I am definitely uncertain of the phrasing. I stole it from somebody's sig anyhow. Except for that spelling error, I feel that your phrasing is likely to be more accurate.

[Magus]

I'd actually forgo an analogy altogether, since its effectiveness hinges on the person believing you to begin with - when they evidently don't. It's difficult to draw parallels if the parallels are precisely the subject of the debate.

Rather, if I were you I'd give a very cursory overview of, say, relativity theory. If they're still with you somewhat after that, smile and point out that that's the easy stuff.

[Darth Wong]

The problem is that even the most complex theory can be distilled into an explanation that the layman can grasp. But it's like the difference between knowing in principle that a house is made of nails and wood and plumbing and electrical wires, and actually knowing how to build and wire a house.

[Surlethe]

The problem is that even the most complex theory can be distilled into an explanation that the layman can grasp. But it's like the difference between knowing in principle that a house is made of nails and wood and plumbing and electrical wires, and actually knowing how to build and wire a house.

Is there a quantitative analogy for the difference? I.e., it takes this much knowledge to grasp the principle, and this much knowledge to know how to build the house?

I'd actually forgo an analogy altogether, since its effectiveness hinges on the person believing you to begin with - when they evidently don't. It's difficult to draw parallels if the parallels are precisely the subject of the debate.

The idea is just to be able to show someone who's feeling anti-elitist just how little he knows about a certain area compared to the experts in the field. So, I don't think the point will be contested; I'm just looking for a form that any given person would be able to grasp.

[aerius]

Here's a baseball, it represents what you know about science. The Earth you're standing on? That's everything we know about science so far. Though with some of the people I know I'd probably use a marble or a BB, they're kinda dumb.

[Darth Wong]

Here's a good analogy. You know how a car works, right? Gasoline vapour goes into the combustion chamber, spark plug, crankshaft, pistons, transmission, etc? Good. OK, now design a car.

What most people know about science is like what most people know about cars. Hell, even a skilled auto mechanic or customizer would be totally out of his league when trying to design an engine from scratch. All they do is pick parts from catalogues; they never had any clue how to design those parts. And what about the complex materials used to make them? Do you know how to make steel alloys? How long to cool them? How high to heat them when you're doing the heat treat? How to control porosity during the casting process? Did you know that headlight lenses have a prescription, like eyeglasses? How would the average auto mechanic go about calculating the physics of the crumple zones in order to meet safety standards?

And this is just a car, which is absurdly simple compared to, say, a nuclear reactor. But people figure they know all about nuclear reactors because someone told them "the basic concept". Well the basic concept may make you FEEL like you know how things work, but it's like knowing the principle of how a car works. It's a miniscule fraction of the knowledge you need in order to design the thing from the ground up.

[ANGELUS]

Here's a baseball, it represents what you know about science. The Earth you're standing on? That's everything we know about science so far. Though with some of the people I know I'd probably use a marble or a BB, they're kinda dumb.

The problem if you tell them something like that is that they will feel insulted and will be less willing to accept what you are saying. They will become deffensive and shut their ears to anything you have to say.

[Darth Wong]

Here's a baseball, it represents what you know about science. The Earth you're standing on? That's everything we know about science so far. Though with some of the people I know I'd probably use a marble or a BB, they're kinda dumb.

That's not a useful analogy; it's more like one of Jesus' parables. It only works if the person accepts your authority and doesn't question your claims.

[General Zod]

How about building a computer from nothing? I mean literally, no pre-manufactured parts or anything. I find it easy to take the already assembled parts and plug them into the sockets they go in to get a computer working, even though this took months to learn how to do properly. On the other hand, I'd be completely clueless as to what you have to do to design a computer from essentially nothing with only a minimal grasp of higher math and engineering principles.

[Darth Wong]

How about building a computer from nothing? I mean literally, no pre-manufactured parts or anything. I find it easy to take the already assembled parts and plug them into the sockets they go in to get a computer working, even though this took months to learn how to do properly. On the other hand, I'd be completely clueless as to what you have to do to design a computer from essentially nothing with only a minimal grasp of higher math and engineering principles.

That's not a bad idea.

"You know a lot about computers, right? You consider yourself pretty knowledgeable? You know the basics of how they work? OK, you have six months to design and fabricate a CPU. Try to make it at least as powerful as an old Intel 386 processor, circa the early 1990s. Ready, set, and GO!"

[FSTargetDrone]

"You know a lot about computers, right? You consider yourself pretty knowledgeable? You know the basics of how they work? OK, you have six months to design and fabricate a CPU. Try to make it at least as powerful as an old Intel 386 processor, circa the early 1990s. Ready, set, and GO!"

Do we get the raw materials in appropriate amounts piled in front of us, or do we have to start mining gold, copper and produce other metals, fabricate plastics, glass, etc. etc...

[aerius]

How about building a computer from nothing? I mean literally, no pre-manufactured parts or anything.

Forget a computer, just trying to figure out any of the IC chips in there takes more knowledge than most people will ever have. I specialized in hardware design for my Computer Science degree and even I can barely understand the damn things. About the furthest I got was figuring out how to lay down all the traces on a circuitboard for say, a soundcard. Even that takes tons of knowledge about dielectric constants, capacitive coupling & crosstalk, inductive losses, timing issues, proper grounding, and a hundred other such things which people don't have a clue about. It's mindboggling.

Even with something as simple as a vacuum tube or a single transistor, there's more physics & math going on than the average person can understand. Just trying to build a single working transistor or vacuum tube from scratch will be next to impossible for Joe Blow. Build a 2SK1815 transistor or a 6P5 vacuum tube. Ain't gonna happen.

[Darth Wong]

Basically, I think we've hit on the best approach. Use technology as an analogy for science. It's not too hard to show people how the world of technology is enormously vast and complex and that they understand only a tiny bit of it, yet they can still believe they understand how things work. And science is exactly the same way. The best thing about this technique is that science and technology are already interconnected in the mind of the average person anyway, so you're not likely to get people objecting that it's totally different.

[Admiral Valdemar]

When I was little, I had one of those 500-in-1 electrical laboratory kits, since I wasn't too keen on chemistry back then. I leapt in at the deep end to do some of the more advanced wiring set-ups in it, you know, making simply machines you'd see in the house like a timer or light detector. It took me hours just to master the way the electronics was wired-up to make something as basic as a counter, letalone a random number generator. I cannot fathom how hard it is to, say, construct the basic underpinnings of a modern CPU and then write software that runs the thing smoothly.

That little quest of curiosity pretty much summed up how much more vast a single subject like basic electronics can be. The thought of theoretical physics would hurt my mind.

[FSTargetDrone]

That little quest of curiosity pretty much summed up how much more vast a single subject like basic electronics can be. The thought of theoretical physics would hurt my mind.

And you were provided with the materials. I'm not sure how many of us could even fashion some wire let alone anything more complicated.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Making a basic conductor is easy. Just use strips of foil or a bent coat hanger. Making them into flexible, low-resistance, anti-corrosive lengths of materials with cotton fibre level fineness and numbering in the hundreds is a tad more tricky.

Then you've got to make capacitors, transformers, resistors, diodes, AND/OR/XOR gates, LED cells etc. etc.

[Darth Wong]

The most annoying thing about people who don't understand how little they know about science is that they usually wax poetic about how little scientists know about the universe.

In other words, Joe Blow recognizes that there is a vast amount of information out there which scientists still do not have. But he fails to recognize that his own personal knowledge is vastly inferior to that which scientists do know.

[General Soontir Fel]

How about using software as an analogy? Sure, the average person can learn to write simple programs (text processing, simple calculations, etc.) relatively quickly. Point that out (they might even know how to do that themselves, heck, I knew how to do that in Middle school), and then point out that:

1) They're writing in a high level language like C++ or Java, which does a lot of work for them. If you know an assembly language, you can appreciate this.
2) They're using a specially designed editor, which makes it easy to spot mistakes in the code. Try debugging with a standard text editor... (I've had to do that, and it sucked.)
3) They're using a compiler, and they really have no clue what it actually does.
4) They're using an operating system.

What science knows is how to take a computer with nothing on it (just hardware) and get it to do everything it can. What the average person knows is how to write Java console text processing programs.

[kheegster]

Here's a simple analogy that I like to use. It takes slightly less than a decade to go from starting an undergrad degree to finishing a PhD in a highly specialised, narrow field.

That's just slightly less than the amount of time between elementary school and finishing high school, and that's not taking into account that in university I've worked far harder than I have ever did in elementary or secondary education.

So Joe Sixpack should accept that the gap of knowledge between him and a qualified scientist is on par with that between him and a 7 year old kid, if not more.

[Ariphaos]

That's not a bad idea.

"You know a lot about computers, right? You consider yourself pretty knowledgeable? You know the basics of how they work? OK, you have six months to design and fabricate a CPU. Try to make it at least as powerful as an old Intel 386 processor, circa the early 1990s. Ready, set, and GO!"

That's a little bit unfair, since that was done by a rather large design team. Though if you don't care what the instruction set is, and give them access to a suitable fab, anyone who's earned their computer engineering or science degree ought to be able to replicate any specific part of a pre-OOe processor in six month's time (though no doubt some FPU instructions would be difficult. Fortunately the 386 had no such thing).

Hell for kicks I took Labview and started using the transistor components to make a little processor... Slow as hell but it was amusing.

That, of course, is the easy part. Some of the most difficult parts of it involve timing, power distribution, and making it all work together. Some would call that a wicked sort of puzzle, but hey.