Minding Your Mind When Politicians Speak
Election season is here, in the US. Whenever it is and wherever you are, activists, politicians, and talking heads are going to tell us how things work, what’s wrong, and why their solutions are right. Most people have some sense that politicians in particular sell whatever their audience is buying. What sometimes gets lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday life is this: People in the same part of the political spectrum as you are doing the same. This is a big problem that only science literacy and some awareness of how our minds work can solve.
Science Literacy, Statistics, and Critical Thinking
It just takes common sense to understand poverty. Right? Common sense can also tell us how to deal with violent crime. Right?
Those are tempting ideas, but they don’t necessarily hold up. Firstly, common sense is more of a set of prejudices, assumptions, vague “life lessons” and notions that make a person think he or she knows how the world works.
Science is about understanding how the world works, regardless of what your own eyes and ears or your upbringing make you think. The same observation applies whether the subject is smoking, or crime, or upward mobility.
To understand how society works, you need to:
- Think scientifically
- Understand a few things about statistics
- Practice your critical thinking skills
- Know how real researchers study things like poverty and violent crime
- Know how propagandists, pundits, and activists can use your mind against you.
The first few items on that list should be somewhat familiar even if you’ve never read this publication before. In short, scientists can help us understand social problems, social change, and so on.
While science education in the US isn’t that bad, it inevitably leaves some gaps in the average person’s understanding of how science works. How many people see a man (perhaps a woman) in a lab when they think of a scientist? Some folks picture a guy looking through a microscope or a man looking at something scientific looking on a big computer monitor. These things have something to do with science, with what scientists do, but not much.
Science, of course, is a process for understanding how the world works. Scientists use previous research and theory to make predictions about some small part of the world. They test those ideas using a wide variety of techniques. Often, they use complex and expensive equipment. Have they heard of CERN or the JWST? Those are two of many examples. But the equipment is in no sense a requirement for “doing science” no matter what the uniformed or dishonest may say.
What you might not get from some long-ago science classes is the idea that studying society is a scientific undertaking, or at least it can be. Sure, economics, psychology, and sociology are somewhat more prone to ideological or political bias than natural sciences are. Or are they? (
Some philosophers and social critics find real problems with the idea of science being a purely rational enterprise where the truth about the world is all that counts. That is a topic for another article. It should probably be an article by a writer who understands the topic better than this writer does.
Back to social sciences then.
Is the study of society even scientific? Many people would say ‘no’ and for reasons that are useful more for propaganda purposes than anything else. Back to social science…it isn’t science, for some reason, to some people. Critics could mention Marxism, or how economists can’t predict anything, or you can’t trust polls and surveys. None of those statements is accurate or helpful.
Being an informed consumer who knows about science and statistics can help. That is only a starting point, knowing if a poll is valid or if drug abuse is truly trending down. This is only a starting point. Informed consumers, and informed citizens, need to understand how they can be manipulated.
Mind Your Mind, or Someone Else Will
You will encounter people talking about rates, proportions, trends, theories, and causality. Perhaps they don’t truly understand those things. Perhaps they understand them but want to sell an idea. That’s mainly what politicians and activists do — they sell ideas.
So, let’s ease into the topic of manipulation. Most of us have better sense than to take anything from a YouTube channel called LiberalTears or a guy who screams about Blacks and Jews on 8Chan or a random woman who demands that Biden take all the guns. You can’t put much stock in what those people say. Most adults realize this, but does it matter?
Perhaps not. Here is a problem with brushing off these people — their ideas can slip past our defenses for a couple of reasons. The main one is probably a phenomenon called belief bias. Once we settle onto a belief for whatever reason, we tend to filter out information that goes against that belief. Likewise, information that shores up that belief tends to get past our defenses. Here’s an example:
Why are people poor, and why do they stay that way? We all understand that people can fall on hard times for various reasons. Are the reasons just various forms of irresponsibility? Maybe we already spend way too much on welfare.
The Black welfare queen with four kids, no man, and a late-model Cadillac is still around, some say. If you believe that the welfare system coddles scam artists and lazy people, stories that shore up that belief are likely to get your attention. Stories that undermine the idea tend to be ignored.
There’s only so much time and attention you can give various things. News about social problems or how to solve them can only take up a small portion of a person’s time. This leaves people vulnerable to getting oversimplified or deliberately misleading information on why a problem exists, what to do, whether current policies work, and so on.
Social pollution — Ideas spread from “idea factories” just as contaminants enter the air, water, and soil from factories in poorly regulated industries. That’s what is happening. People have been exposed to a steady trickle of disinformation and misinformation on how social scientists do what they do. This can be detected in statements like these:
- X is “just a theory”
- Polls can be made to say whatever you want them to say
- Anyone can get out of poverty if they want to
- More guns equals less crime
A theory in science is not an education guess or a conjecture. A theory is a well-tested explanation for how a part of the world works, to somewhat oversimplify it. A scientific theory can be tested against the real world if you understand the theory and what kinds of predictions it can make.
Polls and surveys can be more or less scientific, depending. That doesn’t change reality, which is that survey research operates according to certain standards, standards that let us be somewhat confident we’re actually learning things about the people being surveyed.
Poverty is a personal issue and a social phenomenon. A person falls into poverty for whatever reason. The economy, cultural norms, and politics can all make it easier or harder to climb out of poverty. Racist social policies may be a problem. Heavily subsidized vocational education may help a person learn a valuable trade, so they can get a good job.
The relationship between gun ownership (legal or otherwise) and crime has been studied extensively. As with most social phenomena, the connection is not a simple one. Other variables, like poverty rate, age of the population, and population density play some role in violent crime. The rate of gun ownership or the percentage of gun owners who routinely carry a gun may make a difference.
People love to read about polls, surveys, and experiments, especially when the results make them feel good about their worldview or their opinions. Politicians and pundits know this. They share information and numbers that will appeal to their audience and make their political views seem correct. Cherry picking is a big social problem.
If you liked this reminder about science, science literacy, and political propaganda, please clap and share. And consider subscribing to Social Pollution.
