The Ladder of Scientific Understanding

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

There are three or four levels of scientific understanding. The first level is description say I describe what's out there just like Aristotle described beetles and all the bugs in the world. Explanation is a second level but the explanation is post hoc it's like oh I explain things that have already happened. A third level which is prediction I predict that if we do X Y will happen so for instance if we can go to the moon we probably understand gravity If we can nuclear reactor we probably understand you know nuclear physics pretty well. This has been recognized for a long time now, the full full understanding is if you can just create diff to create the effect That's what the full to highest level

When facing a novel and uncertain situation, the brain secretly disambiguates the ambiguous without letting you know it was ever uncertain in the first place, leading people who disambiguate differently to seem iNsAnE.

This episode is about why we so often don't understand why we disagree, which leads us to disagree even more, and we explore that through the science behind The Dress. We look into why some people see it as black and blue, others see it as white and gold, and how the scientific investigation of why that is led to the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs, and how the scientific investigation of socks and Crocs may be, as one researcher explains, the nuclear bomb of cognitive neuroscience.

- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com

- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart