Political Blindness
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Political Blindness
People who are numerate are good with numbers: it’s the definition of numeracy. It doesn’t mean they are technical math wizzes as such. But political beliefs can make the numerate numerically impaired.
The evidence comes to us via the popular YouTube science explainer channel Veritasium.
The design of the study furnishes a nice contrast between two topics. The more numerate a person is, the better she or he is at understanding the numbers attached to a fictional study about a face cream product. This is as we should expect.
But when the same numbers are presented as coming from a study about a politically relevant topic, the more numerate a person is, the worse he or she is at understanding numbers that undermine his or her political views.
It turns out that this is one of the easiest things in the world to diagnose—in all those people who are on the other political team. In one’s self? Maybe not so much. And the smarter a person is, the easier it is for that person to explain away evidence that runs contrary to one’s political convictions.
As Richard Feynman said regarding scientists holds more generally: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
I could try to prove it to you, but if you’re smart enough, you either already believe it, or else you don’t believe it and you’ll never be persuaded by anything evidence.
Good morning. Cold here, with just enough snow to look pretty.
What I noticed in the video was that, in neither case - skin cream or gun control - does the data show that the variable *caused* the result. In the case of gun control, the people who said things like, "There are a lot of different kinds of crime, not just with guns," are correct.
One lesson, then, is that statistics usually don't have the explanatory power that those deploying them are claiming they do.
About ten minutes in, the presenter mentioned that it would be beneficial to avoid using buzzwords and "high concept," and just deal with practicalities. The example was flooding in Florida. Instead of arguing about whether it's global warming or climate change or the sacrificial victims weren't really virgins, just say, "We have a growing problem with flooding. What can we do to reduce the damage it is causing?"
It reminded me of a situation with the Envirothon group. As we were planning the testing event we had yesterday, people brought up a lot of different questions: how should we arrange the tables, what was the time limit, one subject at a time?, what about breaks? Some of questions were settled by considering the circumstances of the real competition, including "no additional time."
Thinking about some of the students who don't read as well as others, one of the parents suggested that, if asked, an adult could read the question to the student. The argument was that, in competition, they will be in teams, and the question will be read by a stronger reader. It seemed reasonable enough, but when I mentioned it to Brenda, she gave me a rant about DEI. "She's always bringing up all this DEI stuff. It makes me so mad!" She also had a reasonable counter-argument, which was that it would be disruptive to the other students, and that the group-test format is harder for a lot of the students, because they all want to read the questions and answers, so they're climbing over each other trying to see.
I said, "Okay," and after more complaints about DEI and unreasonableness of some parents, I said, "When I said, 'Okay," I meant it's okay. I'll tell her we're not going to do it that way."
The point of this rambling anecdote is that the question of, "Would it be a good idea to *do this*?" isn't helped by throwing in DEI as a high concept. It's a practical question. We were talking last night about how to accommodate one of Brenda's sons, who has a very heavy schedule of co-enrolled college classes and swimming practice. That's just as much an individual accommodation as considering a student's reading abilities, but it never occurred to her to call that DEI.