[Laughter]
we aren’t encouraged to use our
imagination very often and I think we
should be this became real to me with my
friend well we’ll call her patty and
Patty and I used to go hiking together
and she would complain about back pain
and she would tell me about the
different ways that she would treat that
back pain which included going to an
acupuncturist seeing an herbalist even
some homeopathy and by the time she went
to a doctor the tumor was so large there
was very little she could do and very
little the doctors could do and she
passed away shortly thereafter now we
are all like patty we’re going through
our lives trying to find the truth and
being hampered by our human limitations
and our human biases and these biases
are go by the name of confirmation bias
either-or thinking and correlation
causation errors and these biases are
not the result of lack of knowledge they
are the result of the lack of
imagination Carl Sagan said we wish to
pursue the truth no matter where it
leads and to find the truth we must have
imagination and skepticism both but in
order to follow Carl Sagan’s advice we
need a guide a guide to proper thinking
a guide to balance the imagination and
the skepticism to find that guide we go
back 200 years to these two gentlemen
Reverend Thomas Bayes and pierre-simon
Laplace Reverend Bayes wrote down the
guide to proper thinking also known as
Bayes theorem Laplace independently
derived it and applied it to many
different fields in biology and physics
and finance and sociology in the form of
this guide is the following it says that
our beliefs should scale with how well a
particular X planation fits the data and
how plausible that explanation is in the
first place that part of it is pretty
intuitive but our belief should also be
scaled down by the number of plausible
alternative explanations
for the data and this is where
imagination comes into play so how might
this work imagine that you have a
headache and you take a homeopathic
remedy and three hours later your
headache is gone how well does the
explanation that the homeopathic remedy
fit the data
it’s got rid of the headache fits it
pretty well but we shouldn’t stop there
the guide to proper thinking says you
should use your imagination come up with
alternatives maybe you took something in
addition to that remedy maybe you took
an aspirin or maybe you took a nap
maybe the being treated by an expert is
soothing enough that your headache goes
away because of that maybe headaches go
away on their own sometimes the belief
in the original explanation should be
scaled down by these plausible
alternative explanations I’ll take a
totally different example tornado counts
have increased over the past 60 years
one explanation is climate change
temperature increase may increase the
severity of storms may increase the
number of storms but the guide to proper
thinking says you shouldn’t stop with
with the first explanation you should
use your imagination and come up with
the alternatives
perhaps we are counting more tornadoes
because there are more people perhaps
the technology is better and we count
more tornadoes that way the guide to
property also suggests that we don’t
even stop there with the alternatives we
need to use our imagination in the next
step to see which of those alternatives
might actually be true Matt Dillahunty
says I want to believe as many true
things and as few false things as
possible and if we use this balance
between imagination and skepticism we
can then improve our beliefs and believe
more true things this is the core of
scientific thinking it’s the use of
imagination and skepticism now it
doesn’t have to always be really big
topics I think everyone should make a
habit of using their imagination and
skepticism
so I was working with a student or
sitting at a table and we’re working on
a project and I looked up at the at the
wall there was a clock there and I
noticed that the clock was broken it was
saying the wrong time and the second
hand was being erratic and I pointed
this out to the student and she looked
up at it and was like no I don’t think
that the clock is completely broken and
it’s not showing the right time but she
said it’s taking out the right amount of
time it’s just doing it erratically it
would take one second and then wait for
three and then jump three and wait for
two seconds and jump two seconds but
it’s clicking out the right amount of
time and I looked at it again I was like
no that clock is broken now we had two
alternatives and in this case I was
using someone else’s imagination to come
up with what the alternatives and I
wasn’t going to stop with my own
explanation now we had to and I wasn’t
going to stop simply by listing off
alternatives we had to use our
imagination to come up with a way to
test it so to make it a little bit more
interesting I pulled a dollar out of my
wallet and put it down and I said I bet
you it’s my explain explanation is right
so we both sat there staring at a broken
clock with our iPhones out timing it for
a couple of minutes and I lost my dollar
it was in fact ticking out the right
amount of time but I was happy to lose
that dollar because now I knew one more
true thing and one fewer false thing so
I have a call to action for everyone
enjoy skepticism look for ways to apply
it use your imagination and come up with
alternatives don’t take the first
explanation don’t even take the second
explanation and and when your
imagination might be limited use others
find alternative viewpoints find
alternative people and let them
challenge your beliefs and I believe
that by applying imagination and
skepticism both you can be a better
person and the world would be a better
place thank you very much
we aren’t encouraged to use our
imagination very often and I think we
should be this became real to me with my
friend well we’ll call her patty and
Patty and I used to go hiking together
and she would complain about back pain
and she would tell me about the
different ways that she would treat that
back pain which included going to an
acupuncturist seeing an herbalist even
some homeopathy and by the time she went
to a doctor the tumor was so large there
was very little she could do and very
little the doctors could do and she
passed away shortly thereafter now we
are all like patty we’re going through
our lives trying to find the truth and
being hampered by our human limitations
and our human biases and these biases
are go by the name of confirmation bias
either-or thinking and correlation
causation errors and these biases are
not the result of lack of knowledge they
are the result of the lack of
imagination Carl Sagan said we wish to
pursue the truth no matter where it
leads and to find the truth we must have
imagination and skepticism both but in
order to follow Carl Sagan’s advice we
need a guide a guide to proper thinking
a guide to balance the imagination and
the skepticism to find that guide we go
back 200 years to these two gentlemen
Reverend Thomas Bayes and pierre-simon
Laplace Reverend Bayes wrote down the
guide to proper thinking also known as
Bayes theorem Laplace independently
derived it and applied it to many
different fields in biology and physics
and finance and sociology in the form of
this guide is the following it says that
our beliefs should scale with how well a
particular X planation fits the data and
how plausible that explanation is in the
first place that part of it is pretty
intuitive but our belief should also be
scaled down by the number of plausible
alternative explanations
for the data and this is where
imagination comes into play so how might
this work imagine that you have a
headache and you take a homeopathic
remedy and three hours later your
headache is gone how well does the
explanation that the homeopathic remedy
fit the data
it’s got rid of the headache fits it
pretty well but we shouldn’t stop there
the guide to proper thinking says you
should use your imagination come up with
alternatives maybe you took something in
addition to that remedy maybe you took
an aspirin or maybe you took a nap
maybe the being treated by an expert is
soothing enough that your headache goes
away because of that maybe headaches go
away on their own sometimes the belief
in the original explanation should be
scaled down by these plausible
alternative explanations I’ll take a
totally different example tornado counts
have increased over the past 60 years
one explanation is climate change
temperature increase may increase the
severity of storms may increase the
number of storms but the guide to proper
thinking says you shouldn’t stop with
with the first explanation you should
use your imagination and come up with
the alternatives
perhaps we are counting more tornadoes
because there are more people perhaps
the technology is better and we count
more tornadoes that way the guide to
property also suggests that we don’t
even stop there with the alternatives we
need to use our imagination in the next
step to see which of those alternatives
might actually be true Matt Dillahunty
says I want to believe as many true
things and as few false things as
possible and if we use this balance
between imagination and skepticism we
can then improve our beliefs and believe
more true things this is the core of
scientific thinking it’s the use of
imagination and skepticism now it
doesn’t have to always be really big
topics I think everyone should make a
habit of using their imagination and
skepticism
so I was working with a student or
sitting at a table and we’re working on
a project and I looked up at the at the
wall there was a clock there and I
noticed that the clock was broken it was
saying the wrong time and the second
hand was being erratic and I pointed
this out to the student and she looked
up at it and was like no I don’t think
that the clock is completely broken and
it’s not showing the right time but she
said it’s taking out the right amount of
time it’s just doing it erratically it
would take one second and then wait for
three and then jump three and wait for
two seconds and jump two seconds but
it’s clicking out the right amount of
time and I looked at it again I was like
no that clock is broken now we had two
alternatives and in this case I was
using someone else’s imagination to come
up with what the alternatives and I
wasn’t going to stop with my own
explanation now we had to and I wasn’t
going to stop simply by listing off
alternatives we had to use our
imagination to come up with a way to
test it so to make it a little bit more
interesting I pulled a dollar out of my
wallet and put it down and I said I bet
you it’s my explain explanation is right
so we both sat there staring at a broken
clock with our iPhones out timing it for
a couple of minutes and I lost my dollar
it was in fact ticking out the right
amount of time but I was happy to lose
that dollar because now I knew one more
true thing and one fewer false thing so
I have a call to action for everyone
enjoy skepticism look for ways to apply
it use your imagination and come up with
alternatives don’t take the first
explanation don’t even take the second
explanation and and when your
imagination might be limited use others
find alternative viewpoints find
alternative people and let them
challenge your beliefs and I believe
that by applying imagination and
skepticism both you can be a better
person and the world would be a better
place thank you very much
Please follow and like us: