Scientist Explains Why Politics Makes You Dumb - FutureIQ

6,086 views Wait, is this logic right? • Apr 23, 2024

Slog Reference: How politics is making us dumb

Description

Is politics good or bad for you? I’d say bad. Because the data shows that smart people make dumb decisions when there is politics involved. Politics literally makes you dumb. Why do I think this way and why might politics have already affected many of your decisions? Find it out in this episode of the FutureIQ podcast.

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

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Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

More videos for you:
Group conformity: https://youtu.be/_XhIECCt_P8
New is making you crazy: https://youtu.be/YYr7qNnOPDg

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Transcript

- did you know that discussing politics makes you dumb it makes your brain function worse it makes your thinking sloppy not just that everyone knows that politics makes your logic bad but it also makes your maths bad but how does politics make your maths bad and your logic worse and your brain dumb naven the nation wants to know well good thing the nation will be given research results okay so there is research by Dan Kahan a scientist who works on this topic and uh let's look at what this research is okay all right so the numbers you see on the screen are talking about the effectiveness of a skin cream for improving a rash for people who are listening to this the

0m 49s image that naen is talking about you'll find a link to it in the description it's a fairly U big image with with multiple numbers so just take a look at it when you get a chance the First Column is people whose rash got better and the second column is people whose rash didn't get better okay so basically top row 223 is the number of patients who used the skin cream and their rash got better 75 is the number of people who used the skin cream but the rash didn't get better 107 is the patients who didn't use the skin cream but still their rash got better and 21 is the ones who didn't use the cream and the rash

1m 30s obviously didn't get better right in his research danahan showed this table to subjects and asked them whether based on this data the skin cream worked or did not work unfortunately most people got it wrong but the people who were good at math they got it right okay just for the understanding of the audience what is the right answer here the expected answer is that the skin cream doesn't work because the percentage of people who got better using it is lower than the percentage of people who got better not using it and that is the right answer according to the math involved in the situation um but I'm guessing that most people probably didn't get the

2m 15s answer right because they did not understand this math B and the science and you know the general understanding of randomized control trials and how they work and what's the statistics behind yeah and and the general impression we have is that if we increase people's awareness if we teach them about the science involved and if we teach them the necessary math once they are well informed then they will reach the correct decision which is also part of what we are trying to do here with this channel we are trying to educate people more about science and math not in this episode this episode is about something else okay all right the research continues oh okay he took the

2m 54s same table okay and he showed it to people but this time instead of saying that it is a skin cream used for improving a rash he said it is gun control laws used for reducing crime top row is states where the gun control laws were implemented and bottom row is where it was not implemented would you like to guess what happened I'm guessing all logic went out of the window basically the people who knew the math right and who got it right now started getting it wrong oh and the reason is because gun control laws are a heavily political issue in us where this research was conducted Republicans are pro guns and Democrats are pro gun control right so what

3m 46s happened was that as soon as the problem was changed being good at math didn't help anymore right the people good at math were as bad at this as the people not good at math in fact what determined whether you're going to get it correct or wrong is your politics whether you like this result or you don't right that is so strange right I mean this particular one liberals got this problem wrong because it says gun control doesn't help and the conservatives got it right but when he flipped the numbers now the Liberals got it right and the conservatives got it wrong right so it was basically about looking for the results you wanted absolutely but and here is the most

4m 29s interesting part okay the better somebody was at math the more they got it wrong what okay the smarter you are the Dumber politics makes you how Okay this this blows my mind how so obviously this is a mind-blowing point so Kahan did further research to try to understand this better Kahan had another scientific study to understand this part okay okay in this study what he did was ask a lot of questions to the subject objects to try to understand two things one is how well read they are with respect to science so scientific literacy and second is how well they understand the risks of climate change okay okay and he did a correlation and he found that the people who are better

5m 18s read have more scientific literacy are worse at understanding the risks of climate change okay what now why does this happen okay now keep in mind that both sides have lots of facts and figures and graphs and charts okay I understand the scientifically wrong side has mostly wrong or irrelevant data yes but still there's lots of data and there are lots of so-called studies right okay and one thing we like to say on this channel is believing is seeing right so if you believe that climate change is not a problem right you will only trust the data that says climate change is not a problem and you will ignore the data that says climate change is a problem

6m 01s right and the better your scientific literacy where we are defining literacy as just having read a lot right not having really understood it yeah so better your scientific literacy more charts and graphs you can Trot out to support your ideology but why not listen to The Experts just that much will do right right good thing you asked this question handed another study on this okay obviously the same question got asked why don't we just trust the experts right question is which expert to believe both sides have experts and he did another experiment right people were given information about accomplished scientists okay their biographies their achievements their credentials and a summary of their results okay okay then people were asked

6m 56s is this person an expert would you like to guess what happened uh based on the summary of their achievements and their biography no wrong direction people looked at the result if it didn't agree with their politics they said this guy is not an expert and if it agreed with their politics they said this is an expert but scientific results if the result says climate change is bad not an expert if the result says climate change is good this an expert right so believing is seeing and people will always be dumb please please don't tell me that people will only in matters that get politicized right there is disagreement on climate change in the US there is disagreement on Homeopathy in

7m 39s India because these are politicized topics but there is no disagreement on Is drinking bad for you is junk food bad for you there there is agreement because these are neutral topics they don't attack your political identity right so but why are some topics neutral and other topics so politically what makes topics neutral and what makes other topics politicized right so it doesn't start like that okay but political leaders are always trying to find issues in which you can make a big Us Versus Them speech you want to get your people angry about something do you know why because when you are angry you bind more closely to the people closest to you your tribe yeah either when you are

8m 24s angry or when you are afraid so a lot of what politicians do are trying to make you angry or afraid of them for that you need some topic right and you need new topics every time so you politicize the issues right you say that this is an us topic and they don't believe in it yeah create two tribes essentially every everything comes down to tribalization create US versus them and then what happens is that the them even if they didn't believe in it initially they start seeing that this tribe doesn't believe in it so we have to take the opposite and then it's you know it's called a shelling sort maybe someday we will talk about shelling

9m 04s sorts but yeah that's how it happens right but why does everything come down to tribalization how does tribalization work so well well quote unquote well because Evolution has taught humans to be tribal okay okay people want to be with their tribe right in the African Savana right we are back if you were not part of a group m you know what you were called uh dead yes absolutely I mean all the other animals were faster than us had better claws better teeth and if we were not part of a group we were dead dead either you would become prey to a predator or you wouldn't be able to catch or hunt or find your food right so you had to be

9m 53s part of a group now there are actual experiments when we have done an episode which show that when humans are forced to choose between being right versus being with the group where it means that being right means you're going to get thrown out of the group people will choose being wrong but with the group right so we are tribal people and that is like one of the most fundamental things about how our brain works right is true is true so it looks like the answer to this entire conundrum about politics making us dumb is to not be smart it is okay to be smart just don't be informed what about political things right because the political parts are

10m 40s going to make the more informed you are it is going to make you dumb right okay because the old theory used to be that the more informed you are the more you know what's going on in the world the more news you read the better off you are and you will take better decisions but what this episode shows and we have another episode on why new is bad for you yeah is that the more you get informed about politicized issues you are going to make Dumber decisions right so stay away from those things right in fact for such issues it is better to have experts make the decision okay but we don't choose the experts right because we choose the

11m 24s wrong experts so institutions should be choosing the experts right that is why RBI works so well I mean people try to politicize it but by and large it's an institution of experts chosen through a uh you know neutral mechanism and that's why it works better so we should have more professionalism and less popularism H so basically depoliticized institutions is what you're recommending yes absolutely yes yes not politicized institutions but also I don't want to say completely that don't get involved in politics yeah because it's difficult given the current climate and whatnot remember uh I mean we have an episode on preference falsification which is that if you just hide your true feelings what might happen is that you'll end up in a

12m 11s situation where your entire tribe internally they believe X but externally they think everyone else believes y so everyone believes Y and you don't want that to happen if so everybody hides their true feelings and goes with the flow then the flow might not be what everybody wants exactly so you should gently disagree once in a while okay and you might find others who are on your side okay and over time then the preferences can shift or the preferences can become depoliticized if your tribe half the people feel this way and how the people feel the other way then you realize it's not a political issue for us right okay question here is it better to wait for the issue to get

12m 55s depoliticized or is it better to keep disagreeing gently and sort of try and depoliticize the issue yourself see I feel that my 973 rule should be applied here right for 97% of the things let it go it is not important enough right but for the 3% that are really really important to you there you should speak out so whenever it comes to Homeopathy we will always always say it's a pseudo science it is not it's not whatever please don't don't just don't so just to summarize the episode I think smart people become dumb when politics gets involved smart people on the other side of your politics right just to be aware of what is going on

13m 43s that's the way to not become dumb like everyone else and if you're worried about what becoming dumb like everyone else causes then we have an episode lined up for you check it out it's about group conformism wonderful episode um shant naen thank you future thanq