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    $\begingroup$ note the irony of your last question. You make a teleological statement about evolution -- a common mistake of pseudoscience ;). $\endgroup$ – Artem Kaznatcheev Aug 16 '12 at 20:47
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    $\begingroup$ pseudoscience psychology / wikipedia $\endgroup$ – vzn Feb 12 '14 at 18:55
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    $\begingroup$ @forbidden-overseer: some do help and work for people and there are gaps in science. There is an element of art to life that has real outcomes and can not always be organized in thought. $\endgroup$ – Greg McNulty Feb 13 '14 at 4:58
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    $\begingroup$ extra credit for writing an answer that is itself a believable pseudoscientific theory $\endgroup$ – John Berryman Jul 31 '15 at 3:58



At a fundamental level, science is about explanation (and sometimes using that explanation to make predictions). Thus, to most people, science is useless unless they understand the story it tells. The problem with modern science is that to have a good grasp of its explanatory power, you need a lot of (often difficult) background. As you gain this background, you develop what Feynman would call the most fundamental skill in science: always questioning, being able to say "I don't know", and to hold contrasting ideas together. If you don't invest in acquiring this background, most of science seems like witchcraft passed down by ivory-tower academics in funny gowns and hats.





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    $\begingroup$ Prediction is mandatory, a nice story is not. A nice story to help understand is strongly recommended, sure. But science can proceed without. E.g., quantum mechanics as seen by Bohr. Without the ability to make predictions, science is just another narrative. $\endgroup$ – Javier Rodriguez Laguna Oct 14 '12 at 20:30
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    $\begingroup$ I'm wandering if this desire for an "explanation" plagues scientists as well, only in the form of "publication bias", where positive explanations are far more likely to get published than "I tried, but still don't know" ones. $\endgroup$ – Alex Stone Nov 3 '12 at 7:40
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The occasion of governmental

  • lying,
  • hiding of technology, and
  • corruption,



Taking Up John Berryman's challenge in the Comment to the Question:
Most people do not develop mentally past the Concrete Operations stage or early Formal Operations (Piaget). People with this (very common and normal) level of mental development do not reason well in abstract terms and cannot do advanced symbolic manipulations. They are prone to the many Cognitive Biases and other types of fallacy because they cannot see how proper reasoning is different from the fallacies and biases. (Indeed, if everyone could reason properly, the biases would not exist.)

So, like the common tendency to need glasses to see well, and the likelihood of having crooked teeth or getting cataracts, these are just normal situations that render many people unable to reason as needed to understand science. No amount of 'splaining' or 'edumication' will help.

People usually stop developing mentally when they finish school, unless they are unusually motivated to keep studying something out of interest or have very stimulating companions. (Note that this is not to say that anyone cannot develop farther mentally due to some sort of deficiency, merely that they do not, out of life choice and habit. So don't call me a bigot!)


protected by Artem Kaznatcheev Apr 13 '14 at 0:51


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