Thursday, June 09, 2005
What Do Your Misguided Beliefs Cost You?
Evangelical Outpost had an interesting post the other day that was about stem cells. Good post, but I found it particularly intriguing how it began.
Why does the press always report bad news? Because it sells! Therefore, in order to live with themselves, they have to come to believe the world is a truly rotten place and every administration is there to pull something over on the country.
Why does junk science persist? Because people are willing to pay for it!
As bloggers, we need to examine this concept carefully. Why do we blog, and why do we blog about what we blog about? Most of us don't see a dime, but there is a benefit to it -- community, some meek form of fame, emotional ventilation.... Does that affect our blogging? Should it affect our blogging?
I think these question will make us all better bloggers.
Stress causes ulcers.That is so true about so many things. Why does the perception that obesity kills persist in spite of the evidence? Because there is a multi-billion dollar industry devoted to helping people loose weight. If that perception (belief) changed, lots of people would have to find a new way to make a living. Doctors would lose face because they could no longer tell someone "why" they had a heart attack. Airlines would have to build bigger seats, cutting passenger loads, reducing margins on a given flight. Need I go on?
Until a few decades ago, almost everyone ? even medical experts ? considered that simple claim to be true. Even after Drs. J. Robin Warren and Barry J. Marshall discovered that the main culprit was not stress but bacteria, few people were convinced enough to change their opinion.
Driven to frustration by the refusal of his colleagues to accept the conclusion, Dr. Marshall used his own body as a test case and drank a beakerful of Helicobacter pylori. The nasty bacterial brew did indeed cause an ulcer and two weeks later Marshall began taking the antibiotic tinidazole. His symptoms resolved within twenty-four hours.
Like most of us, Marshall's fellow doctors held beliefs that were false. But because they did not themselves suffer from ulcers, it was a comparatively "low stakes" belief; the price they paid for believing it was relatively low. They only changed their minds after it became worth it to do so.
How do we decide whether we should change our minds about a belief? "Economics provides a simple, almost trivial sounding, answer," says economist David Cox. "Believe something when the benefits of believing outweigh the costs, otherwise don't."
Why does the press always report bad news? Because it sells! Therefore, in order to live with themselves, they have to come to believe the world is a truly rotten place and every administration is there to pull something over on the country.
Why does junk science persist? Because people are willing to pay for it!
As bloggers, we need to examine this concept carefully. Why do we blog, and why do we blog about what we blog about? Most of us don't see a dime, but there is a benefit to it -- community, some meek form of fame, emotional ventilation.... Does that affect our blogging? Should it affect our blogging?
I think these question will make us all better bloggers.
