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Mini: Scientific Understanding · Why We Do What We Do

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  You're listening to Why we Do what we Do. Welcome to Why we Do
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  what we Do Mini. I'm your host Abraham and I'm Shane. This is
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  our short form series where we just do a quick deep dive, a deep
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  sort of shallowish, I don't know. We do a dive on a topic,
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  and so we'll jump right in. Let's talk about science, Shane.
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  I love science. It's one of my favorite things in the world. Yes,
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  it's very good science, very cool science. Good. Now we're going
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  to talk about these there's sort of a way of describing events in the world
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  that has arranged into statements about those observations. And these scientific statements then have
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  are sort of well regarded by people. And now just go through them really
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  quickly. I think the science often, usually, or pretty much always proceeds
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  through a series of language based steps to understand some observed pattern. We've got
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  an observation, a hypothesis, a law, and a theory, and so
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  let's break down what those things are. Yes, so when we talk about
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  an observation, we're talking about seeing something right. That's really what it is.
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  We observe a medical problem, a behavior, a weird animal, a
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  weird thing, in the stars, whatever it is. So we have observed
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  whatever this phenomenon is, and we want to know more about that thing.
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  And it doesn't have to be seen, like we have people who do not
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  have vision who can participate in science any way that you can observe or measure
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  or detect something. But yes, we encounter a thing, I guess.
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  Yes, let's go with the observation that in the United States more than forty
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  eight thousand people died of gun violence in twenty twenty one. That's just an
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  observation. Yeah, I'm not making any qualitative statements about it. I'm not
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  making any judgments about it. I'm just saying that's the thing that happened.
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  More than forty eight thousand people died of gun violence in the United States in
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  twenty twenty one. That is a problem that we can detect with data.
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  I mean, that's just kind of what we're saying right now. So then
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  what happens is we go to our second step, which is that we form
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  a hypothesis about a thing. And so a hypothesis is a statement that possibly
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  explains a phenomenon. We want to explore that hypothesis a little bit, right,
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  So a hypothesis is a statement that is a tentative guess about relative factors
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  and variables that may be attributable to that observation. Right, So that's what
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  a hypothesis is. This is just sort of a tentative guess. We're just
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  sort of saying this, like, this could be what's going on here,
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  maybe the reason for the thing that we're seeing. We're on the gun violence
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  saying one may hypothesize that the reason there are so many gun related deaths is
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  because there are not enough guns, and if we had more guns, there
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  would be fewer deaths by gun violence. That's a hypothesis. We could say
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  that that might be the case of what's going on. Yeah, I mean
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  that that is a hypothesis. I'll say that good or bad or otherwise.
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  I will say that it is a hypothesis. As we go forward, though,
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  the third step is that after we encounter the observation, or we've had
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  enough observations, I should say a scientific law can be described. So a
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  law is a statement about the constant parameter associated with data collected about a phenomenon.
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  So laws are often summarized as equations. So we start kind of looking
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  at those the laws are usually some kind of there's usually a sigma involved in
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  there. There's definitely equal signs, but we have some kind of equation that
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  describes, like this, this is how we know about this thing. Here.
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  The parameter is the rules, the guidelines. Yeah. So, as
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  an example, when early aeronauts were explaining we're experimenting, not explaining, but
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  they were just experimenting with hot air balloons, they discovered that whenever a gaseous
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  element was heated, it expands. Gases expand when heated. This relationship can
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  be described as a law because it was so constant to say, whenever this
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  thing happens, this thing happens. Whenever we would apply heat to a gas,
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  the gas expands. That just happens, right, And so that was
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  consistent enough that it was just it wasn't saying why it happened. It wasn't
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  saying how it happened. It's just saying, this is a thing that seems
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  to pretty much always happen in this context. Right. And so another example
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  of that is how the law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be
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  created or destroyed. So basically energy equals energy and the equal sign is there.
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  It's not crossed out because it does equal to the same thing, so
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  you can't get rid of it. You know, the equation is always balanced,
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  is what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, and they kind of specifying
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  an internal closed system, et cetera. But you know whatever, that is
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  the law of conservation of energy, that's different. That's the whole everything in
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  the matching law. To an episode that we did recently on the matching law,
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  the states that the rate of behavior will approximately match the available rate of
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  delivered reinforcement. So there's a correspondence there. So that's that is a law
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  that states that those two things tend to go together in that way. Right.
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  And then in a twenty nineteen study, they found that for every one
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  percent that gun ownership increased, there is a point nine percent increase in the
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  rate of homicides. So they were able to describe that as a pretty clear
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  equation. Yeah. So again, it's not making any value statements about it.
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  It's not saying why or how it happens. All it is saying is
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  like, this is an observation that we made this thing happens, and this
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  thing happens, and they happened at about this rate pretty consistently. So there's
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  that, right, We need to get to signentific theory. But first we'll
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  take a quick advertisement break. Okay. So we talked about observation, then
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  we talked about a hypothesis, and then we described a law, and so
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  finally there is scientific theory, the redheaded stepchild of scientific descriptions among sort of
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  the public, not among scientists. Yeah, and how often have we heard
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  the derelict rejoinder? That's just a theory when someone is challenged with scientifically validated
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  counter evidence too often in my opinion. Yeah. In science, though,
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  a theory is a statement that describes, first of all, that summarizes an
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  enormous body of data, and it describes how and why something happened based on
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  just such overwhelming evidence that it is unlikely to be falsefied in the near future,
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  if ever. Right, So, things like stating the sun will rise
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  tomorrow, or more accurately, that the part of the Earth on which you
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  are stationed will rotate towards the Sun again within the next twenty four hours is
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  basically a theory constructed on such massively incontrovertible evidence. It's a sound as fact.
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  It's basically we know this to be true. It's as true as it
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  could possibly get at this point in time. Yes, stating that everyone who
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  lives will eventually die. It's just a theory, a theory that is so
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  well established by the evidence that we simply know that it is true. Right.
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  Evolution is so well established by data that we simply know that it's true.
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  That's why we have thumbs y'all. Climate change is so well established by
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  the data of specifically anthropogenic or human cause. Climate change is so well established
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  by the data that we simply know that it is true. Uh huh.
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  The fact that the world is spherical, Yeah, I mean it's an irregularly
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  shaped ellipsoid nerds, it's a ball floating in space. But that's actually so
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  well established by the overwhelming amount of evidence that we simply know it to be
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  true. Theory is so well established by the evidence that we simply know it
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  to be true. Right, So calling something just a theory should be one
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  of the highest forms of praise and endorsements about whatever your topic you're talking about,
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  Because if something is a theory, that means has gone through all of
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  the scientific rigor, or quite a bit of it, enough to solidify it
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  into the scientific lexicon. Yeah, basically you could say that's just a fact,
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  and you'd be saying as something as critical as saying that's just a theory.
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  Right, so someone's talking about evolution and they say that's just a theory,
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  then they basically just said that's just a fact, and you know it
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  is, it is just a fact. You're right, You're right. Good,
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  glad we're on the same page. Well, we've been talking about gun
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  violence, so I guess we may as well not leave you hangling gun death
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  violence. Unfortunately, this is where we have we sort of run out of
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  things we talked about. We have an observation, we had a hypothesis,
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  we had a what is almost a law. There's needs more data to be
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  substantiated, but you know there's data we're collected. So the issue here is
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  when we get into theory, we don't exactly know what kinds of policies or
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  laws would reduce needless deaths by guns. Some countries have worse gun violence than
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  the United States, but some have far less gun violence than the United States.
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  And unfortunately, in the United States, we can't research it because people
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  have enacted legislation to make it illegal to do research on gun violence here,
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  so we just won't know what we could possibly do about it. All we
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  have right now is our observations, our hypotheses, and our data that have
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  been collected that, as we said, are simply correlational at this point.
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  So there is certainly more to be learned, but just to say, like,
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  that's as far as it has gotten. We don't have a solution for
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  it. Sorry, it's unfortunately, but this was not an episode on gun
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  violence. This was an episode on theories and scientific understanding. And so the
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  point is a hypothesis is the point at which we know the least amount of
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  something. A law is a description about how things work that is basically always
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  true, and a theory is an explanation of phenomenons so overwhelmingly supported by evidence
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  that it is a fact. That is the fact. And so thank you
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  for listening to our mini I think that's all I got. Anything you'd like
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  to add before we le everyone go, Shane, I think we're good.
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  You know I have it on good authority. It's a theory that we're good,
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  just a fact. Great, Well, then, thank you all for
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  listening, Thank you for recording with me today. Shane. Why we do
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  what we Do Mini is out. This is Abraham, this is Shane.
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  Bye all. You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do. You
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  can learn more about this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.
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  Thanks for listening and we hope you have an awesome day