According to "The best way to win an argument", researchers found that most people tend to believe they understand how things work when in fact their understanding is only superficial and they call this phenomenon "the illusion of explanatory depth", a phenomenon that occur from our mistaken familiarity, such as the belief that we have detailed understanding of how flushing toilet work. Moreover, they found that if we notice ourselves that our understanding are superficial by trying to explain our thought to someone else, we tend to change our mind toward the opposite idea or become more moderate instead.This finding reminds me of my AEP class. As you all know, we have so many discussions in our topic we are studying and it seems that this phenomenon, the illusion of explanatory depth, happens frequently in our class without noticing. It's interesting to know that scientists also notice, study and even name this kind of phenomenon! I mean it's just a simple matter, we have disagreement, we try to give our reasons why we think like that, we try to give counter supporting ideas and end up with someone changing their sides. Well, I guess scientists just want to clarify it by experimenting. I can't imagine how teachers get through this phenomenon especially teacher in the university. They must have had suffered for a long time to answer all their student's questions.
Also, this finding reminds me of Thai's political conflict we are facing right now. Sometimes I wonder how much understanding of democracy and political issues the protester has. I have experimented once about how much understanding my friends has on government policy and I kept asking to the point that they had no idea how to answer me. I believe that most of the protester are also similar to my friends. May be more discussions about political issues between both sides can solve misunderstandings the protester has, but so far I haven't seen one. I think it's time Thai people practice discussion and giving reasons more often or else the problem will continue and remain unsolved.
__________
Reference
Thank you Pop for this most useful post. The way you relate it to what we do in class is great.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to some comments, preferably showing ... real explanatory depth.
In school, a superficial repetition of bit of (too often wrong or unsupported) idea from a teacher or other person might be enough, but it's not nearly good enough for academic work, which demands some serious understanding.
I would also recommend reading the article that Pop has effectively summarized for us in his second paragraph.
DeleteI think human don't like the unexplained things. We are programmed to find some explanation to any phenomenon that we see . That whys a lot of conspiracy theories appear after many big event such as 911 or Disappearance of MH370.
ReplyDeleteYes I couldn’t agree more about the illusion of explanatory depth. I found that many people think that they understand it obviously but when they were asked to explain what they understood. I sometimes really surprised that they talk about other things that didn’t relate to the topics. I also believe that this situation happens everywhere including our AEP class too. (I really like thing that that Peter says in the class “if we don’t exactly understand what we are talking and keep talking, it’s just garbage”).
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I also sometimes face the easy problem, that Pop mentioned, to describe what we think we clearly know such as mathematics formula or English grammar. May be, I need to check my understanding anytime when I get something new in my head to make sure that I really got it.
DeleteIf you are looking for something to respond to, Pop's concluding paragraph, especially the suggestion in his concluding sentence there, seems to me worth some thoughtful discussion.
ReplyDeleteThe obvious question that arises from Pop's concluding paragraph is:
ReplyDeleteWhat does the noun democracy mean? And not mean?
First of all I think that we should look up the dictionary. As Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD) defines, “democracy” means “fair and equal treatment of everyone in an organization, etc, and their right to take part in making decisions”. After we got the roughly definition, I think we need to make it better, solid and fit in our context by adjusting something. Can anyone help me to do that? :)
DeleteOnly three definitions in the OALD for democracy, and this time Ball has chosen the last one to quote.
DeleteI'm looking forward to the discussion on a topic that I suspects we all have ideas on. How clear are those ideas? Clear enough that we can explain them, and then perhaps support them against competing understandings?
I do agree with Ball that a dictionary can be a very useful place to start - I usually do that, and often follow up with some research into the word's etymology, for which the Oxford Dictionaries website might be more useful than the generally excellent OALD.
DeleteA related question is: Are claims that recent Thai elections have not been free and fair true or false? (I wanted to put this one in a separate comment to the democracy question because I think a good answer must raise different issues, which it might be better not to mix up with defining democracy.
ReplyDeleteWowwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!! i really completely truly like this response, and i want to response to your response again, but it may be too redundant, so i won't do it LOLOLOLOL.
ReplyDeletethough my major was development economics, my minor was psychology. when i studied psychology, it allowed me to learn many things about bias, prejudice, attribution and causes of conflict. psychology made me realised that there are many effects which lead to conflict are caused by denial to discuss opposite idea. For exaple, "polarization", most of all, is the effect when people deny to dicuss with opponents and only talk about something with some people who have opinion like them. take political protestors -- in every country, not only Thailand -- for an instance. it is obvious that they gain information about politics from their own side, either leaders of protest or their media, and they trustfully believe without any doubt. so, when they talk to opponents, they will think that the opponents is lying, becuase opponents' ideas are quite different from their media and leaders of their protest. this make them and their opponent hate eac other, and turn to talk with some people who have the same view instead. by doing this, their opinion will be more and more extreme. For illustration, people who like liverpool (i am also a liverpool fan) talk to other liverpool fans and they condemn Man United and admire their own club. at last, they will definitely hate Man United and may think all of Man United fans are bad. psychologists call this effect "stereotype".
so, i think to solve political problem we have to discuss more open more and accept differences more. the process of dicussion will make us more logical, reasonable and rational, and this will lead to the best solution for the turmoil. no matter how the resolution is, or who are the right side. if the resolution is from reasonable, logic and rational process -- discussion, i believe that this resolution will be good and everyone -- from both side -- will accept it, even though ther is only one correct belief.
Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of what Pop's blog discusses is the considerable confusion that students have over such basic terms as topic and idea (also conclusion, sentence and others, including vocabulary, which came up on Thursday).
ReplyDeleteThe handout with a set of basic terms for us to check in the first days of class is something I use with every new AEP group, including students who have tested into a level 3 class - the general level of confusion and the lack of clear understanding that we saw as we went through those basic terms, which everyone has been seeing and using for many years, was average.
And this begs the question: why is such a lack of any deep understanding, of any clear understanding, or even of any very accurate understanding, so normal?