Natural Science and the Anchoring Effect.

I'm currently reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

I'm a quarter of the way through, and so far I think Kahneman has written a deceptively complex book. He is very capable of simplifying complex ideas.

I already feel like he is providing me with precise terms for discussing problems of minds, decision making, and the training of intuition and judgement.

Right now I'd like to employ Kahneman's concept of the anchoring effect. The anchoring effect refers to the idea that the framing of an issue effects the way that an answer is given, because the initial presentation of a question or idea serves as a reference point or anchor from which all answers are given.

If, for example, you were asked 'Was Gandhi more or less than 144 years old when he died?', then asked 'How old was Gandhi when he died?' The age 144 is obviously absurd, but the high number encourages one to guess that Gandhi died at an old age, maybe in his 80s or 90s. It feels harder to guess that Gandhi died in his 50s or 60s because the initial suggestion of 144 is the anchor point from which we are basing our guess.

The anchor effect is something that is frequently used in the context of negotiation. While negotiating a price, for example, you can purposefully underbid so that all the subsequent bids will be lower than they would have been otherwise. If I initially offer you 10$ for a pair of glasses, which I know to be worth $30, then the negotiations are more likely to end with a price closer to $15 or $20. But if my initial bid is $20 then we are much more likely to end up at $25 or even $30.

These are simple examples, but Kahneman is convinced, and I believe him, that the anchoring effect is very real. The initial framing of a problem or question undoubtedly influences subsequent answers by serving as the anchor from which all other answers are gauged.

But now I have a question: In what way is natural science anchored into our culture, our collective thinking? In what ways, and why, do we assume that the pursuits of the natural sciences are valuable in themselves?

I saw a comic that was making fun of the big bang, and in particular, of researchers looking into the big bang. I wish I could find it. But the basic idea was that even when we discover what caused the big bang we are going to end up pursuing the question of what came before the big bang. The comic concluded that natural science had essentially launched a line of investigation that would never be complete and that probably wouldn't produce any useful knowledge.

But none of us scoff at the idea of space travel or the continued attempts to understand the nature of the universe, these attempts to find a so-arrogantly-called 'theory of everything'.

Unfortunately, this 'theory-of-everything' would leave crime rates unchanged, would social and political problems untouched, and maybe even exacerbated.

I am a bit hostile towards the natural sciences, as you can tell.

I think that they unfairly dominate so much of our spending and thinking.

But we flinch and cringe when someone suggests, as John Gray has, that our scientific pursuits are morally bankrupt mutations of the Christian imperative for salvation. That is to say, that science has unwittingly inherited the Christian hope that all can be saved. Salvation is no longer to come from god, but from our power to dominate and manipulate the natural world.

Look at people like Ray Kurzweil, Mr. Technological-Immortality. He freaks me out. His refusal to accept death, to push onward into the natural sciences with the belief that we will someday be technological gods.

Why do the natural sciences loom so large in our view of the world? Why are we so epistemologically committed to the study of the natural world? Why do all of our answers about the nature of knowledge and study anchor themselves to the natural sciences?

This is one way that I think the anchoring effect is a valuable concept. It explains why it is so hard to vindicate forms of knowledge other than those of the natural sciences. I.e., it explains why the humanities and history have such a hard time vindicating themselves. Because we already have accepted that the natural sciences provide us with the best model of knowledge, and we use it as our anchor or starting point for all further reflection on knowledge.

This is a problem for me.

I'm in the business of justifying the humanities and history as the science of human affairs, the way in which we can learn to deal with the human world more skillfully. Because as Collingwood knew so long ago, "In dealing with their fellow men, I could see, men were still what they were in dealing with machines in the Middle Ages. Well-meaning babblers talked about the necessity for a change of heart. But the trouble was obviously in the head. What was needed was not more goodwill and human affection, but more understanding of human affairs and more knowledge of how to handle them" (An Autobiography, 92).

I fear that we are still in the same situation.

Our commitment to the natural sciences continues to impoverish our approach to the world of human affairs. We continue to ignore the value of history and the humanities.

I have to go to work now.

But the anchoring effect is an interesting way of analyzing our commitment to the natural sciences and our unwillingness to embrace historical, human knowledge.