Facts Versus Understanding
Created Saturday 28 September 2024
Some considerable time ago I heard about one of these surveys of the wider public asking about various things to assess their general knowledge.
One of the questions was:
- "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?"
Ignoring for the moment (and indeed, probably forever) the whole issue of frames of reference, etc, this has a fairly straight-forward "correct answer" ... the Earth goes around the Sun.
There was a follow-up question:
- "Roughly how long does it take?"
And here is the interesting thing. Of those who answered the first part correctly, and said that the Earth goes around the Sun ... limiting our consideration to just those people ... around 80% of them, when asked how long it takes, gave an answer of "About a day."
To anyone who knows how the physics works, this is clearly[0] nonsense. The Earth goes around the Sun, and a complete journey takes about a year. So how can people who get the first answer right get the second answer so thoroughly wrong?
I have a theory[1].
My suspicion is that the first answer is being given by rote ... a knee-jerk answer given as a reflex in response to the trigger that is the question. They recite, from memory, that the Earth goes around the Sun.
But that isn't really connected in a deep sense to their personal experience. Their personal experience is of the Sun going overhead. There is the sense, there is the person experience, of the Sun going around the Earth. So when asked how long it takes, they answer according to that personal experience. About a day.
So my personal internal model of how people can give answers like this, that appear to be so inconsistent and self-contradictory, is to see the disconnect between "remembered facts" and "personal experience".
- Should this be fixed?
- Can this be fixed?
- Is it really a problem?
- Does it matter?
[0] For some definition of "clearly"
[1] And at this point all my friends and colleagues say: "Of course you do ..."
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