By Sidney S. Stark
A writer friend of mine was lamenting the fact that “today we make decisions based on statistical analysis rather than experience, or what used to be called common sense.” There would certainly seem to be plenty of proof backing that up. I’m not sure if it’s the shortening of our attention span that makes that necessary or the acceleration of the pace of our living.
The relatively recent lack of popularity in the subjects of history and the arts as educational necessities might carry some of the responsibility for this trend. Being in too much of a hurry to learn from the past necessitates the use of mathematical models instead of intuition for support. That same friend suggested that “heroes of the past learned from experience and amassed a life hilosophy that helped them with the most complex challenges of their day. The same would be true for us today if we could rise above statistical probability and media babble to listen to our own intuition.” But is that really true? Do we have problems of such complexity today that only numbers can make sense of them as so many believe?
It would seem that numbers sense and common sense are very different things. In his new book The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, David Brooks attacks this dilemma head on and backs up his work with a barrage of scientific research. It’s a completely engaging treatise even with all that research included and I recommend it highly. There are many other important topics he tackles as you might assume from his title with equal skill. A video of his interview about the book for NPR’s All Things Considered is on the link above. In it he says that
“research today reminds us of the importance of emotion over pure reason.” How could that be? That’s completely opposite from the accepted knowledge of our day. But maybe that’s exactly the problem. Our knowledge doesn’t go back far enough; it’s only of our day.