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Misconceptions From Wrong Perceptions & Limiting Beliefs

Misconceptions about science fuel pandemic debates and controversies, says Neil deGrasse Tyson

Schools should teach science as an evolving process — not a series of hard facts, argues astrophysicist

www.cbc.ca

This article pretty much confirms what I said before about how many people are misunderstanding the meaning of things today because they have the wrong perception of things.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says some of the bitter arguments about medicine and science during the COVID-19 pandemic can be blamed on a fundamental misunderstanding of science.

“People were unwittingly witnessing science at its very best.… [They said,] ‘You told me not to wear a mask a month ago and now you tell me [to] wear it.… You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Yes, we do,” the American astrophysicist and author told The Sunday Magazine host Piya Chattopadhyay.

Misconceptions about how science works stems in part, he said, from the fact that it’s often improperly taught at the earliest levels of education.

“People think science is the answer. ‘Oh, give me the answer. You’re a scientist. What’s the answer?’ And then I say things like: ‘We actually don’t have an answer to that.’ And people get upset. They even get angry. ‘You’re a scientist. You should know,'” he explained.

“What’s not taught in school is that science is a way of learning what is and is not true. The scientific method is a way of ensuring that your own bias does not leave you thinking something is true that is not, or that something is not true that is.”

If anything, we should be taught in school how we perceive reality. That we’re not seeing reality directly but with psychological “lenses” that filter and distort what we’re seeing based upon our beliefs.

For example, the mentioning above of “not to wear a mask and then to wear a mask” ties into a conventional belief that if someone changes their mind, it shows they’re not honest and not to be trusted. And yet growth and development at its very core is about changing your beliefs and values, as well as the way you perceive yourself and your world.

So if you believed that people should never change their minds, you would be fostering an environment and culture where no growth or development occurs. You’d want everyone to stay as they are and never change.

But alas, for some people, that’s actually what they want. They want time to stand still, what they know to be enough, and for things to remain permanent as they are.

Yet again that’s the opposite of life and nature itself which is embodied by constant change. The problem is that we’ve been extremely fortunate to live within such a highly stable time frame, that we assume and belief that this is what reality is like all the time.

It’s not. It’s constant change. And without a doubt, over the decades to come, we’ll probably see more change, more often, than some of us have ever seen throughout our entire lives.

And I have no doubt, that in the near future, science will probably have a major breakthrough that will completely redefine our reality and what we believe as a whole, similar to the radical shift that Copernicus had when he realized the Sun was the center of the solar system and not the Earth (which was considered heretical and blasphemous during his time).

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