What exactly is evidence? What is valid and what it not? For many years people have defined it as facts or information indicating whether a believe or proposition is valid or correct. Kathryn Schulz in “Evidence”, a chapter of her book called being wrong, that we need to “learn to actively combat our inductive biases: to deliberately seek out evidence that challenge our beliefs, and to tale seriously such evidence when we come across it”(page.377). By attending to counter evidence we can avoid making errors in our conclusion. Whether we are aware of it or not we depend on our past experiences to form our believes and ideas. Prior knowledge from personal experiences also explain why we come to the conclusions that we do in everyday life. Whether we like it or not we are guilty of believing things based off of evidence we have formally come across. There is a short little quiz in “evidence” that proves to both you and Schulz that this is true. One of the simple question included a photo of a shaded rectangle with a white strip running behind. The question was that: “what is behind the shaded rectangle?”(Schulz,pg.365). Our automatic human assumption would be that the strip of white continued behind the rectangle. What we do not think about is that fact that we truly do not know what is actually behind that shaded rectangle, we use our former knowledge that something peaking through the top and the bottom must continue through the middle. The reality is, we have no logical indication about what is really behind that shaded rectangle, But what is probable is what our mechanized answer is.
Given the history of the witch trial is tells me that evidence was based off of believes. For instance, how back then spirits were to be blame for every little cause. If someone did not strike you the right way(you did not approve of that person) it would be easier to accuse them for anything based off of a dream you had. So for example say you had a nightmare about your next door neighbor, it would be contented just to accuse them of witch craft activity. A distinct example take a photo of a furry creature with long ears, small nose, that hops , and eats carrots and display it for the people and ask them to describe what is in the photograph. Sounds pretty obvious right? Our nature would to jump to conclusion and say that it is a rabbit in the photograph. As the text “evidence” you don’t need to be the greatest scientist to combat your inductive biases. Remember to attend to counter evidence is not a challenge, It is an effortless habit of mind. Like all habits though, Conscious cultivation is a requirement. Without it, our primary evidence that we have encountered will remain the final words of the truth.
Abovetheclouds 