Opinion | Do I Have to Floss My Teeth? The Science Is Inconclusive - The New York Times - 0 views
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the more I learn about science, the more I discover basic mysteries that I assumed were solved long ago. Perhaps we’ve exited the Dark Ages, but our own age still seems rather dim.
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How do you make sense of a world where the scientific sands are always shifting and where so much remains unknown? It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve made my peace with it by learning to hold everything loosely, to remain ever humble about what we do know and ever optimistic about what we will.
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What sustains me now is neither certainty nor hopelessness, but a determined, humble optimism. The right answers are often simply unknown, and I might die without getting to know the truth
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It was hard to get there, because I had to learn over and over again that extreme conviction requires extraordinary evidence, and the evidence we have is usually far from extraordinary.
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Just as we solved many of the mysteries that befuddled our ancestors, our descendants will solve many of the mysteries that befuddle us. our ignorance is profound, forgivable and temporary. There are only two true errors: One is believing that we have no errors left to make, and the other is believing that those errors are permanent and irreversible.
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It’s hard to maintain this attitude when you realize just how much we have left to figure out. And we often have to cultivate this attitude for ourselves, because our educators and experts often fail to give it to us.
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Experts, for their part, are perfectly comfortable issuing blanket recommendations with scant evidence and then shaming people for not following them.
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Our teachers and officials may think the public simply can’t handle uncertainty, and maybe that’s why they project so much confidence, even when the science is faulty. But the best way to cultivate informed citizens is to give them the evidence that we have, not the evidence we wish we had.