8 Essential Growth-Hacking Tools to Build Your Business

Step 1: Research what other companies have done successfully to grow. Step 2: Copy them.

Tips to Writing Short and Catchy Headlines

Mastering the art of writing enticing headlines and exciting teasers takes practice.

Here's why so many smart people don't believe in evolution

Does seeing the word "evolution" in a headline make you nervous?

It makes me nervous. Climate change may be the most politically charged scientific finding of the modern era, but the charged responses to it are nothing compared to people's forceful responses to evolution. 

Gallup reports that 64% of US adults are worried "a great deal" or "a fair amount" about climate change, but only 50% believe in evolution. That's despite the fact that evolution is the foundation of all modern biology - not to mention much of modern medicine - and has been thoroughly investigated for the 157 years since Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species."

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end when I get near this debate. One of my parents is a research mathematician; the other works in a biology lab. When I was a kid they made sure to talk about science with me, to help me see the elegance of Darwin's eons-long story of life. But we also lived in an Orthodox Jewish community, where schoolteachers laughed off dinosaurs and space travel as fairy tales and made a point of shutting down talk of evolution. It was the first in a series of conflicts that turned me away from that world.

But because of where I come from, I know lots of smart, thoughtful people who deeply believe that evolution is a crock. (And more who believe evolution was a God-guided process - along with the majority of Americans who accept the science.) I'm hostile to segments of the anti-religious crowd, including many scientists, who would shame religious people as fools.

That's why I was particularly interested in this paper by the psychologists Dan Kahan and Keith Stanovich, which re-examines some older data on why people do or do not believe in evolution.

First, the backstory. In 2015, the psychologists Will Gervais and Ara Nornzayan asked students to answer these three questions:

1. WIDGET. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? ____ minutes


2. BATBALL. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? ____ cents


3. LILYPAD. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? ____ days

Take a second to think them over.

Together, these questions make up the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). The idea behind each of them is that they have an intuitive answer, one that seems obviously correct at first glance, that is different from its true answer. Psychologists believe the CRT is a good way to examine how talented a person is at reflecting on and, if necessary, rejecting their intuitive assumptions.

The obvious answer to question one is 100 minutes, because it follows the pattern of the question. But the correct answer is five minutes, because the we've already established that each machine takes five minutes to build a widget. For the second question, you want to guess $0.10, but if you do the math the correct answer is $0.05. And for the last question, the intuitive answer is 24 days but the correct answer is 47 days - because the patch had to double in size on the last day.

Gervais  and Norenzayan found that students who didn't believe in evolution were somewhat more likely to get lower CRT scores, and students who did believe in evolution tended to get higher CRT scores.

We should be skeptical of anyone who publishes a study explaining why people who disagree with them are less clever.

They argued that this shows people tend to reject evolution due to "bounded rationality." That is, they see that iPhones, cars, and artwork are products of deliberate design, and are unable to escape their intuition that living things must be as well. 

I'm going to be honest with you for a second about my biases: This kind of paper makes me a little angry. It strikes me as an attempt to marginalize and dismiss the perspectives of religious people for the benefit of Right-Thinking and Clever Academia. I suspect, personally, that a determined person could uncover any number of beliefs and attitudes held by academics that correlate with negative scores on tests of mental proficiency. All of which is to say: I think we should be skeptical of anyone who publishes a study explaining why people who disagree with them are less clever.

So I was pleased to see Kahan and Stanovich uncover a deeper story in Gervais and Nornzayan's data.

They replicated the original finding that anti-evolutionists tend to score somewhat lower on the CRT. But it turns out that there's a much stronger effect trending in exactly the opposite direction.

It turns out that high CRT scores most strongly predict that people will stick to their cultural beliefs about evolution. So very secular students with high CRT scores were likely to accept evolution, and very religious students with high CRT scores were likely to reject the science. Low CRT scores predict muddier, less culturally coherent views.

(When Kahan and Stanovich repeated the study on a national sample of 1,012 people they found the identical result.)

They suggest an alternative model of disbelief, which they call "expressive rationality." The theory is that people with highly developed mental tools for turning over and examining ideas are more skilled at explaining to themselves why they shouldn't - or should - accept a verifiable scientific claim.

It's a more challenging argument to accept, if you're a person who sees science as our only effective tool for extracting something like objective truth from an uncaring and chaotic universe - and who fears the consequences of rejecting it. It's far less comforting than telling yourself Oh, well those people are just dumb.

Folks who reject science, like the brilliant, infuriating Talmud scholars in my life, might not simply do so because they lack the brainpower to grasp it. Instead, they seem to arrive at their religious skepticism by their own extreme powers of persuasion - a highly developed ability to convince oneself that, rationally, the thing you believe is right. Oddly enough, that's the very same route that leads many secular people to place their faith in science.

What a scary thought.

SEE ALSO: TRUMP: Claims of global warming still 'need to be investigated'

DON'T MISS: A massive solar storm could wipe out almost all of our modern technology - and we'd have just hours to prepare

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Scientists discovered something 'shocking' that could rewrite a key part of human evolution

The 3 Essential Mindsets an Entrepreneur Needs to Succeed

By adapting these mindsets, founders can help scale their business into a successful venture.

4 Relatively Painless Ways to Make Your Business Tax Debt Go Bye-Bye

The IRS is hiring agents -- which means it will likely get more aggressive with business owners

Padres GM suspended following report that team hid important medical information from MLB and other teams

Major League Baseball has announced the suspension of San Diego Padres Geneal Manager A.J. Preller for 30 days without pay following the investigation into a trade the team recently made with the Boston Red Sox.

Earlier, Buster Olney of ESPN reported that MLB had been investigating the Padres for intentionally concealing medical information on their players from both the league and from potential trade partners.

According to the report, multiple sources told ESPN that the Padres have maintained two separate files of medical information on their players, one for their own internal use and one that was shared with the league database.

Olney goes on to explain that team trainers were instructed to only post information to the MLB database if it related to a player who went on the disabled list. Any injuries or preventative treatments were reportedly only added to the Padres' own internal system and were not shared with other teams or the league.

Two recent trades appear to be at the heart of the investigation.

In one trade in July, the Padres traded pitcher Colin Rea to the Marlins. During Rea's first appearance with the Marlins he experienced elbow discomfort. According to Olney, the Marlins only learned at that point that Rea had been receiving treatment "for weeks" prior to the trade.

In a second trade in July, the Padres sent pitcher Drew Pomeranz to the Red Sox. Sources with the Red Sox told Olney that they found out after the trade that Pomeranz had been receiving some preventative treatment.

Olney reports that Padres trainers were specifically told in spring training that the team would benefit by hiding the information from other teams.

"According to the two sources with direct knowledge of the meetings, the athletic trainers were told that by splitting the medical files into two categories, the Padres would benefit in trade discussions."

The Padres also reportedly had far fewer injuries reported than other teams.

"According to sources, the Padres reached midseason with dramatically fewer medical entries on their players. An average number of entries for a given team might be in the range of 60 by the All-Star break. The Padres had fewer than 10, according to a source."

Preller had previously been suspended by MLB. In 2010 when he was with the Texas Rangers he was suspended for violating MLB rules that pertain to signings of international players.

It is unclear at this point what type of discipline the Padres are facing if MLB does indeed determine that the team violate league rules.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's how LeBron James reacted when he learned Kevin Durant was joining the Warriors

The US Consumer Safety Agency now says the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is too dangerous to turn on

The US Consumer Safety Agency is issuing a recall for Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phones. The agency advises customers to turn off their Note 7s and  exchange them where they were purchased. Samsung had previously been pursuing a recall of their own that was plagued with problems.

Follow BI Video: On Twitter 

 

Join the conversation about this story »

5 Things Startup Investors Look for Before Investing

Fundraising can be difficult. Here are five things you should know before you start the process.

Apply For a Trademark Before It's Too Late

With trademarks, the early bird gets the worm.

Verizon Purchased Yahoo: What Does This Mean for You?

Given the new web properties and brands Verizon acquired, advertisers will have more opportunities than ever before.

How to Boost Customer Loyalty Using Analytics and Actionable Insights

Returns data offers companies priceless insights that improve the customer experience.