STREET DOGS: Alternative possibilities
'Evaluating alternative possibilities ought to be better known because it’s a tool for better thinking'
From Tania Lombrozo, an associate professor of psychology, University of California, Berkeley: At the heart of scientific thinking is the systematic evaluation of alternative possibilities. The idea is woven into the practice of science itself. Statistical hypothesis testing is about ruling out alternatives. In a null hypothesis test, one evaluates the possibility that a result was due to chance alone. And in science classes students are trained to generate alternative explanations for each observation. Systematic evaluation of alternative possibilities is not restricted to science. To arrive at the truth, we generate multiple hypotheses and evaluate how they fare against reason and empirical observation. We can’t learn without entertaining the possibility that our beliefs are wrong or incomplete, and we can’t seek diagnostic evidence unless we specify the alternatives. Evaluating alternative possibilities is a basic feature of human thinking that science has refined. Within psychol...
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