> I instinctively understand and firmly believe everything mentioned in this article about sleeping is true.
Well, yes, but that's a standard quality of B.S. It's plausible, and intuitive. When you actually start trying to prove it out, though, you discover it's wrong.
True, there is a category of "no duh" scientific findings, like walking is beneficial to one's health, that do align with our intuition. But where science really shines is when the evidence points to something counterintuitive.
Even the "walking is beneficial" part is not just "duh".
I mean, what is "walking". What distance? What pace? There are negative health effects from walking too much. The general idea is that moderate exercise is the best, too little is bad, too much is also bad. But where is the peak? It seems that walking is beneficial to the average city dweller, which aligns with our intuition, but what about foot soldiers?
And where does the intuition that walking is beneficial comes from? Walking is tiring, it is not something we do naturally if we can avoid it, not very "intuitive". That's the problem by the way, because we can avoid it in modern society. I think the intuition comes from the fact that we get told over and over than walking is beneficial, so much that we made these thought our own, i.e. that's conditioning. And the reason we are told that is because it is backed by observation and science.
Well, yes, but that's a standard quality of B.S. It's plausible, and intuitive. When you actually start trying to prove it out, though, you discover it's wrong.
True, there is a category of "no duh" scientific findings, like walking is beneficial to one's health, that do align with our intuition. But where science really shines is when the evidence points to something counterintuitive.