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Now I’m sure that looking at the title of this post would make you think that I’m maths illiterate but it may surprise you to know that I have worked a good part of my careers as an analyst. That said, I have recently come to the conclusion that 1+1 doesn’t always equal 2!
What do I mean by that? Well what if I told you that I believe that 1+1=3? Would you try to correct me by saying that it actually equals 2? What if I then say that you are hurting me by infringing my beliefs and that I am entitled to my beliefs?
This is the dilemma that I have experienced in conversation although maybe the 1+1=3 example oversimplifies it slightly in order to make a point. Not may people would argue that 1+1=3 but perhaps that’s only because a lot of people have been educated on basic mathematics. It is also easy to show someone empirically by say giving them a bean and then giving them another bean and asking them to count how many beans they have in total.
But what happens where there is a lack of education or the proof is not so easy to demonstrate? Does this then mean that ‘belief’ is allowable over ‘evidence’ because the evidence is too complex to understand / demonstrate?
A good example of this is the COVID vaccination efforts or should I say the hesitancy that people have towards taking the vaccination. Despite best efforts to provide the empirical evidence to support the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, many people refuse to take it because of their ‘beliefs’ about the vaccine.
We recently had a family argument where a member of my family said that he refused to take the AstraZeneca vaccine due to its poor safety. Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for the past 15 years, I felt it was on me to explain to him how drug discovery works and how every medication has side-effects and that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the low risk of blood clot. In other words death from contracting COVID is many, many times more likely than death from having a blood clot as a side-effect from the vaccine.
After a heated exchange where he mis-quoted many bits of evidence he had read he concluded by saying that he was entitled to his beliefs and that I have no right make him feel bad for his beliefs.
This leads me back to the dilemma of what the answer to the question of what one plus one equals. Does it really equal 2 or is it equal to what anyone believes it to be?
So very true. I’m a big fan of the following image and correction:
https://signsoflifeconz.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/6a00d83451bd4869e201b8d24e6308970c-800wi.jpg
You can have a belief, and that’s fine, however some levels of understanding and belief are supported by greater or lesser levels of evidence.