I like understanding things. Many explanations strike me as insufficient, and I wanted to know what features characterize the explanations that frustrate me. I looked through answers to why questions on Quora, found ones I didn’t like, and tried to find patterns in them. So far, I've come up with the following ways that explanations can go wrong:
Insufficient specificity
Often, when I'm asking a why question, a general answer will not satisfy my confusion or curiosity. It’s common, though, to not answer specifically enough, ranking as my top complaint with explanations I looked at on Quora.
Here are some examples of cases where an explanation lacks contrast:
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why do people believe in the supernatural?
Because they have confirmation bias
Any belief can be related to confirmation bias. What about supernatural beliefs make it more related to confirmation bias than others?
Why do people scroll social media?
Because they get dopamine from doing that
Any behavior could be explained in these terms. What is special about social media?
Why are plants green?
Because they emit wavelengths in the range of 495–570 nm
Any movie could be made with profit in mind. A more complete answer could be:
Shot-for-shot remakes are especially profitable because they walk the line of peoples’ preferences for familiarity and nostalgia with novelty. Most people wouldn’t watch the exact same movie twice in theaters, but they are more interested in a new movie if it’s something they’re already familiar with.
Interestingly, not all questions should be answered with the specificity that the question asker is looking for. Here are some examples:
Question
Explanation
Why does Bill have four legs?
Because he’s a cat and cats have four legs.
Why do men commit more murders than women?
Because men commit more violence in general.
Why does [plant species] have chlorophyll?
Because nearly every plant species has chlorophyll.
At first, I didn't think these were good explanations because patterns are not causal. Being a cat doesn't cause an animal to have four legs. Still, these explanations add relevant information that can clear things up for the question-asker.
This is an okay answer, but not all arctic animals have thick fur. A better answer could be:
Many arctic animals have layers of thick fur, but others have blubber. While blubber is more energetically expensive, hair can become compressed in water, making it ineffective as insulation.
Why don’t sharks have bones?
“Bones are rigid and fixed in length after a species specific period. Cartilage is flexible and can increase in size as critters like sharks continue to grow throughout their lives.” (from this)
Large bony fish exist, too.
To get more specifity, you can try asking questions like:
Why do ___ have ___ rather than some other trait?
Why do ___ have ___, but others in the same category don’t have this trait?
Why __________? Is there a different mechanism behind this than others in the same category?
Insufficient mechanistic detail
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why is the flame from a gas stove blue?
Blue flames are produced by excited radicals.
I don’t know anything about how radicals would emit light, so I would still be pretty confused.
Interestingly, the following is sufficient for me when it comes to why some flames are orange, suggesting that analogous situations are important:
Soot particles at really high temperatures, similarly to a hot metal, glow orange.
To me, it’s not intuitive how air resistance would make raindrops smaller. I think this could be solved with a good analogy.
Asking for intuitive examples or analogies may help with this problem.
Not the kind of explanation I wanted
There may be a variety of true answers to a “why” question, but they may not all be what you’re looking for. The question "Why are plants green?" can be answered from a variety of perspectives:
Category
Explanation?
Cause?
Before effect?
Example
Historical
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plants are green because an ancestral cell engulfed a photosynthetic cell, which eventually became the chloroplast.
Evolutionary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plants are green because chlorophyll-based organisms may have outcompeted retinal-based ones, making a chlorophyll-using organism more likely to become the endosymbiotic ancestor of chloroplasts.
Mechanism
Yes
Maybe
No
Plants are green because they contain chlorophyll, which reflects green wavelengths and absorbs others.
Definition
No
No
-
Plants are green because they are perceived as the color we call green.
Pattern
No
No
Most plants have some green parts.
Interestingly, while the mechanistic answer is most common for the above question, it's often not mechanisms that we're looking for with why questions (usually, that's "how").
Here’s an example of an answer that doesn’t address the kind of answer I’m looking for:
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why don’t more animals eat wood?
Wood contains lignin, which is difficult to break down.
I want it to address something about an evolutionary tradeoff, like:
Wood contains lignin, which is difficult to break down. There are tradeoffs when it comes to processing lignin: it’s abundant, but it’s physically hard, requires a lot of specialized chemical machinery to break down and use as energy, and the chemical machinery involves highly reactive molecules.
It can help when asking a question to think about what kind of explanation you’re looking for. Here’s some ideas:
Category
Subcategory
Example questions
Historical
Historical origin
What is the historical origin of _____?
Evolutionary
Arbitrary/ random
Why is _____ so common? Was it beneficial or selected for, due to random chance, linked to something that was adaptive, or a spandrel?
What is the evolutionary tradeoff related to ___?
Adaptive/ beneficial
Genetic hitchhiking
Spandrel
Mechanism
Mechanism
What is the mechanism underlying _____ at the [cellular/ atomic/ etc.] level?
Circular or semantic
Next, there are circular and semantic explanations. For "why are plants green?" you could answer "they are the color we call green." I don't think these are super common, and I didn’t find examples of this on Quora.
Question
Insufficient explanation
Why do people look for evidence that confirms their beliefs?
Because they have confirmation bias.
Miscellaneous problems
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why is Pluto no longer considered a planet?
Because Pluto shares its orbital area with many other objects.
Did the definition change, or did we learn something new about Pluto? If the definition changed, was it for a particular reason? Does the new definition draw a line that reflects reality?
Why are wolves considered evil?
Because we learn to think of them as evil as children through fairytales.
Confuses correlation with causation; why did people make them evil in fairytales?
Why don’t other sharks normally grow as large as great white sharks?
“Short answer is that they are different species.” (from this)
I would want something related to ecological tradeoffs… This doesn’t even provide new information.
Explanations are overrated
While I've focused here on explanations, which are often causal, I think we might spend too much of our limited attention focused on causality. Patterns and descriptions can, and do, help us make decisions.
For instance, imagine you have a symptom that is highly correlated with having a particular disease. If we have a treatment for that disease, it makes sense to test for that disease based on this correlation. Another example: I’ve performed a couple weeks of extensive mood tracking, finding that most evenings and weekends I have pretty high moods, while I have lower moods at work. It made me think that, if I could find things to improve my mood at work, that would have a much larger impact on my overall happiness than trying hobbies I might enjoy more.
Modern science produces lots of experiments and other non-experiments trying to make causal claims. Some have critiqued this movement away from descriptive research (i.e. Grimaldi & Engel 2007). As an example of fascinating and modern descriptive work, Patty Brennan’s career has been centered on animal genitalia, and I would highly recommend this video or this article.
Understanding things requires a mix of descriptive and causal information. Perhaps my desire to understand focuses too much on the latter, as even this essay is an attempt to see what causes me to not like certain explanations.
Thank you to my friends for providing me with feedback! :)
I like understanding things. Many explanations strike me as insufficient, and I wanted to know what features characterize the explanations that frustrate me. I looked through answers to why questions on Quora, found ones I didn’t like, and tried to find patterns in them. So far, I've come up with the following ways that explanations can go wrong:
Insufficient specificity
Often, when I'm asking a why question, a general answer will not satisfy my confusion or curiosity. It’s common, though, to not answer specifically enough, ranking as my top complaint with explanations I looked at on Quora.
Here are some examples of cases where an explanation lacks contrast:
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why do people believe in the supernatural?
Because they have confirmation bias
Any belief can be related to confirmation bias. What about supernatural beliefs make it more related to confirmation bias than others?
Why do people scroll social media?
Because they get dopamine from doing that
Any behavior could be explained in these terms. What is special about social media?
Why are plants green?
Because they emit wavelengths in the range of 495–570 nm
All green things emit those wavelengths!
Why do shot-for-shot remakes exist?
Profit (based on this)
Any movie could be made with profit in mind. A more complete answer could be:
Shot-for-shot remakes are especially profitable because they walk the line of peoples’ preferences for familiarity and nostalgia with novelty. Most people wouldn’t watch the exact same movie twice in theaters, but they are more interested in a new movie if it’s something they’re already familiar with.
Interestingly, not all questions should be answered with the specificity that the question asker is looking for. Here are some examples:
Question
Explanation
Why does Bill have four legs?
Because he’s a cat and cats have four legs.
Why do men commit more murders than women?
Because men commit more violence in general.
Why does [plant species] have chlorophyll?
Because nearly every plant species has chlorophyll.
At first, I didn't think these were good explanations because patterns are not causal. Being a cat doesn't cause an animal to have four legs. Still, these explanations add relevant information that can clear things up for the question-asker.
Insufficient acknowledgement of counterexamples
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why do animals like polar bears have thick fur?
Because they need to keep warm (based on this)
This is an okay answer, but not all arctic animals have thick fur. A better answer could be:
Many arctic animals have layers of thick fur, but others have blubber. While blubber is more energetically expensive, hair can become compressed in water, making it ineffective as insulation.
Why don’t sharks have bones?
“Bones are rigid and fixed in length after a species specific period. Cartilage is flexible and can increase in size as critters like sharks continue to grow throughout their lives.” (from this)
Large bony fish exist, too.
To get more specifity, you can try asking questions like:
Insufficient mechanistic detail
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why is the flame from a gas stove blue?
Blue flames are produced by excited radicals.
I don’t know anything about how radicals would emit light, so I would still be pretty confused.
Interestingly, the following is sufficient for me when it comes to why some flames are orange, suggesting that analogous situations are important:
Soot particles at really high temperatures, similarly to a hot metal, glow orange.
Why does rain fall as small drops?
Because of air resistance (based on this)
To me, it’s not intuitive how air resistance would make raindrops smaller. I think this could be solved with a good analogy.
Asking for intuitive examples or analogies may help with this problem.
Not the kind of explanation I wanted
There may be a variety of true answers to a “why” question, but they may not all be what you’re looking for. The question "Why are plants green?" can be answered from a variety of perspectives:
Category
Explanation?
Cause?
Before effect?
Example
Historical
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plants are green because an ancestral cell engulfed a photosynthetic cell, which eventually became the chloroplast.
Evolutionary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plants are green because chlorophyll-based organisms may have outcompeted retinal-based ones, making a chlorophyll-using organism more likely to become the endosymbiotic ancestor of chloroplasts.
Mechanism
Yes
Maybe
No
Plants are green because they contain chlorophyll, which reflects green wavelengths and absorbs others.
Definition
No
No
-
Plants are green because they are perceived as the color we call green.
Pattern
No
No
Most plants have some green parts.
Interestingly, while the mechanistic answer is most common for the above question, it's often not mechanisms that we're looking for with why questions (usually, that's "how").
Here’s an example of an answer that doesn’t address the kind of answer I’m looking for:
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why don’t more animals eat wood?
Wood contains lignin, which is difficult to break down.
I want it to address something about an evolutionary tradeoff, like:
Wood contains lignin, which is difficult to break down. There are tradeoffs when it comes to processing lignin: it’s abundant, but it’s physically hard, requires a lot of specialized chemical machinery to break down and use as energy, and the chemical machinery involves highly reactive molecules.
It can help when asking a question to think about what kind of explanation you’re looking for. Here’s some ideas:
Category
Subcategory
Example questions
Historical
Historical origin
What is the historical origin of _____?
Evolutionary
Arbitrary/ random
Why is _____ so common? Was it beneficial or selected for, due to random chance, linked to something that was adaptive, or a spandrel?
What is the evolutionary tradeoff related to ___?
Adaptive/ beneficial
Genetic hitchhiking
Spandrel
Mechanism
Mechanism
What is the mechanism underlying _____ at the [cellular/ atomic/ etc.] level?
Circular or semantic
Next, there are circular and semantic explanations. For "why are plants green?" you could answer "they are the color we call green." I don't think these are super common, and I didn’t find examples of this on Quora.
Question
Insufficient explanation
Why do people look for evidence that confirms their beliefs?
Because they have confirmation bias.
Miscellaneous problems
Question
Insufficient explanation
Problem
Why is Pluto no longer considered a planet?
Because Pluto shares its orbital area with many other objects.
Did the definition change, or did we learn something new about Pluto? If the definition changed, was it for a particular reason? Does the new definition draw a line that reflects reality?
Why are wolves considered evil?
Because we learn to think of them as evil as children through fairytales.
Confuses correlation with causation; why did people make them evil in fairytales?
Why don’t other sharks normally grow as large as great white sharks?
“Short answer is that they are different species.” (from this)
I would want something related to ecological tradeoffs… This doesn’t even provide new information.
Explanations are overrated
While I've focused here on explanations, which are often causal, I think we might spend too much of our limited attention focused on causality. Patterns and descriptions can, and do, help us make decisions.
For instance, imagine you have a symptom that is highly correlated with having a particular disease. If we have a treatment for that disease, it makes sense to test for that disease based on this correlation. Another example: I’ve performed a couple weeks of extensive mood tracking, finding that most evenings and weekends I have pretty high moods, while I have lower moods at work. It made me think that, if I could find things to improve my mood at work, that would have a much larger impact on my overall happiness than trying hobbies I might enjoy more.
Modern science produces lots of experiments and other non-experiments trying to make causal claims. Some have critiqued this movement away from descriptive research (i.e. Grimaldi & Engel 2007). As an example of fascinating and modern descriptive work, Patty Brennan’s career has been centered on animal genitalia, and I would highly recommend this video or this article.
Understanding things requires a mix of descriptive and causal information. Perhaps my desire to understand focuses too much on the latter, as even this essay is an attempt to see what causes me to not like certain explanations.
Thank you to my friends for providing me with feedback! :)