Cognitive bias and practical epistemology
I've been coming across some useful discussions of the sorts of cognitive biases that we read about in Chapter 5 of How To Think About Weird Things. Here's one -- a site by journalist David McRaney:
You Are Not So Smart
Every few days McRaney puts up a post discussing a particular bias or psychological effect. He's a pretty good writer and his explanations and examples (which sometimes come with videos) are clear and entertaining. A few of my favorites:
Hindsight Bias -- "I knew it all along!"
Misinformation Effect -- Memories, so convincing, so wrong.
(Check out the video from "This American Life" near the beginning of this post.)
The Perils of Introspection -- "Why do I feel this way? I don't really know, but I can sure make something up!"
The Just-World Fallacy -- "People deserve what they get"
Philosophy major turned big-time blogger, Matt Yglesias comments on these things from time to time. For example:
Red Reality, Blue Reality -- Regardless of the facts,we think the economy is doing better when our team is running the show.
Politics and Investment Bias -- Even our investment decisions are skewed by our political beliefs.
Then there's Less Wrong: "A community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality"
It's not as reader friendly as McRaney's blog, but there are good posts from time to time, like these:
But now, we need to do more than just marvel at the apparent irrationality of the human animal. We need to think about how to deal with the fact that people (including, of course, ourselves) are prone to all of these sorts of bias and irrationality. One clear result of all this research is that eye-witness testimony is quite fallible. Perhaps our courts ought to be taking more account of this. Another clear result is that our memories are fallible and, over time, are modified to fit what we want to believe about ourselves and others. Perhaps we should keep this in mind when we get into arguments with our friends and spouses. But suppose we want to do more, suppose we want to improve the quality of our thinking and the likelihood that our beliefs are true -- then what should we do?
You Are Not So Smart
Every few days McRaney puts up a post discussing a particular bias or psychological effect. He's a pretty good writer and his explanations and examples (which sometimes come with videos) are clear and entertaining. A few of my favorites:
Hindsight Bias -- "I knew it all along!"
Misinformation Effect -- Memories, so convincing, so wrong.
(Check out the video from "This American Life" near the beginning of this post.)
The Perils of Introspection -- "Why do I feel this way? I don't really know, but I can sure make something up!"
The Just-World Fallacy -- "People deserve what they get"
Philosophy major turned big-time blogger, Matt Yglesias comments on these things from time to time. For example:
Red Reality, Blue Reality -- Regardless of the facts,we think the economy is doing better when our team is running the show.
Politics and Investment Bias -- Even our investment decisions are skewed by our political beliefs.
Then there's Less Wrong: "A community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality"
It's not as reader friendly as McRaney's blog, but there are good posts from time to time, like these:
Your intuitions are not magic
In brief: "People who know a little bit of statistics - enough to use statistical techniques, not enough to understand why or how they work - often end up horribly misusing them. Statistical tests are complicated mathematical techniques, and to work, they tend to make numerous assumptions. The problem is that if those assumptions are not valid, most statistical tests do not cleanly fail and produce obviously false results. Neither do they require you to carry out impossible mathematical operations, like dividing by zero. Instead, they simply produce results that do not tell you what you think they tell you"
The Tragedy of the Social Epistemology Commons
In Brief: "Making yourself happy is not best achieved by having true beliefs, primarily because the contribution of true beliefs to material comfort is a public good that you can free ride on, but the signaling benefits and happiness benefits of convenient falsehoods pay back locally, i.e. you personally benefit from your adoption of convenient falsehoods. The consequence is that many people hold beliefs about important subjects in order to feel a certain way or be accepted by a certain group. Widespread irrationality is ultimately an incentive problem."
But now, we need to do more than just marvel at the apparent irrationality of the human animal. We need to think about how to deal with the fact that people (including, of course, ourselves) are prone to all of these sorts of bias and irrationality. One clear result of all this research is that eye-witness testimony is quite fallible. Perhaps our courts ought to be taking more account of this. Another clear result is that our memories are fallible and, over time, are modified to fit what we want to believe about ourselves and others. Perhaps we should keep this in mind when we get into arguments with our friends and spouses. But suppose we want to do more, suppose we want to improve the quality of our thinking and the likelihood that our beliefs are true -- then what should we do?
I've always known my memory to be fallible. Okay, I haven't always known it to be fallible only since I've had children. Although, they are teenagers now, it seems they always remember things differently than I do. They love playing "Let's have Mom use her memory to reconstruct the events" because they know I will not remember the same details of it even though we all attended the same event. There are times when I don't even recall the event! My point is, most people believe wholeheartedly in the memories they have created about an event but if they don’t, we always want to blame it on the irrationality of the human animal or this statement used most often, “we are all human and we make mistakes”. Well I am actually fed up with this excuse so I have taken that statement out of my vocabulary. The only way we can improve our way of thinking (and linguistic skills) is through education. For how can we know if no one teaches us! Lack of knowledge is the fundamental problem of human thought. Of course there is someone who will disagree and state it is our (mis)interpretations and/or beliefs for the problem of human thought. Yet, most people believe (including myself)if you want to improve in any area of your life, you seek the advice of a specialist. In my opinion, is a school teacher not a specialist? However, our education system does not freely teach philosophy or ways to disect information to conclude what TRUE BELIEF is. Education holds the skills needed to improve our way of thinking thereby increasing the likelihood that our beliefs are true. Of course we can seek higher education but why do we have to wait until we are out of grade school? Are our children (and ourselves) not entitled to believing in a system that is actually true well before the adult years? And still for some folks who have a college education, the beliefs they hold to be true are fallible because they were not required to take a philosophy course. I know this is kind of long winded but truth is, we cannot improve our way of thinking without being educated, without arts & humanities and especially without science. So, if one is really willing to improve their way of thinking, visit a school or library, begin reading books and open your mind to new ideas. You have to obtain an education to obtain knowledge. Even if that means you have to educate yourself! This is what we should do.