tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post2948707344041944951..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: An Orgy of Confirmation BiasStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-1292870785825913772017-01-20T16:46:11.561-08:002017-01-20T16:46:11.561-08:00IAC, OCD,
I have noticed that phenomenon, checke...IAC, OCD, <br /><br />I have noticed that phenomenon, checked the facts and dismissed. However, I must thank you for the heads up and implied support. It really just boils down to how long you want to spend finding data to support your 'facts', doesn't it? <br /><br />I used to be a die hard liberal, but changed my mind when the facts of my life presented themselves. Difficult to change one's stripes, but certainly not impossible. Most important is to admit that you don't know what you don't know and then, depending on the issue's importance in your life, committing the time to learn.<br /><br />In that regard, I thank Stuart for his posts - always thought provoking - which force me to pay attention to the detail and to question myself.<br /><br />Good times, good times.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-37879257444034537882017-01-20T08:50:54.480-08:002017-01-20T08:50:54.480-08:00Anonymous @January 20, 2017 at 5:16 AM:
Ares Olym...Anonymous @January 20, 2017 at 5:16 AM:<br /><br />Ares Olympus is all about facts. So he says. Just ask him. Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18222603717128565302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-87895821508912032492017-01-20T05:16:50.058-08:002017-01-20T05:16:50.058-08:00A.O.,
Reread the last line of the original articl...A.O.,<br /><br />Reread the last line of the original article: "If you allow the facts to challenge and to disprove your theories, you are engaging in rational thought and are using the scientific method."<br /><br />Sad that for all your highfalutin postulations, theories and ramblings, you resort to inane, sophomoric solutions to what you don't find acceptable. Impeachment? Guns and shooting? Surely it would have been offensive to you if I offered those same solutions to show my distaste for your candidate, assuming that ze/she/it/zhei (whatever) had been elected.<br /><br />Open your mind! Find the freedom of allowing facts to guide you! Wait until factual data driven performance is available! Be Free, Ares! Save yourself!!!!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-87030278578530656192017-01-19T07:35:16.561-08:002017-01-19T07:35:16.561-08:00Anonymous said... Perhaps something "drastic....Anonymous said... Perhaps something "drastic..and..crazy" wasn't anything like what you're describing. Perhaps it was voting AGAINST rather than voting FOR. Perhaps it had nothing to do with drastic OR crazy and was simply the desire to try a new hypothesis. Perhaps, rather than drastic and crazy, it was patriotic and fed up. <br /><br />I'm certainly open that many people voted for Trump because they didn't want Clinton. I'm sure my state of Minnesota Republicans saw it that way, especially given Republicans haven't won Minnesota since Nixon '72. <br /><br />So now the next step is to build the case for impeachment, either by letting Trump be himself, OR provoking him into breaking the law and using that against him. <br /><br />Technicalities are fine, while I'm open to him shooting someone on 5th avenue, if someone wants to take the fall. Trump might have bad aim.<br /><br />Anyway, I hope we work though this relatively quickly, and maybe we'll have President Pence in 6 months, if Pence plays things right and stays out of harm's way.<br /><br />And then we'll be left merely with a divided GOP to collapse under their own division over the next 2 and 4 years. <br /><br />It really is hard to imagine what the worst case is, while GWB obviously sets the standard, two wars funded on a tax cut, and he had to start an unnecessary war to get his second 4 years to show what a terrible president he was.<br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-37178028602183279712017-01-19T04:09:25.007-08:002017-01-19T04:09:25.007-08:00"And when needs are unmet, like for years, pe..."And when needs are unmet, like for years, people will often get drastic, and do crazy things, like voting for Donald Trump, just in case their personal agency can be improved by a distractable bully leading the most powerful country in the world."<br /><br />Perhaps something "drastic..and..crazy" wasn't anything like what you're describing. Perhaps it was voting AGAINST rather than voting FOR. Perhaps it had nothing to do with drastic OR crazy and was simply the desire to try a new hypothesis. Perhaps, rather than drastic and crazy, it was patriotic and fed up. <br /><br />Everyone who voted (for the Bully as you called him) was trying to improve "personal agency" and had just survived eight years of having their "free will.....replaced by the will of the scientists setting up the framework of possible action". Perhaps they just said, as they do in Exploding Kittens, NOPE.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-16190548368970720022017-01-18T22:26:58.081-08:002017-01-18T22:26:58.081-08:00It was easy for Freud to figure out human nature. ...It was easy for Freud to figure out human nature. <br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoS1MCF8AeIAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-15725240754289847922017-01-18T18:44:00.133-08:002017-01-18T18:44:00.133-08:00Koestler on closed systems:
http://photoncourier....Koestler on closed systems:<br /><br />http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_archive.html#108638662359305703<br />David Fosterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464681514800720063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-35545839013775357892017-01-18T16:38:53.873-08:002017-01-18T16:38:53.873-08:00Stuart: Anyway, New York Magazine defined confirma...Stuart: Anyway, New York Magazine defined confirmation bias: Confirmation bias comes from when you have an interpretation, and you adopt it, and then, top down, you force everything to fit that interpretation,” Kahneman says. “That’s a process that we know occurs in perception that resolves ambiguity, and it’s highly plausible that a similar process occurs in thinking.<br /><br />This looks like tge general problems of all ideology. If there is only one "correct" interpretatation (objective reality), but reality is too complex to be describeable by any single model, then a person who needs the certainty of understanding will prefer to replace reality with his model, and only pay attention to apparent facts that confirm, and neglect the evidence that threatens the model.<br /><br />Iain McGilchrist expressed this in his talk of our "Divided brain", where right brain thinking tends to look for the exceptions, while left-brain thinking reinforces the model.<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI RSA ANIMATE: The Divided Brain <br /><br />I'm sure I get caught by confirmation bias at least as much as anyone else, at least in things I'd prefer be settled, because life is impossible without some assumptions of what's real. If you had to debate every aspect of physical law every time you needed to convince someone else of reality of a given danger, you would pull your hair out in exasperation.<br /><br />And that's why tribalism is so powerful, because we'd all prefer the "confirmation bias" of our own echo chambers to not discuss inconvenient truths that threaten our ability to be oblivious about things we don't want to deal with.<br /><br />My own approach to this is to call myself "agnostic", especially about religious dogma, but also in general. Still I'm with the aetheists when I say I'm not agnostic about Russell's teapot circling the sun. It seems too improbably to contemplate, even if I use "confirmation bias" of my culture to avoid the possibility.<br /><br />I remember when I was younger, I had an excellent theory that every time I learn a new fact, I ought to see how that fact affects every other assumed fact, or speculative interpretation of reality, and then I could be pure - I'd never have to worry about cognitive dissonance, because I'd have cleared away the contradictions long ago.<br /><br />But apparently human brains can't do this, or not individually. Science can try, and even there, it usually takes the last generation of scientists to die before the new scientific facts become integrated and the old assumptions banished. Of course, propaganda, tribalistic needs and confirmation bias can cause "new science" to be build on different false assumptions, and the old dead scientists might have been right to resist the new fangled nonsense.<br /><br />E.F. Schumacher called this "fake" science as "materialistic scientism", and he worried that its "materialistic focus" was throwing away deeper truths of existence that objective evidence can't measure. He separates science between "instructional science" of repeatable experiments, and "observational science" that described the world without presuming understanding of the hidden inner experience of its beings.<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_for_the_Perplexed#Critique_of_materialistic_scientism<br /><br />Certainly psychology ought to be primarily internal, at best descriptive, although behaviorists were able to show otherwise, and that if you can control experiments sufficiently, free will, and individual agency can be replaced by the will of the scientists setting up the framework of possible action. Schumacher used the "chain of being" to put a framework of agency and free will above dead scientific loaw.<br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-32027806409066527132017-01-18T16:05:19.772-08:002017-01-18T16:05:19.772-08:00Stuart: One thing we know about desire is that if ...Stuart: One thing we know about desire is that if you have something you cannot want it. By definition. Wanting something means not having it. <br /><br />I object to this definition, although maybe it comes down to the definition of "have" which may require action or effort. Wanting things you can't easily get is certainly problematic, while wanting things you can possess simply by asking or easy effort is quite sensible.<br /><br />So wanting something could be said to be about personal agency. A plant in dry soil that "wants" water has to wait for rain, while an animal can just hop over to a stream or puddle close by. <br /><br />A cautious animal might think he has to sit by the stream all day, just in case he gets thirsty, while a more adventurous one will feel safe he can come back any time he's thirsty, and not need to possess access to the stream continually.<br /><br />I do agree that "desire" is most tricky when you can't possess what you think you want. If you have agency, you can imagine what you want, and work towards it, and then reflect if it meet the need or not, and reassess. But if you don't have agency, you might spend a lifetime wanting something you can't have, and never realize it wouldn't meet your need anyway. Of course sometimes thought experiments can replace action in the world, and imagine you already have it, and see what has changed.<br /><br />Usually when we "want" something we're focused on what is lacking in us, and don't think about the less-wanted consequences of having are. Materialism can be like that, like having the perfect house for hosting parties, while you're too busy working to keep up the payments on your mortgage and credit cards. Real agency wouldn't demand future labor pay for present needs.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm not convinced Freud believed he was a mind-reader, or at least that he wsa sure he was always right. Maybe Carl Jung was more humble, like dream analysis, Jung accepted dreams could have many interpretations, and many levels of meaning, including literal ones. So it is all subjective, and takes trial and error and even then its not immediately clear which strategies are good ones and which ones put us one step further down a road to hell.<br /><br />And Freud was also smart enough to know that we all have an inner tyrant, that 2-year old persona who thinks other people exist to meet our needs, and acting badly when the evidence suggests otherwise. So its better to see needs or desires as "our problem", and not make other people responsible for fulfilling them involuntarily. OTOH, social duty is real, even if also subjective, and agreements between people surely are what makes families and society function at all.<br /><br />And when needs are unmet, like for years, people will often get drastic, and do crazy things, like voting for Donald Trump, just in case their personal agency can be improved by a distractable bully leading the most powerful country in the world.<br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-42640491748873997952017-01-18T13:26:45.148-08:002017-01-18T13:26:45.148-08:00Your citation of K&T is interesting here. Thei...Your citation of K&T is interesting here. Their data are among the most misunderstood in cognitive psychology. <br /><br />For example, the famous "loss aversion" graph, purported to show that individuals are "irrational" investors because their choices do not fall on a line with slope=1.0. There is nothing either rational or irrational about that particular line, except that it happens to be one of the assumptions in quantitative economic theory. It is perfectly reasonable <i>and rational</i> that a person might choose to avoid losses they cannot afford over gains that will not materially better their lot in life.<br /><br />Confirmation bias is "irrational" when it arrives at a conclusion with which an observer disagrees, and inductive reasoning when it arrives at a conclusion with which the observer does agree. In fact, courts of law exist to debate two different, opposite, instances of confirmation bias in every trial under the rules of evidence.Trigger Warningnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-31960714452023291242017-01-18T13:06:10.761-08:002017-01-18T13:06:10.761-08:00Confirmation bias is a phenomenon well-known to ac...Confirmation bias is a phenomenon well-known to accident investigators. It may have played a key part in that accident in which a regional jet attempted to take off from the wrong runway, which was way too short. The First Officer had mentioned to the Captain that he had observed "lights are out all over the place" when landing at the airport the previous day. This may have led both of them to discount the dark runway environment rather than questioning it.<br /><br />HYPOTHESIS: We are on Runway 22<br />DATA: The runway lights are out<br />DATA PROCESSING VIA CONFIRMATION BIAS: They must be out because of that maintenance or electrical problem that the FO observed yesterday.David Fosterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464681514800720063noreply@blogger.com