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Off The Map Discussion Board for Christians, Atheists and People In-between
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Karen
Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 847
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 Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:25 am Post subject: Don't Believe Everything |
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We discuss "ways of knowing" here a lot, as well as the nature of belief. So, this book review I got from the Skeptics Society a week or so ago really caught my eye. It's a review of psychologist Thomas Kida's book, "Don't Believe Everything You Think" and it discusses the six basic mistakes in human thinking.
| Quote: | The first error is that we prefer stories to statistics. Kida illustrates this with an example of car shopping. Although Consumer Reports rates the car you are considering as very reliable, a colleague of yours owns that model and complains that it has been nothing but trouble. Would you still buy the car? In general, people trust unique personal experiences over “impersonal” data, even though the statistics represent the aggregated experiences of many people.
The second error is that we seek to confirm rather than question our beliefs. Furthermore, we are more likely to remember evidence that supports our beliefs rather than evidence that does not. This confirmation bias leads to stereotypes and prejudices as well as to pseudoscientific thinking. For example, if you believe in moon madness, you will notice the occasional crazy driver on a moonlit night without noticing all the other drivers (including yourself) that are driving normally.
The third error involves a general misunderstanding of the role of chance and coincidence in shaping events. Few people understand how to calculate the probabilities of events, and so people generally rely on intuitions developed from personal experience. This leads to cognitive errors such as the gambler’s fallacy, in which people believe, for example, that tails is “due” after a run of heads, and the hot-hand fallacy, in which people believe that a basketball player who makes several shots in a row will likely continue making shots. Neither belief is true, and they are logically contradictory as well, but both beliefs are commonly held.
Trusting the reliability of our senses is the fourth error Kida discusses. “I know what I saw” is a common assertion, but in fact we never know for sure that our senses are accurately reporting what is going on around us. This is because perception is a reconstruction by the brain of the external world based on limited sensory inputs, and as such is subject to error. Not only is our perception influenced by our expectations, hallucinations are far more common than people think and are not just the product of drug abuse or psychosis.
The fifth error is that we have a tendency to oversimplify our thinking. The heuristics we use to guide our thought processes help us prevent information overload and let us make decisions in a timely manner. However, these mental shortcuts can also lead us widely astray and leave us vulnerable to deception by those who wish to manipulate us.
Finally, we need to be aware that our memories are faulty. We all know that we forget things sometimes, but we generally assume that what we do remember is an accurate representation of past events. However, a vast program of memory research has shown that human memory is exceedingly unreliable. The average person views memory as a type of video recording, but in fact it is a reconstruction based on current beliefs and expectations as well as the suggestions of others. Over-reliance on memory recall has serious consequences. For instance, the criminal justice system still places inordinate weight on eyewitness testimony in spite of all the evidence showing how unreliable it is.
These six errors in thinking are part of our evolutionary makeup, and so there is little we can do to change them. However, Kida is not pessimistic. Rather, he maintains that we can overcome these weaknesses with a two-step approach. First, we need to be aware of our cognitive biases so that we can anticipate when we are likely to fall victim to them. Second, we need to take a skeptical approach in all aspects of life. The skeptical approach Kida espouses is none other than the scientific method. Thus, Kida rejects the idea that there are various ways of knowing, depending on the field of inquiry. Although our beliefs may comfort us, Kida maintains that “we must learn to accept how much we don’t know” (p. 237). It is only through the skeptical evaluation of evidence that individuals as well as societies can make informed decisions. |
I like his conclusion about the advantages of a skeptical mindset. (Well, I'm a skeptic, so I'm obviously using "confirmation bias" here.) 
And I also relate to the other mistakes in thinking - I know I'm prone to them all the time. Though I would say that all of us in this dialogue can pat ourselves on the back because we are deliberately engaging with people who don't agree with us, thereby NOT just relying on confirmation bias in our thinking. |
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Eliza
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 800
Location: Seattle WA
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| Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:38 am Post subject: |
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Sounds interesting!
Another aspect, which seems related to the 3rd and 4th errors, is that humans are prone to "seeing" patterns - even when none exists. We (our brains) seem especially good at creating patterns, including adding in information that "fits" even when that information was not, objectively, there. Some optical illusions are a basic example of this. |
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David S
Joined: 25 Mar 2006
Posts: 1029
Location: Where the crowd isn't
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| Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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| In order to become a profitable stock trader you have to get all of those under control. Just thought I'd throw that bit of randomness out. |
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NCxian
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 597
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| Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2006 12:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Kida maintains that “we must learn to accept how much we don’t know” (p. 237). |
I realize this is a review of an argument and not the argument itself, but from this synopsis I don't quite understand how the sentence above fits into Kida's scheme. Can somebody tell me how this follows (or are you going to make me have to read the book? Actually, it does sound interesting). |
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