[HN Gopher] Cognitive sophistication does not attenuate the bias...
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Cognitive sophistication does not attenuate the bias blind spot
(2012)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 102 points
Date : 2023-02-20 10:30 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| [deleted]
| largepeepee wrote:
| History is full of talented people who squandered their talents
| onto meaningless endeavours.
|
| Take the famed scientist Issac Newton for example, despite all
| his scientific knowledge and logical reasoning he wasted the
| second half of his life trying to turn other metals into gold,
| alchemy - based nothing more than biblical text.
|
| Big brain does not prevent ideological blindness.
| tmn wrote:
| I'll ignore the argument that alchemy was a precursor to modern
| science. An iron man version of 'lead to gold' is that it was
| never about literally turning lead to gold (which modern
| science can do).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
|
| 'Esoteric interpretations of historical texts'
|
| From this lens, alchemy becomes a form of spiritual meditation.
| You can argue that such things are meaningless endeavors. But
| this is itself a subjective take. What are meaningful endeavors
| really?
|
| If I want to take a nihilistic frame, I'll strengthen your
| comment and say it's impossible to avoid meaningless endeavors.
|
| Inevitably one must pick their bias and arrive at their
| narrative.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Newton was a complex person and I think this is an overly
| reductive take on both his life and study of alchemy.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Is the next thing you are going to say that it's an overly
| reductive take on the alchemy as described in The Bible?
| batch12 wrote:
| Where is this description? I am having a difficult time
| finding a reference to performing alchemy in the Bible.
| h2odragon wrote:
| That was one of the things that made alchemy so much fun;
| all the "instructions" were "encoded" and literally
| occult. Much of what they were doing was hunting for the
| keys to a known ciphertext (the Bible) that would give
| them the secrets of the universe, once they decoded it
| correctly.
|
| Of course we're far too bright and sophisticated to fall
| into such folly today. You won't fond modern peoples, for
| example, having passionate arguments about the meanings
| of text generated by mechanical / statistical processes.
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| a more apt vignette from newton's life is that he absolutely
| lost his shirt on speculative investments in a bubble that
| collapsed and took one of the finest minds to the cleaners.
| mogacom wrote:
| Historical context is important to take into account with
| Newton. He had no idea he was doing "science" as opposed to
| something else. He was trying to systematically investigate the
| natural world in an environment largely composed of ignorance
| and myth, which he was also part of. Wasn't alchemy simply
| chemistry before chemistry had been developed into a well-
| defined field of study? His obsession with the dimensions of
| Solomon's temple is a little hard to understand though!
| stocknoob wrote:
| After inventing modern physics and calculus I'd think I had the
| golden touch, too.
|
| Newton took a lot of intellectual paths, from tinkering with
| prisms to thinking about the paths of the heavens. Only looking
| back can we say "oh, you wasted your time investigating x and
| y, but z was right on. Why didn't you just bat 1000?"
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It seems he was just overly credulous. Yes, he was very
| Christian, but I imagine if he got some ancient text from China
| on how to transmute lead to gold he would give it a shot
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > Take the famed scientist Issac Newton for example, despite
| all his scientific knowledge and logical reasoning he wasted
| the second half of his life trying to turn other metals into
| gold, alchemy - based nothing more than biblical text.
|
| Prior to the atomic model invented several hundred years later,
| given there was examples of metals turning into other metals
| (i.e. iron turning into steel, copper turning into brass)...
|
| I don't think there was much of a reason to think that the
| transmutation of metals into Gold wouldn't be possible. And it
| in fact sort of turns out to _be_ possible in certain
| circumstances. We can make gold from lead (although it requires
| a particle accelerator).
| largepeepee wrote:
| Certainly there is that possibly, problem is where he stemmed
| his research from - biblical text.
|
| He used dates and accounts of ancient myths for many of his
| data points.
|
| Combing the bible over and over for clues, wasting much of
| his talent and decades on false leads.
|
| Flawed research leading to dead ends despite his brilliance.
|
| Which is the point of the post, intelligence does not make
| one immune to bias.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Alchemists being "wrong" is like Michelson-Morley "failing":
|
| More branding than reality, since we accomplished their
| projects later -- transmuting elements and detecting the
| aether.
|
| Ironically, this seems to be a cognitive bias -- we never
| update our first impression nor put together a story across
| terminology changes. Carlo Rovelli gives an interesting talk
| on how we're too quick to dismiss ancient scholars.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an5-KLvvMGM&t=1199s
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's really fascinating to read historical accounts of
| science. Cicero's De Natura Deorum has an incredible
| account various antique world views and how they're
| motivated. Most of it is wrong in some sense in the light
| of modern science, but what's fascinating is how often they
| get things right.
|
| It's like they're using poorly chosen basis vectors, and
| muddling some concepts we now understand to be distinct:
| They seem to have associated energy and/or thermodynamic
| heat with the element of fire; the gaseous phase with air
| and buoyancy, the liquid phase with water, the solid phase
| with earth and gravity.
|
| It's very clear why the model stood for as long as it did
| despite some remarkably clever people looking into it. It
| actually fits the empirical evidence pretty well.
| evv555 wrote:
| >More branding than reality, since we accomplished their
| projects later -- transmuting elements and detecting the
| aether.
|
| Arguably this was accomplished using the work of
| alchemists. Ontologies tend to progress through stages of
| differentiation of components("stamp collecting") followed
| by integrative models. Mendeleev doesn't find periodic
| patterns in elements without alchemists first inventorying
| elemental features.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| As the bumper sticker says: "No shit." Intelligence in one domain
| does not necessarily translate to all areas. There are
| uncountable millions of gifted people who are low functioning in
| other domains.
|
| Contrary to this are the individual fallacies of overconfidence
| and the collective fallacy of the genius halo effect.
|
| There is also a tendency to failure aversion by avoid domains
| outside of performant ones.
|
| The safest assumption is: 1. Your areas outside of performant
| ones are lacking until proven otherwise with feedback. 2. Don't
| worry about not being an omnipotent polyglot, polymath. Seek
| excellence, just don't go crazy or drive everyone else nuts.
| Theory of mind and frame taking by considering putting yourself
| in others' proverbial shoes isn't necessarily something people
| are born with, it has to be taught and learned. Some people do
| have harder times because they have to intellectualize it if they
| are emotionally disconnected from others and/or themselves, or
| have a neurotype that doesn't lend itself to smooth observation
| of social and situational state of others.
| peatmoss wrote:
| This is one of those things where I've lived the XKCD comic
| (https://xkcd.com/793/).
|
| I once had a job where I was part of the supporting technical
| crew for some very smart people with some truly impressive
| accomplishments. A colleague and I sometimes groused about the
| challenges of working with "universal domain specialists."
| dkarl wrote:
| Tests and version control... why do you bother with all that
| ceremony? It seems like a lot of work that could go towards
| making the code better.
|
| To play devil's advocate, though, I do think that something
| is lost if everyone stops themselves from asking questions on
| the grounds that everyone has good reasons for everything
| they do and therefore there's no point having thoughts about
| someone else's job. Even if you assume the first part, the
| second doesn't follow. Understanding other people's jobs
| helps you work better with them, and if you don't understand
| the purpose of something they're doing, that probably
| indicates an opportunity to understand them better. Second,
| looking at it from the other side, we all benefit from
| answering beginner questions. What's the difference between
| the innocence of a child and the innocence of somebody who
| has studied physics their whole life and never had to support
| a piece of software? When children, or physicists, ask
| questions that are hard for us to answer, we can learn
| something in the attempt.
|
| The only difference between being posed "dumb" questions by a
| child and an adult from another field is if they think you're
| an idiot. (Honestly, that isn't even a difference. We just
| don't mind if children walk around thinking adults are all
| idiots most of the time. We expect differently from them
| after they grow up.)
|
| Reading between the lines, I think some people regard the
| momentary joy of thinking you see something that someone else
| doesn't as a bit of corruption in the soul, a moral root
| cause. I don't think it's a bad thing, though. Imagine
| playing chess against someone much better than you and
| getting excited because you think you can take a piece and
| get a winning advantage. The odds are very high that you are
| wrong, or that you're going to take the piece and then lose
| anyway, but what are you going to do? You're going to take
| the piece, pose them the question! Or else there's no fun in
| playing the game. Some people would argue that the excitement
| that arises in your mind at that point is wrong, not just in
| the sense of not being supported by reason, but a morally
| wrong response, arrogant, disrespectful of the better player,
| a toxic feeling that we should strive to eliminate and
| certainly strive not to show to other people. But it isn't
| necessarily, and we don't have to take it that way.
|
| Where it can change from innocent to annoying and even toxic,
| depending on how people handle it, is when the expert can't
| provide an answer that satisfies the innocent. At that point
| the innocent (or the expert) might get angry or
| condescending, or might simply badger the other person in a
| time-wasting way, insisting that the matter can't be dropped
| until agreement is reached. Or one or both of them might walk
| away thinking the other person is an idiot.
|
| But that doesn't have to happen. They can let it go
| gracefully. The innocent can walk away thinking, "I don't
| understand their reason for doing that," the expert can walk
| away thinking, "I don't know how to explain it to someone
| with their background," and they both have food for further
| thought.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| There is a whole interleafing flower petal of mental bug
| categorys:
|
| Detectable | Undetectable
|
| Fixable | Unfixable
|
| Workaround | No-Workaround
|
| Cost of workaround (Big O)
|
| Individual | Society
|
| Non-Meta | Meta (Bug is created by several other bugs recombining
| into a functional or dysfunctional cluster)
|
| Some bugs you cant fix, cause society depends on it while also
| suffering with it. Humanity sized Behaviour DBs and Datamining is
| the real Psychology!
| 2devnull wrote:
| A lot of great comments here about the difficulty recognizing
| one's own biases. A related thing I like to think about is the
| jungian concept of the shadow; if we can see it, it's not the
| shadow.
|
| I do think we can look for evidence that we are at least limiting
| the impact of our biases. For example, if you don't change
| political affiliations at least once or twice in your lifetime,
| that's probably a sign you're controlled by your biases and not
| really as free or rational as is optimal. What's the old saying,
| if you aren't a liberal in your youth you have no heart; if you
| aren't conservative as you get older you have no brain. But I
| think moving in the opposite direction is also a good indicator
| of free thinking. A foolish consistency is the hob goblin of
| little minds. Dynamic thinking is the only real thinking. We
| should grow and evolve overtime.
| apienx wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see how the Skeptics and other bias-aware
| groups perform. It's hard to imagine the folks at the Center For
| Applied Rationally doing just as bad as the average Joe.
|
| It's hard to believe that you can't train yourself into
| hypervigilance and extraordinary awareness. Practicing with
| intent is a very different animal from "cognitive sophistication"
| (however the paper defines it).
| jgeada wrote:
| You _cannot_ be an expert in everything, it is impossible; the
| domain of human knowledge and experience has grown too vast for
| anyone to be conversant with anything more than a minor
| fraction. So, sooner or later, either you distrust everything
| and you become a conspiracy theorist or you rely on experts.
| Who you choose to trust as experts gives you a bias.
|
| My personal observation (ie read this as anecdote, not data) is
| that skeptics frequently choose to select as their expert the
| lone dissenter in the field. My interpretation is not that the
| skeptics I know are truly skeptics, they're contrarians who
| don't trust institutional knowledge or consensus.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| The science seems to show that it's very hard (possibly almost
| impossible) to de-bias yourself, which is why humans have to
| rely rely on other humans with outside perspective as a
| counter-balancing force. This assumes that conflict of opinions
| is welcome and accepted by the group, which is unfortunately
| not always the case, leading to echo chambers and groups
| confirming and reinforcing existing beliefs.
| blfr wrote:
| Are these biases wrong though? In a hypothetical perfectly
| spherical chickens in vacuum world, yes, but in reality you
| probably want some outcome bias for example because you don't
| control all the variables.
|
| So the analysis of perception of that bias and bias blind spot
| strike me as interesting but rather useless.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Your comment gave me an interesting way to think about biases:
| Bayesian statistics. It is no wonder we see people end up at
| vastly different conclusions when their starting point (bias)
| is so different. Coupled with this, bias is probably correlated
| with experiences to some extent, leading two different
| individuals to entirely different conclusions.
|
| This is a good argument for devolution, IMO. Today's politics
| is too large-scale and winner-take-all to accurately represent
| all its constituents. For instance, a topic like immigration in
| the US has no solution that will appease everyone, because
| there are so many different viewpoints that conflict with each
| other. We should let smaller populations with a higher level of
| concurrence govern themselves accordingly.
| naasking wrote:
| They're wrong if you're interested in truth, just maybe not
| wrong if you're interested in reproductive fitness. We're not
| so concerned about the latter these days so much as the former.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Additional analyses indicated that being free of the bias blind
| spot does not help a person avoid the actual classic cognitive
| biases.
|
| This is the worst part. Being fully aware that people are biased
| and that you are not a special exception to that isn't helpful.
| You're still just as likely to let bias influence your actions,
| and you'll probably try to justify yourself as having good
| reasons for your biased actions.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > You're still just as likely to let bias influence your
| actions, and you'll probably try to justify yourself as having
| good reasons for your biased actions.
|
| I really don't think everybody is equally biased. Some people
| at least try to use reason and science to guide their beliefs,
| why other will systematically deny all evidences. Also people
| who are aware of biases are more likely to recognize their
| errors when called out with logical arguments.
| naasking wrote:
| > why other will systematically deny all evidences
|
| Sure, but they also do so for specific reasons, like that
| considering evidence failed them in the past in some
| significant way. Possibly they just didn't do it right, but
| it's just incorrect to think people are the way they are for
| no logical reason.
| tired-turtle wrote:
| A specific reason is not a logical reason; sure, the
| decision 'made sense' to that person at the time, but it's
| irrational within the broader schema of life.
|
| (I think that's what you meant?)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| This sounds pretty close to a standard bias blind spot. Do
| you consider yourself more or less biased than the average
| person?
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I didn't say that. From experience dealing with people, I
| just think that not everybody is equally biased. Just like
| not everybody is equally good at maths, music or sport.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| You didn't specify what you do, but you clearly laid out
| what you see as the biased and the unbiased way. It's not
| that simple. Everyone thinks their decisions are based on
| reason, and most people will sometimes ignore evidence.
|
| Maybe some people are better at avoiding bias than
| others, but from my experience people will be better in
| some areas while still prone to it in other areas.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I'm a little confused by this because I don't know if it's
| possible to measure biases and proclaim that someone is more
| biased than the other. One of the things that comes to mind
| is that one person may have weakly held or strongly held bias
| (maybe differentiating being biased to being bigoted?). How
| do you compare multiple weakly held biases vs one very
| strongly held one? How do you count biases when you yourself
| are also biased and therefore will very likely undercount any
| biases aligning with your own?
| yamrzou wrote:
| That's why we need feedback from others.
|
| _"A system cannot understand itself without help from outside
| the system, because prior experiences will bias objectivity,
| preventing critical analysis of the organization."_ -- Edward
| Deming
| aatd86 wrote:
| Until you realize that part of you is a black box to others
| and only you have access to some of your internal state.
|
| So, yes and no. That's why self awareness, perhaps via proper
| meditation, although I thought it was some hippy shit at
| first, is actually valuable.
| luckylion wrote:
| How often can you get feedback from someone until they've
| become part of your system and are no longer an outsider?
| Byamarro wrote:
| This is such a valid point. I've experienced it myself.
| When you're on a team, after some time team members start
| developing shared biases. It's enough that some previous
| discussion was railroaded certain way to make it harder for
| the team members to think outside of the box shaped by
| previous conversations.
| michaelt wrote:
| Available from the coauthor's website at
| http://www.keithstanovich.com/Site/Research_on_Reasoning_fil...
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| at_a_remove wrote:
| My methodology, such as it is, goes like:
|
| 1) Receive information.
|
| 2) Assume that I am being lied to, manipulated, shaded, data
| elided, whatever, sometimes by accident, sometimes by intent, but
| at least several levels removed from whomever delivers the
| information.
|
| 3) Seek out information that says the exact opposite.
|
| 4) Repeat Step 2.
|
| 5) Start looking for little tricks: what has been left out? If we
| are judging person X for act Y, are we not judging other parties
| for Y? Is the timing convenient for a distraction?
|
| 6) Resign myself to a state of uncertainty in a world of lies.
| maCDzP wrote:
| How does members of the HN crowd try to combat this?
|
| Or is it just another exercise in futility where the actual
| exercise is just part of the thing that make me biased in the
| first place?
|
| I'll go first. I see a therapist every other week. I hope that
| gives me an outsiders point of view.
|
| But I think I have identified a way to know where my biases are
| could be strong. When I get a really uneasy feeling when I start
| to think about making changes in a certain area. And I don't know
| if it's a rational fear or just a sunk cost fallacy.
|
| What I find really scary is that I have hard time understanding
| if I am just fooling myself or being rational. Because it's
| always my own mind coming up with explanations, so the actual
| process looks the same to me.
|
| I read a book called "Quit" recently and it gave me a lot to
| think about regarding biases and quitting different endeavors.
| Can recommend.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| A little humility goes a long way for correcting biases
| asdf123wtf wrote:
| Here's my little folk "wisdom" addendum to your great point:
|
| * Try to replace any judginess you feel, with curiosity
|
| (Easier said than done - but a little humility is a great
| first step towards getting to that curious state of mind)
|
| Curiosity places understanding something ahead of justifying
| something. It makes self-interrogation easier and less
| threatening to the ego. It makes engaging with those who hold
| differing beliefs more about understanding/exploring, and
| less like doing battle.
|
| That's my theory anyways, but it could be my bias talking.
|
| And I fail at taking my own advice, often. ;P
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I try to fully rationalize the opposing viewpoints. To the
| point that I cannot disdain anyone for taking those viewpoints
| because I completely understand why they would think that way,
| and can see my own self from their POV.
|
| It does not at all prevent me from having bias, but it at
| least, with effort, on a case by case basis, lets me adopt
| someone else's bias.
|
| After all, there is no unbiased person so what's the point?
| kilgnad wrote:
| How far can you take it? Can you talk about implementing
| eugenics? Because scientifically it's not a completely
| invalid idea.
|
| Preventing people with genetic defects and recessive carriers
| of genetic defects from reproducing whether through execution
| or restriction does definitively eliminate the defect if such
| policies were implemented well.
|
| The short period of suffering during the culling has the
| reward of completely eliminating the targeted genetic
| diseases.
|
| I find that it is rare to find someone who is able to think
| rationally about the topic above. A lot of people have to
| rearrange the logic of potential solutions such that it fits
| within a moral framework. They cannot disentangle the logic
| and keep their analysis completely separate from their own
| ethics.
|
| Executing someone with a genetic defects is logically
| speaking the most definitive way to stop that genetic defect
| from spreading. Restriction costs resources and has the
| potential for failure.
|
| You see what I'm saying? Being completely unbiased is a form
| of psychopathy. But it does let you see truths others are
| unable to see. Eugenics targeted at actual known genetic
| defects in both sufferers and recessive carriers does
| logically lead to a better outcome then the moral path. If
| you just let natural selection play out the defect could just
| stick around causing suffering across many many generations
| of people.
|
| But this is the extreme example. The extreme example triggers
| moral reactions which in turn becomes a mirror to your
| biases.
|
| A more realistic example is: "do I eliminate the jobs of
| everyone whose livelihood depends on success in the oil
| industry to stave off the impending catastrophe of global
| warming?"
| 988747 wrote:
| Why stop at genetic defects? Just abolish the whole modern
| medicine: let the sick people die, so only the strongest,
| most immune survive. Do we really want to live in the world
| like that?
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _Being completely unbiased is a form of psychopathy._
|
| Nice. On the other hand, we must remember that biases can
| be, and are, exploited: "Patriotism is the last refuge of
| the scoundrel."
| bena wrote:
| Yeah, I like to remind people we do eugenics all the time.
| With plants and animals. We don't call it that because we
| often feel that humans are a different class of life and we
| need special words to describe things we do to ourselves.
|
| But breeding a dachshund is eugenics. You are selecting for
| desired traits and not allowing undesirable dogs to breed.
|
| Like, it technically works.
|
| We don't do it because it also means violating people's
| privacy and autonomy. And that's just wrong. The mechanisms
| are inhumane.
| kilgnad wrote:
| Here's the thing. The logic for eugenics is actually MORE
| humane then letting it go. Do you have generations of
| people suffering from genetic defects or do you do one
| execution and save thousands from suffering?
|
| We choose the former not because of logic, but because
| our moral instincts are evolved to be reactionary rather
| then analytical. We only feel it's wrong, but in
| actuality it is not consistent.
|
| It's the same biases that cause us to view Thanos as the
| villain in Avengers. Without getting too pedantic, in a
| way, he's actually right.
| bena wrote:
| It's not entirely that you have to execute people. It's
| that you have to restrict the rights of people to have
| sex with who they want. And you have to force others to
| give up their genetic material to produce offspring they
| may not want to.
|
| There's also the issue of the definition of "suffering".
| Once you control for the traits people mostly agree are
| detrimental, where do we stop? Do we control for height?
| Intelligence? Decreased propensity for certain behaviors?
| Where's the line?
|
| And no, Thanos was not right. Thanos was written by a
| fucking moron. It took Earth about 50 years to go from 4
| billion people to 8 billion. So, in the most generous
| interpretation of his action, he gave the universe 50
| more years. Next, it's kind of implied that it was all
| life, including animals. You know, livestock. And then
| you also have the matter of plant life. If that was or
| was not affected. Regardless, cutting out half of all
| life also cuts roughly half of your resources as well. It
| also ignores that at 4 billion people, we were doing a
| fucking bang up job of thrashing the environment still.
| And it ignores the fact that there's just a better
| answer, make more stuff. Or change reality so that far
| fewer resources are consumed through certain actions.
| Make energy free. Make it so people don't need to eat.
| Everything is on the fucking table. The Infinity Stones
| are essentially limitless. His justification in the films
| just do not hold up. Both in reasoning and execution. At
| least in the comic he was doing it to get laid. As base
| as that is, it's a reason with no issues.
| kilgnad wrote:
| See. Rationalization. Bias. Whether it's right or it's
| wrong. You spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to
| twist the logic to fit your definition of morality.
|
| You aren't trying to put together a conclusion from
| facts. You're trying to put together the facts to fit
| your conclusion. Don't you find it convenient that
| everything tends to have a clear moral solution?
|
| In the universe described by the movie, Thanos is right,
| the heros fought him Despite them knowing he's right. The
| pedantic details of Thanos being right in reality is not
| what I'm referring to here, I'm referring to Hollywood
| Movie logic and how both the audience and the characters
| went along with it.
|
| >There's also the issue of the definition of "suffering".
| Once you control for the traits people mostly agree are
| detrimental, where do we stop? Do we control for height?
| Intelligence? Decreased propensity for certain behaviors?
| Where's the line?'
|
| That is off topic. The point is eugenics for diseases
| with clear detriment to humanity. It's like I asked you
| "Should I eat a hot dog." and you're like "What about a
| pizza, what about 2 hot dogs? What about scarfing down
| your throat all the food in the entire restaurant? Where
| is the line??"
| gilleain wrote:
| No, there are (at least) two explanations for Thanos'
| solution to the problem of resource constraints and
| overcrowding.
|
| In-universe, I understand (from the youtube videos
| 'Comics Explained :) ) that Thanos is in love with
| Mistress Death, so naturally he favours a solution that
| kills a lot of organisms.
|
| Out-of-universe the writers needed a villain. So they had
| Thanos do something evil. As the other poster pointed
| out, it was also a fairly dumb solution, given
| exponential growth.
|
| Either way, he has a glove with the literal power of the
| universe and he chooses a comically evil way to fix it.
| Obviously as it is a comic book.
|
| The important point is that thinking the Thanos
| 'solution' is somehow rational is based on an arbitrary
| choice of what is important - life, freedom, nature,
| order, etc.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Sadly, the devil is in the details of determining whether
| something is a genetic defect, or an adaptation to an
| environment just around the corner. Would you get rid of
| cycle cell anemia even though it gives an advantage towards
| Malaria? Genetic variability tends to be beneficial in the
| long run. This can easily be seen with dog breeding, where
| the hybrid crosses have more vigor than the "true breeds".
|
| In the end, one would be justifying a decision based on a
| bias.
| kilgnad wrote:
| That's rationalization. There are definitely defects that
| do not have any trade off. It is bias in itself to think
| that every genetic trait has a balanced positive and
| negative.
|
| It's the apple and oranges argument people often use with
| programming languages. They think every programming
| language is just a tool in a tool box, good for one thing
| bad for another. They preclude the possibility that
| certain programming languages can be good for almost
| everything or that other ones can be complete crap for
| just about all applications. There is no logical
| reasoning that precludes either of the aforementioned
| languages to exist. It's illogical and it's biased to
| think everything is fair and balanced.
|
| Logically speaking, executing the people with clearly
| defective traits is overall beneficial to society.
| There's no other way to reason around this. You can try
| but it'd be a biased endeavor as your specifically
| searching for reasoning to counter mine for the sake of
| creating the contradiction itself.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _rationalize the opposing viewpoints_
|
| Putting oneself in the other's place is the least one can do.
| But in politics, for example, all you will find is that
| there's no right or wrong but rather opposing _interests_ (of
| which there may be more then two). Then all you can do is
| start to appeal to the _irrational_ - faith (religion), hope
| (expectations), love (e.g. patriotism), etc.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Thats kind of the point. It takes the wind out of my sails
| when I realize there isn't any sense of "right" or "wrong"
| that can be agreed upon. Instead, you have to talk about
| values, and why one approach favors one value over the
| other. At that point, you're not talking to a heretic, but
| a human being with a different value system, which is often
| not far from yours.
| csours wrote:
| > I try to fully rationalize the opposing viewpoints.
|
| Edit: "Both Sides"-ing an issue can be dangerous. Many times,
| there is actual harm on one side, and mere discomfort on the
| other. You may not be describing "both sides"-ing; but this
| could be read that way.
|
| I would say it as "identify the deeply held beliefs that got
| this person to their viewpoint"
|
| Previous statement:
|
| This can be dangerous, depending on how it is done. I would
| say it as "identify the deeply held beliefs that got this
| person to their viewpoint"
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I don't think being able to hold opposing viewpoints in my
| head is ever dangerous. Understanding the chain of logic
| that leads from, for example, some religious fundamentalism
| to misogyny does not imply I'm going to keep my girls out
| of school, it just means I get why they have that fucked up
| opinion: they grew up around it, it feels natural to them,
| their elders support it with scripture so it becomes
| sacred, etc etc.
|
| It just helps understand how deep it goes, and therefore
| how challenging it might be to persuade someone out of it.
| It doesn't change my own beliefs on the matter.
| lumb63 wrote:
| To the contrary, I think your approach leads to, rather
| than understanding, identifying. In my opinion, it can be a
| little degrading to have one's system of beliefs broken
| down to "this person believes X therefore Y"; there is
| probably a lot more going on in some people's minds.
|
| The best approach is probably somewhere in the middle. I
| can think of instances in people i know where they have
| deeply held beliefs that they don't challenge that lead
| them to all sorts of conclusions. But I also know people
| who have deliberated on topics in depth to reach the
| conclusions they have. That is not to say that they are
| without bias, but their viewpoints are consequences of more
| than just deeply held beliefs.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Right. My method for discriminating between core values
| and rational deliberation is to walk myself through their
| decision tree. Usually I come up with questions to ask
| that make people uncomfortable and the Convo ends.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Do you have any concrete examples of this? I'm curious.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I would say isn't it useful to simply acknowledge you can be
| deeply flawed all the time and your experiences of reality will
| always be slanted with your subjective opinions on how society
| works, that everyone else is also doing the same thing, and
| continue onwards anyways? There's no way to escape our own
| imperfections. We have some tools to help us mitigate them, but
| they will always be there.
| brookst wrote:
| That seems fairly defeatist. I've gotten better at some
| things I used to be terrible at, and it took work to do so.
| And I'm happier for it, while still being plenty imperfect.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I never said to stop working at it. I'm merely pointing out
| that the knowledge that one is a personally unsolveably
| flawed human being doesn't have to cause uneasiness.
| brookst wrote:
| Then apologies for misunderstanding your point!
| [deleted]
| evv555 wrote:
| >How does members of the HN crowd try to combat this?
|
| I think what can be lost in these conversations is the
| differentiation of a cognitive capacity and the drives to use
| that capacity. What are the conditions that have lead to your
| drive for empathic perspective taking? What are these
| conditions and are these conditions scalable to the world at
| large?
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Knowledge itself is a bias against things you don't know.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| This is not what bias means.
| brookst wrote:
| How about my bias against being electrocuted?
| Koshkin wrote:
| You are entitled to have your own opinion on this.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Thanks for informing me that my understanding of the word
| differs from yours. Unfortunately, that information on its
| own is not very useful to me.
|
| Would you care to also tell me your understanding of the
| word, so I can figure out whether I need to change my
| understanding or not?
| csours wrote:
| The human mind appears to have evolved in a tribal system, and
| it appears to be predisposed to tribal thinking. As for myself,
| I try to think of my tribe as all of humanity. You're all my
| cousins; some of you are knuckleheads, some of you are
| dangerous, but you're all my cousins.
|
| I like the book "The Righteous Mind". It took me a month to
| read; it's emotionally difficult, not intellectually difficult.
| You can't blame people for their gender or skin tone; you also
| can't blame them for how they were raised - people pick up
| deeply held beliefs as children that are very hard to see or
| address.
|
| > What I find really scary is that I have hard time
| understanding if I am just fooling myself or being rational.
| Because it's always my own mind coming up with explanations, so
| the actual process looks the same to me.
|
| The mind is a rationalizing system. It makes things you do feel
| rational. After I left organized religion, I fell in love with
| rational skepticism. Then I found that most public "skepticism"
| is just debunking, not gathering evidence for things you should
| believe in; and that most "rationality" is just post-hoc
| rationalization of existing beliefs.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| Seconding the book "The Righteous Mind". Was hard to accept
| the point that landed against "my" usual political side, but
| his point are valid, and only more applicable since it was
| published ten (?) years ago.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Excellent book, highly recommended as well.
| maCDzP wrote:
| Hehe, I like the thought of having and being cousin
| knucklehead.
|
| I'll have to check out the book you recommended. Speaking of
| righteousness, I have noticed in myself that it's a very
| addictive feeling. I get off on it. I don't think that's a
| good thing though.
| codethief wrote:
| > The human mind appears to have evolved in a tribal system,
| and it appears to be predisposed to tribal thinking.
|
| +1
|
| I learned about this was when someone posted this article on
| HN some years ago:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200808051003/https://nautil.us.
| ..
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| how do you know if its all a dream? Because the top doesn't
| stop spinning.
|
| You need a top for testing rationality. Here's a nearly
| definitional one: you're being rationale when your explanation
| convinces people other than just you.
| robgibbons wrote:
| Being convincing does not equal rational. There are many
| logical fallacies that are convincing on the surface but
| don't stand up to rational scrutiny.
| kilgnad wrote:
| People on hackernews especially suffer from this because a lot
| of programmers tie their identity to being smart. Its the worst
| place to ask for advice against this because the people
| answering you are likely the most confidently biased people.
|
| The happier and more confident someone is the more biased they
| tend to be.
|
| The less confident someone is the less biased they tend to be.
|
| Because you use the word "scared" I'm thinking you're not a
| confident person and therefore you're highly highly unbiased.
|
| As a human, to live a happy life, we are evolved to be more
| biased then not. It is the cruel irony in life that your quest
| to seek the unbiased truth leads to less happiness.
|
| I'm too lazy to cite this but there is actual research showing
| this. People who lie to themselves tend to be happier and more
| successful and people who are more honest with themselves...
| Tend to suffer from depression.
|
| If you don't believe a word I say, then great, you're doing
| well. And you're really smart! Leave me a snappy reply showing
| how you disagree then go on and live your life.
|
| If you agree with this post, then I'm sorry.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _programmers tie their identity to being smart_
|
| And not just programmers themselves: more than once I have
| heard a manager say, Let's ask a programmer, they are smart!
| tootie wrote:
| My layman observation was always that being intelligent and being
| rational are two completely different things. It's how you get
| people who have high technical achievement but still hold on to
| odd beliefs or get sucked into conspiracies.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I observe something like this in the way people react to what's
| going on in the news.
|
| Example: compared to most people, I am "better" positioned to
| understand what's going on in Ukraine - my dad and both inlaws
| are from there and speak the language. I grew up in former USSR
| and speak fluent Russian so I can also watch and read things
| closer to the source.
|
| And yet, I don't claim to understand anything that's going on in
| Ukraine because ~none~ of the information I see can be considered
| unbiased. So I can chose to believe one set but not the other set
| of data or I can say "I am not equipped to understand this."
|
| Meanwhile, tons of people who are objectively less equipped to
| suss out the situation, don't feel this hesitation to have an
| opinion. Intellectually, if you ask them 'does propaganda exist,
| and is it amped up in a war situation' they will say 'of course,
| every time' and then they'll go and believe what they read (be in
| in a Western or Russian source, doesn't matter.)
|
| This is not a complaint, it's actually something quite empowering
| to understand.
| FrontierPsych wrote:
| "Truth is the first casualty of war" goes the saying.
| im3w1l wrote:
| In the end there is an imperative to act*. Even if we don't
| understand as well as we'd like, we don't get to just shrug and
| say "I dunno". We have to go with our best guess (perhaps
| hedging a bit against other possibilities) and hope for the
| best. Yes we might be misled by propaganda. Still we must act.
|
| * I'm defining act broadly here as any kind of policy choice.
| Sending humanitarian aid, or not sending it. Sending military
| aid or not sending it. Voicing our support, or not voicing our
| support. Encouraging surrender, or not encouraging surrender.
| pharrington wrote:
| Are you saying that the information about Russia's war is
| _unduly_ biased? I ask because all communication is biased,
| obviously to very different degrees, and for very different
| reasons.
|
| I try to be as open and honest as possible about my biases, and
| constantly reexamine my current and past beliefs.
| bawolff wrote:
| It should go without saying that any coverage of a war is
| going to be extremely biased, doubly so from places that are
| participating in it (including usa, because they clearly have
| a strong geopolitical interest in the outcome)
|
| That is just how war works.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What do you mean by _unduly_ biased.
|
| Bias, at least for me, means erroneous or misleading.
|
| I think all people are biased and imperfect, but that doesn't
| mean that all communication is biased. Unbiased communication
| takes a lot more work, but isn't impossible.
| pharrington wrote:
| Our definitions of bias in this context seem, mine aligns
| with the first Merriam Webster definition -
| 1 a : an inclination of temperament or outlook
| especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment :
| prejudice b : an instance of such prejudice
|
| I consider undue bias to basically be deliberate deception
| about the information itself or the biases of the source.
|
| This is important because, as another commenter in this
| thread said, we always have an imperative to act amid
| imperfect information.
|
| edit: Obviously you can choose to not act, but inaction
| seems like the opposite of empowerment to me.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| When you talk about bias as an adjective, you can have a
| biased person or biased communication . Humans are vastly
| complex so you can't have unbiased humans without
| omniscience.
|
| Language and data however are different. You can have
| unbiased communication and data.
|
| The statement 2 + 2 = 4 in the base 10 number system is
| unbiased.
|
| To say unbiased language does not exist is saying that
| truth does not exist.
| pharrington wrote:
| I'll clarify myself - all communication of imperfect
| knowledge is biased. I'm afraid we're falling into a
| overly pedantic semantic quibble though.
|
| The context we're talking about is how much we can
| understand about a war. I understand that Russia invaded
| Ukraine, and that nothing Ukraine's done even begins
| justifies a full on, bloody invasion.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Yeah it's a war, there isn't much more bias information
| you're going to see. I looked into half the stories Google
| promoted me when I did a random search about an Ukraine topic
| and it was basically all US MSM which cited "experts" that
| were former US intelligence. This also held true for Bing
| because appearantly US MSM is the place to get unbiased
| reputable information about the war in Ukraine (???)
|
| The only place I could get a different view was Yandex who
| rigged their search results to show a bunch of small anti-US
| bloggers since the Ruskies run Yandex. Also RT right near the
| top.
|
| So I have to choose between a bunch of shills the US and it's
| MSM puppets promoted, or a bunch of shills the Russians
| promoted plus some bloggers who would believe the US is
| responsible for cancer and heart disease.
|
| None of these search engines promote sources which could be
| seen as relatively neutral like Al Jazeera or Chinese news or
| whatever. I never see people promote random substacks of
| independent media. Almost everything I read about this war is
| planted by government shills of one sort or another that are
| boosting search results and so on. I was around for the Iraq
| war and yeah that war made it incredibly obvious how
| THROUGHLY untrustworthy the mainstream media is regarding war
| reporting and their love of killing the innocent with lies.
| I've fallen for propaganda before because it's impossible not
| to because there's such a freaking torrent of it.
| loudmax wrote:
| None of this is strictly incorrect, but it's a mistake to
| conclude that since all sides are biased the truth is
| unknowable and you might as well throw up your hands and
| retreat entirely. In fact, the goal of disinformation isn't
| necessarily to make you believe things that are wrong, the
| goal is to create enough confusion to make you believe that
| you simply can't know what's going on.
|
| If you assign equal weight to NASA and flat earth websites
| you might as well conclude that apparently there is
| controversy among so-called "experts", so who knows, maybe
| the earth is round and maybe it isn't. You can think this
| way, but it's clearly bullshit. While NASA isn't magic and
| they have made mistakes and have lost spacecraft, their
| level of credibility isn't equal to flat-earthers.
|
| The governments of the United States (and the European and
| Asian democracies) and Russia both have agendas and both
| push narratives they want you to believe. This is true. But
| if you think the democratic and totalitarian governments
| are _equally_ trustworthy you 're deluding yourself.
| enkid wrote:
| But no matter the bias, you can get some facts that should
| allow you to make some judgements like Russia invaded
| Ukraine to "defend" breakaway republics it propped up
| itself by trying to blockade Ukraine's two largest cities.
| Russia is the aggressor and is shooting rockets at
| civilians and doing generally bad stuff like torturing
| people. That is "biased" but it's biased toward truth.
| Seeing anything anti-Russian as a government shill is going
| to lead you to seeing conspiracy theories everywhere
| because Russia legitimately is the bad guy here.
| leereeves wrote:
| It's entirely possible for both sides of a war to be the
| bad guys.
|
| I don't know how many, if any, of the charges that have
| been levied against Ukraine are true, but given the
| history of the US, we should know better than to assume
| that we are on the right side, or that we are being told
| the whole truth.
|
| And we obviously aren't being told the real reason for
| the war. If torturing people, invading another country,
| and firing missiles at civilians were sufficient reason
| to oppose another country, we wouldn't support the
| Saudis.
| bawolff wrote:
| > I don't know how many, if any, of the charges that have
| been levied against Ukraine are true,
|
| In terms of valid reasons to go to war, i dont think any
| of the reasons russia provided really make sense, even if
| you consider the other side extremely biased.
|
| Just because both sides are very biased, does not mean
| you can't critically evaluate the arguments. Bias means
| you should be cautious not discard all reasoning.
|
| > And we obviously aren't being told the real reason for
| the war. If torturing people, invading another country,
| and firing missiles at civilians were sufficient reason
| to oppose another country, we wouldn't support the
| Saudis.
|
| Moral justification for wars always differ from
| geopolitical reasons. That is true for literally every
| war ever. In this case its pretty obvious that its a
| fight over what russia's sphere of influence should be
| along with various strategic resources in ukraine (oil,
| port access). Letting russia invade a country for
| essentially deciding to have closer ties to the west, is
| a terrible precedent for the west, because other
| countries will see that and be less likely to pursue
| ties. So its not really a surprise they got involved.
| enkid wrote:
| Why are you trying to change the subject from Russia
| aggression to US aggression? Something's aren't about the
| US, and viewing this war in that lens completely takes
| agency away from Ukraine and Russia. Instead, let's talk
| about Russia and Ukraine. Russia has nuclear weapons and
| promised to guarantee Ukraine's borders in exchange for
| them giving up theirs. Instead, Russia invaded and took
| territory from them in 2014. When that wasn't enough,
| they did it again a year ago. Before 2014, Ukraine barely
| had a military and posed no threat to anyone. What
| possible reason could Russia have to invade Ukraine that
| would justify this?
| bawolff wrote:
| Usa is a super power. Pretty much every geopolitical
| conflict is going to have at least something to do with
| usa. That is kind of implicit in the definition of super
| power.
| enkid wrote:
| "Having something to do with" doesn't mean explains, and
| only talking about the US still takes all agency away
| from other actors.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I haven't been following the news lately but early on in the
| war it was obvious to me that the U.S. media was at least
| minimizing reports of Ukranian casualties, and possibly
| inflating those of Russia. This is "expected" since we are
| aligned with the former
| ag315 wrote:
| This is a really excellent point, both in general and vis a vis
| the conflict in Ukraine. Something I see happening often is
| that some people are quick to confuse expertise-as-credential
| with expertise-as-substance, or to assume that anyone who has
| above average knowledge of some relevant subject area that
| relates to some aspect of the war is immune to emotionally
| biased interpretations.
| kulahan wrote:
| This was recently on display with the Ghost of Kyiv killing
| over 850,000 enemy platoons with a single bullet. I'm sure it
| was born out of some interesting story - maybe a rookie had a
| good dogfight or something, but BOY did that story grow and
| grow.
|
| My only question is: how much propaganda came from states, vs.
| people taking an idea and running with it because it's a
| narrative they want to hear?
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Or the rumors of mobile cremation chambers to incinerate
| corpses of crimes against humanity victims which circulated
| in the first few weeks, including copious photos, which all
| turned out to be some random heavy equipment.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Apparently there's even a wikipedia article on this, TIL: h
| ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_usage_of_mobile_cremat
| ...
| marsten wrote:
| You only realize how uninformed the media is when it covers
| something you know very well. I experienced this in grad school
| when Newsweek magazine profiled some work my lab was doing
| (physics), and they made a lot of simple mistakes we could've
| easily corrected.
| oofnik wrote:
| This is called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect:
| https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
| [deleted]
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