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Adam Clark

Do People Only Use 10% of Their Brains? | Mental Floss - 1 views

mentalfloss.com/...eople-only-use-10-their-brains

shared by Adam Clark on 11 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Adam Clark on 11 Jul 14
     
    "A 2013 poll surveying over 2000 Americans found that 65 percent thought that this statement is true. And yet, the simple and unequivocal answer is: No. Despite a myth so prevalent that it is easily accepted as a pivotal plot point in movies or a motivational tactic or even justification for psychic claims, everyone uses 100 percent of their brain. There are a number of logical refutations of this myth-why would big brains evolve if they're nothing but dead weight?-but outright proving its fallacy is relatively easy with modern technology. PET and fMRI scans show that even when we're sleeping, our entire brain is active on some level."
sissij

Want to Get From A to B Safer? The Color of Your Car Matters | Big Think - 2 views

bigthink.com/...w-taxis-may-be-safer-than-blue

brain science research education

shared by sissij on 16 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • If you’ve taken to the United States streets anytime lately, you may have noticed that most public school buses are a very particular shade of yellow. That shade is called National School Bus Glossy Yellow in Canada and the US, and it was specially designed by Dr. Frank Cyr.
  • Yellow is easy to see in the dim lights of early morning or late evening, and because it's seen across both the green and red cones in the eye, it pops in our vision faster than other colors.
  • What’s more, while the majority of those who are color blind have trouble distinguishing red from green, they can still see yellow just fine.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It makes sense that yellow taxi cabs are safer than the blue ones.
  • Furthermore, the drivers tend to drive at similar speeds, so the color of the cabs isn’t attracting certain driver personalities. It is mostly linked to the color of the cab.
  • The long-standing association of yellow being the color of cabs means many people purchase cars that are specifically not yellow, because of the connection, but they will purchase blue cars. People are more careful around the yellow vehicle for the same reason they are careful around the school bus: they know what the color means.
  • Of course, this is all a short-term worry: we won't be at the mercy human error for much longer.
  • sissij on 16 Mar 17
     
    I think this is very interesting that even the color of a car can be associated with the accident rate of the taxi. The yellow color on the taxi make use of the pattern recognition in human mind as people tends to make connection between yellow and caution. I really like this idea because it shows that sometimes the fallacies in our logic can benefit us in the modern society. It is not totally useless. --Sissi (3/15/2017)
sissij

Books are getting shorter; here's why - 0 views

www.consumeraffairs.com/...-shorter-heres-why-042613.html

social media bias technology

shared by sissij on 27 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • "A leading brain scientist in England points out that texting actually decreases the ability to think in complex ways because it eliminates complexity in sentence structure. Put it all together and it seems that no one has patience to sit quietly and read a book, as we might have a generation or even ten years ago."
  • "People are publishing books that are radically shorter than in the past," he says.
  • But books aren't just getting shorter, says Levin. What the reader wants from the author is changing too.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "But it's also a little bit of intellectual laziness," he adds. "That's what happens in an era when people are famous for being famous instead of famous for having accomplished something distinctive. If you and the media say you're special, you probably are."
  • "It's a paradox," he says. "We distrust authority if it's in the form of a major institution, like government, business or Wall Street. But if an individual claims authority in a given field, we assume the person must be telling the truth about his or her credentials. It's the natural trust we extend others -- we typically assume that people are who they say they are."
  • He says readers no longer want an author to prove his or her assertions. They just want to know the author is giving legitimate answers to their questions.
  • With a printed book people feel more committed to reading the entire thing, but with a digital book not so much, which is another reason a lot of today's books are shorter.
  • sissij on 27 Oct 17
     
    Interesting analysis on how social media affect human behavior. Intellectual laziness and our desire for simplicity leads us in the path of logical fallacies.
sissij

How Behavioral Economics Can Produce Better Health Care - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...care-behavioral-economics.html

new york times psychology research brain science

shared by sissij on 13 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • I’ll sometimes prescribe a particular brand of medication not because it has proved to be better, but because it happens to be the default option in my hospital’s electronic ordering system.
  • if a poster outside your room prompts me to think of your health instead of mine.
  • I’ll more readily change my practice if I’m shown data that my colleagues do something differently than if I’m shown data that a treatment does or doesn’t work.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • These confessions can be explained by the field of behavioral economics, which holds that human decision-making departs frequently, significantly and predictably from what would be expected if we acted in purely “rational” ways.
  • Rather, our behavior is powerfully influenced by our emotions, identity and environment, as well as by how options are presented to us.
  • (organ donation rates are over 90 percent in countries where citizens need to override a default and opt out of donation compared with 4 to 27 percent where they much choose to opt in)
  • Employees were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first was “usual care,” in which they received educational materials and free smoking cessation aids. The second was a reward program: Employees could receive up to $800 over six months if they quit. The third was a deposit program, in which smokers initially forked over $150 of their money, but if they quit, they got their deposit back along with a $650 bonus.
  • Those in the lottery group were eligible for a daily lottery prize with frequent small payouts and occasional large rewards — but only if they clocked in at or below their weight loss goal.
  • sissij on 13 Apr 17
     
    As we learned in TOK, people tend to follow the default. I think there is a phenomenon like inertia in human social behavior. Once we make up our mind doing something, we are very unlikely to make a change or make a correction. This has a subconscious influence on people so people can't notice it unless they are trained to avoid their logical fallacy. I found this a really good example of policy making can manipulate people's action and thoughts. --Sissi (4/13/2017)
katherineharron

How to be a human lie detector of fake news - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 25 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Fake news existed long before the internet. In an essay on political lying in the early 18th century, the writer Jonathan Swift noted that "Falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it." You have to hire a train to pull the truth, explained English pastor Charles Spurgeon in the 19th century, while a lie is "light as a feather ... a breath will carry it."
  • MIT researchers recently studied more than 10 years' worth of data on the most shared stories on Facebook. Their study covered conspiracy theories about the Boston bombings, misleading reports on natural disasters, unfounded business rumors and incorrect scientific claims. There is an inundation of false medical advice online, for example, that encourages people to avoid life-saving treatments such as vaccines and promotes unproven therapies. (Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop is just one example.)
  • The psychological research does, however, offer us a silver lining to this storm cloud, with various experiments demonstrating that people can learn to be better lie detectors with a little training in critical thinking.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • If you would like to improve your own lie detection, a good first step is to learn the common logical fallacies -- red herrings, appeals to ignorance, straw men and "ad populum" appeals to the bandwagon -- that purveyors of misinformation may use to create the illusion of truth.
  • These efforts are often called "inoculations," since they use a real-life example in one domain to teach people about the strategies used to spread lies and therefore equipping people to spot them more easily. Educating people about the tobacco industry's attempts to question the medical consensus on smoking, for example, led people to be more skeptical of articles denying climate change, according to one study.
  • Another project aimed to inoculate students at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, involved a course on misinformation throughout history. The class was taught about everything from the myth that aliens somehow built the Egyptian pyramids to the theories that NASA's moon landings were faked. Along the way, the students had to identify the erroneous logic that helped create the arguments, and the motivations that may lead some people to spread those ideas.
  • You could also try basic strategies such as cross-checking different outlets and finding the original source of a claim. You might also look at independent fact-checking websites used in the MIT study such as Snopes, PolitiFact and TruthOrFiction.com.
  • The psychological literature offers us one good strategy against bias, called the "consider the opposite" method. This involves asking yourself whether you would have been so credulous of a claim if its opinions had differed from your own. And if not, what kind of additional scrutiny might you have applied? This should help you to identify the weaknesses in your own thinking.
  • Falsehoods may fly, but with this lie detection kit, you can better ensure your actions and beliefs remain grounded in the truth.
peri20042023

By The Numbers: Who's Refusing Covid Vaccinations-And Why - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...ing-covid-vaccinations-and-why

COVID VACCINE: adults research bias education social media

shared by peri20042023 on 27 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • peri20042023 on 27 Oct 21
     
    This article details what percentage of adults are refusing to get the COVID vaccine. I thought this was interesting and pertained to the lesson we recently had about logical fallacies and blindly obeying/disobeying authority.
pier-paolo

Opinion | The War on Logic - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17krugman.html

shared by pier-paolo on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • We are, I believe, witnessing something new in American politics. Last year, looking at claims that we can cut taxes, avoid cuts to any popular program and still balance the budget, I observed that Republicans seemed to have lost interest in the war on terror and shifted focus to the war on arithmetic. But now the G.O.P. has moved on to an even bigger project: the war on logic.
  • First of all, says the analysis, the true cost of reform includes the cost of the “doc fix.”
  • in 1997 Congress enacted a formula to determine Medicare payments to physicians. The formula was, however, flawed; it would lead to payments so low that doctors would stop accepting Medicare patients. Instead of changing the formula, however, Congress has consistently enacted one-year fixes.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • And Republicans claim that the estimated cost of future fixes, $208 billion over the next 10 years, should be considered a cost of health care reform.But the same spending would still be necessary if we were to undo reform. So the G.O.P. argument here is exactly like claiming that my mortgage payments, which I’ll have to make no matter what we do tonight, are a cost of going out for dinner.
  • So, is the Republican leadership unable to see through childish logical fallacies? No. The key to understanding the G.O.P. analysis of health reform is that the party’s leaders are not, in fact, opposed to reform because they believe it will increase the deficit
  • All they ever needed or wanted were some numbers and charts to wave at the press, fooling some people into believing that we’re having some kind of rational discussion. We aren’t.
mcginnisca

Donald Trump says Washington Post is Amazon tax shelter. Huh? - Dec. 7, 2015 - 0 views

money.cnn.com/...index.html

language donald trump donald trump amazon fallacy logic psychology knowledge claim

shared by mcginnisca on 07 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • stock would crumble like a paper bag."
  • "big tax shelter" for Amazon since the paper is "losing a fortune."
  • Amazon is a "no profit" company.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Trump didn't elaborate on Amazon's tax figures. He actually didn't cite any.
  • Trump's claims don't really hold up.
  • Amazon paid $167 million in income taxes in 2014 -- the first full year after Bezos acquired the paper. And that was despite the fact that Amazon reported a pre-tax loss in 2014.
  • So Trump is wrong when he said that Amazon is unprofitable.
Javier E

'ContraPoints' Is Political Philosophy Made for YouTube - The Atlantic - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...579532

philosophy youtube debate eidc

shared by Javier E on 08 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • While Wynn positions herself on the left, she is no dogmatic ideologue, readily admitting to points on the right and criticizing leftist arguments when warranted
  • She has described her work as “edutainment” and “propaganda,” and it’s both
  • But what makes her videos unique is the way Wynn combines those two elements: high standards of rational argument and not-quite-rational persuasion. ContraPoints offers compelling speech aimed at truth, rendered in the raucous, meme-laden idiom of the interne
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • In 2014, Wynn noticed a trend on YouTube that disturbed her: Videos with hyperbolic titles like “why feminism ruins everything,” “SJW cringe compilation,” and “Ben Shapiro DESTROYS Every College Snowflake” were attracting millions of views and spawning long, jeering comment threads. Wynn felt she was watching the growth of a community of outrage that believes feminists, Marxists, and multiculturalists are conspiring to destroy freedom of speech, liquidate gender norms, and demolish Western civilization
  • Wynn created ContraPoints to offer entertaining, coherent rebuttals to these kinds of ideas. Her videos also explain left-wing talking points—like rape culture and cultural appropriation—and use philosophy to explore topics that are important to Wynn, such as the meaning of gender for trans people.
  • Wynn thinks it’s a mistake to assume that viewers of angry, right-wing videos are beyond redemption. “It’s quite difficult to get through to the people who are really committed to these anti-progressive beliefs,” Wynn told me recently. However, she said, she believes that many viewers find such ideas “psychologically resonant” without being hardened reactionaries. This broad, not fully committed center—comprising people whose minds can still be changed—is Wynn’s target audience.
  • Usually, the videos to which Wynn is responding take the stance of dogged reason cutting through the emotional excesses of so-called “political correctness.” For example, the American conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who is a target of a recent ContraPoints video, has made “facts don’t care about your feelings” his motto. Wynn’s first step in trying to win over those who find anti-progressive views appealing is to show that these ideas often rest on a flimsy foundation. To do so, she fully adopts the rational standards of argument that her rivals pride themselves on following, and demonstrates how they fail to achieve them
  • Wynn dissects her opponents’ positions, holding up fallacies, evasions, and other rhetorical tricks for examination, all the while providing a running commentary on good argumentative method.
  • The host defends her own positions according to the same principles. Wynn takes on the strongest version of her opponent’s argument, acknowledges when she thinks her opponents are right and when she has been wrong, clarifies when misunderstood, and provides plenty of evidence for her claims
  • Wynn is a former Ph.D. student in philosophy, and though her videos are too rich with dick jokes for official settings, her argumentative practice would pass muster in any grad seminar.
  • she critiques many of her leftist allies for being bad at persuasion.
  • Socrates persuaded by both the logic of argument and the dynamic of fandom. Wynn is beginning to grow a dedicated following of her own: Members of online discussion groups refer to her as “mother” and “the queen,” produce fan art, and post photos of themselves dressed as characters from her videos.
  • she shares Socrates’s view that philosophy is more an erotic art than a martial one
  • As she puts it, she’s not trying to destroy the people she addresses, but seduce them
  • for Wynn, the true key to persuasion is to engage her audience on an emotional level.
  • One thing she has come across repeatedly is a disdain for the left’s perceived moral superiority. Anti-progressives of all stripes, Wynn told me, show an “intense defensiveness against being told what to do” and a “repulsion in response to moralizing.”
  • Matching her speech to the audience’s tastes presents a prickly rhetorical challenge. In an early video, Contra complains: “The problem is this medium. These goddamn savages demand a circus, and I intend to give them one, but behind the curtain, I really just want to have a conversation.
  • Philosophical conversation requires empathy and good-faith engagement. But the native tongue of political YouTube is ironic antagonism. It’s Wynn’s inimitable way of combining these two ingredients that gives ContraPoints its distinctive mouthfeel.
  • Wynn spends weeks in the online communities of her opponents—whether they’re climate skeptics or trans-exclusionary feminists—trying to understand what they believe and why they believe it. In Socrates’s words, she’s studying the souls of her audience.
Javier E

The science of influencing people: six ways to win an argument | Science | The Guardian - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...le-six-ways-to-win-an-argument

psychology argument persuasion influence

shared by Javier E on 03 Jul 19 - No Cached
  • we have all come across people who appear to have next to no understanding of world events – but who talk with the utmost confidence and conviction
  • the latest psychological research can now help us to understand why
  • the “illusion of explanatory depth”
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • The problem is that we confuse a shallow familiarity with general concepts for real, in-depth knowledge.
  • our knowledge is also highly selective: we conveniently remember facts that support our beliefs and forget others
  • Psychological studies show that people fail to notice the logical fallacies in an argument if the conclusion supports their viewpoint
  • “motivated reasoning”
  • A high standard of education doesn’t necessarily protect us from these flaws
  • That false sense of expertise can, in turn, lead them to feel that they have the licence to be more closed-minded in their political views – an attitude known as “earned dogmatism”.
  • “People confuse their current level of understanding with their peak knowledge,”
  • Graduates, for instance, often overestimate their understanding of their degree subject:
  • recent psychological research also offers evidence-based ways towards achieving more fruitful discussions.
  • a simple but powerful way of deflating someone’s argument is to ask for more detail. “You need to get the ‘other side’ focusing on how something would play itself out, in a step by step fashion”
  • By revealing the shallowness of their existing knowledge, this prompts a more moderate and humble attitude.
  • You need to ask how something works to get the effect
  • If you are trying to debunk a particular falsehood – like a conspiracy theory or fake news – you should make sure that your explanation offers a convincing, coherent narrative that fills all the gaps left in the other person’s understanding
  • The persuasive power of well-constructed narratives means that it’s often useful to discuss the sources of misinformation, so that the person can understand why they were being misled in the first place
  • Each of our beliefs is deeply rooted in a much broader and more complex political ideology. Climate crisis denial, for instance, is now inextricably linked to beliefs in free trade, capitalism and the dangers of environmental regulation.
  • Attacking one issue may therefore threaten to unravel someone’s whole worldview – a feeling that triggers emotionally charged motivated reasoning. It is for this reason that highly educated Republicans in the US deny the overwhelming evidence.
  • disentangle the issue at hand from their broader beliefs, or to explain how the facts can still be accommodated into their worldview.
  • “All people have multiple identities,” says Prof Jay Van Bavel at New York University, who studies the neuroscience of the “partisan brain”. “These identities can become active at any given time, depending on the circumstances.”
  • you might have more success by appealing to another part of the person’s identity entirely.
  • when people are asked to first reflect on their other, nonpolitical values, they tend to become more objective in discussion on highly partisan issues, as they stop viewing facts through their ideological lens.
  • Another simple strategy to encourage a more detached and rational mindset is to ask your conversation partner to imagine the argument from the viewpoint of someone from another country
  • The aim is to help them recognise that they can change their mind on certain issues while staying true to other important elements of their personality.
  • this strategy increases “psychological distance” from the issue at hand and cools emotionally charged reasoning so that you can see things more objectively.
  • If you are considering policies with potentially long-term consequences, you could ask them to imagine viewing the situation through the eyes of someone in the future
  • people are generally much more rational in their arguments, and more willing to own up to the limits of their knowledge and understanding, if they are treated with respect and compassion.
  • Aggression, by contrast, leads them to feel that their identity is threatened, which in turn can make them closed-minded
  • Assuming that the purpose of your argument is to change minds, rather than to signal your own superiority, you are much more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly rather than belligerently, and affirming your respect for the person, even if you are telling them some hard truths
  • As a bonus, you will also come across better to onlookers. “There’s a lot of work showing that third-party observers always attribute high levels of competence when the person is conducting themselves with more civility,”
ardenganse

William urges public to follow queen's example and get jab - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...lic-follow-queens-jab-75300165

shared by ardenganse on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • LONDON -- Prince William is encouraging everyone in Britain to follow the example of Queen Elizabeth II, his grandmother, in being inoculated against COVID-19 as authorities battle unsubstantiated fears about vaccine safety.
    • ardenganse
      ardenganse on 17 Jan 21
       
      Relates to the logical fallacy of argument from authority. In this case, an authority figure is being used to convince people to do something, which they are hesitant to do.
  • The medics told William some members of the public are reluctant to get any of the coronavirus vaccines authorized by regulators.
  • The disclosure was meant to end speculation about the matter and to boost confidence in the shots
ilanaprincilus06

How Knowledge Changes Us - The New York Times - 1 views

brooks.blogs.nytimes.com/...knowledge-corrupts

memory time manipulation secrets

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 30 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • They become the center of every room they enter, with all the attendant narcissism. They also have inside information, and often leap to the conclusion that people who don’t have this information are simply not worth listening to.
  • They become the center of every room they enter, with all the attendant narcissism. They also have inside information, and often leap to the conclusion that people who don’t have this information are simply not worth listening to.
    • ilanaprincilus06
      ilanaprincilus06 on 30 Oct 20
       
      Logical fallacy of appealing to authority. Their narcissism will continue to bias their mind with the idea that they will always be seen by others as correct just because they have more power over them.
  • “First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you.
    • ilanaprincilus06
      ilanaprincilus06 on 30 Oct 20
       
      Relates to our memory recollection. Shortly after experiencing something new or exciting, our emotions usually project this with happiness and other good feelings
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Still, there are psychic effects that come from having this information. I have never seen them so perfectly expressed as by Daniel Ellsberg in a speech he supposedly gave to Henry Kissinger in 1968 as Kissinger was entering the government.
    • ilanaprincilus06
      ilanaprincilus06 on 30 Oct 20
       
      One affect could be mind deception. Over time, the secret is more likely to be altered based on certain experiences/actions that the secret holder partakes. This will leave a negative impact on the true nature of the secret.
  • you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t
    • ilanaprincilus06
      ilanaprincilus06 on 30 Oct 20
       
      Relates to theory of mind. The secret constantly reminds the secret holder of the disparity between their understanding of the secret and other's unknowingness to the secret
  • it’s often inaccurate
    • ilanaprincilus06
      ilanaprincilus06 on 30 Oct 20
       
      The effects that the brain leaves on long-term memory. The premise of the secret may still be true, but the conclusion and other evidence is most likely skewed
manhefnawi

10 Common Flaws With How We Think - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...common-flaws-with-how-we-think

Logical Fallacy Thinking

shared by manhefnawi on 11 Jun 18 - No Cached
  • By nature, human beings are illogical and irrational.
  • survival meant thinking quickly, not methodically. Making a life-saving decision was more important than making a 100% accurate one, so the human brain developed an array of mental shortcuts.
  • these shortcuts -- called cognitive biases or heuristics -- are numerous and innate.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • We can never totally escape them, but we can be more aware of them, and, just maybe, take efforts to minimize their influence.
  • "Our decisions... are guided by the perceived values at the moment of the decision - not by the potential final value."
  • we are biased against actions that could lead to regret
  • The halo effect is a cognitive bias in which we judge a person's character based upon our rapid, and often oversimplified, impressions of him or her.
  • Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs.
  • Hearing or reading information that backs our beliefs feels good, and so we often seek it out.
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