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0 survey of more than 400 docs found that a whopping 56% said they'd actually prescribed placebos to their patients

those who were told they got quality sleep performed better than those who were told they slept badly.

The famous "Stroop Effect" is named after J. Ridley Stroop who discovered this strange phenomenon in the 1930s.

TRY IT!

The words themselves have a strong influence over your ability to say the color. The interference between the different information (what the words say and the color of the words) your brain receives causes a problem.

So what are the three hardest words? Conventional wisdom suggests: “I love you.”

the hardest three words in the English language are “I don’t know,” and that our inability to say these words more often can have huge consequences.

It has varied between studies, but you’d be looking at two-thirds to three-quarters of children—and we’re talking in the age range here of about five to eight years old—would say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a yes/no question that we know they don’t know the answer to.

The latest on Georgia's new law suppressing voting access

It's now a crime in Georgia to approach voters in line to give them food and water 

A lawsuit has already been filed over the new Georgia law limiting voting

There are, however, others who declare that these claims are not of the Natural Sciences. A knowledge claim in the natural sciences needs to be falsifiable in order to be tested, and claims regarding a multiverse are not falsifiable. This view of science is most closely associated with the philosopher of science Karl Popper and more recently by Neil Degrasse Tyson. Tyson claims that the multiverse theory, and others like it, do not fall under “science”, but “philosophy”. He claims that in physics, for example, a concept constitutes knowledge if it accurately predicts the future and can be tested empirically. Questions about why certain models work can be discussed and debated over dinner, but those ‘why’ questions are not scientific. We can predict where the moon will be at any given time on the strength of our equations, but questions about why those equations work are for philosophers if they cannot be answered with a falsifiable claim.

The natural sciences rely heavily on reason, in particular inductive reasoning. The statement, “all bodies observed so far obey Newton’s law of gravity” has been used to justify a believe in Newton’s law of gravity. Belief structures like this are the backbone of Natural Science, but there are notable philosophers of science who are quick to point out the fallacy of induction. David Hume, for example, questioned the assumption he referred to as the “uniformity of nature”. In short, simply because all observed bodies follow a pattern tell us nothing of unobserved bodies, and the “uniformity of nature” (the belief that nature behaves uniformly) cannot be proven. This brings us to....

This traditional unpacking of the idea of knowledge follows naturally after the Student knowledge claims. The Wittgenstein and the polysemy of language unit will also inform the class activities presented below; especially for differentiating between opinion and belief.   

TRUE:The knowledge claim is True rather than False. It corresponds to the real world. It is a fact. It is “what is the case.”

JUSTIFIED:The knowledge claim is justified with adequate evidence. Justification requires Coherence with previous data and Clarity with regard to language and logic. There can be no Contradiction or strong Counter evidence.

Intuition allows us make judgments in the blink of an eye without careful deliberation or systematic analysis of all the available facts. We trust our “gut” reactions and first impressions. They enable us to discern the sincerity of a conversation partner, read the prevailing ambience in a room or feel a sense of impending doom. These insights or early warning "survival" mechanisms are palpable and we ignore them at our peril. They are only irrational in the sense that the cognitive fragments (some of them non-linguistic) and experiential memories that support them remain largely hidden.

In some contexts, Faith is simply belief without evidence. But this is only a starting point. Faith has two primary meanings. It can be used as a synonym for trust in the secular world, and notably, in a more dogmatic sense, for all-or-nothing belief in, and personal commitment to God or Allah, that is central to most denominations of Christianity and Islam respectively. This is a good example of the polysemy of language.

“Why facts don’t matter to Trump’s supporters” and “Why Bernie Sanders is Actually Winning”

Though it’s easy to pick on Donald Trump and his supporters, this cognitive bias is evident in humans in general and we see it in various situations. Below is one article and below that is an amusing video mocking Bernie Sanders supporters.

“Graves’s article examined the puzzle of why nearly one-third of U.S. parents believe that childhood vaccines cause autism, despite overwhelming medical evidence that there’s no such link. In such cases, he noted, “arguing the facts doesn’t help — in fact, it makes the situation worse.” The reason is that people tend to accept arguments that confirm their views and discount facts that challenge what they believe.”

Coronavirus ‘Hits All the Hot Buttons’ for How We Misjudge Risk

When you encounter a potential risk, your brain does a quick search for past experiences with it. If it can easily pull up multiple alarming memories, then your brain concludes the danger is high. But it often fails to assess whether those memories are truly representative.

If two happen in quick succession, flying suddenly feels scarier — even if your conscious mind knows that those crashes are a statistical aberration with little bearing on the safety of your next flight.

When we create personal narratives, we rely on a psychological screening mechanism, dubbed the monitoring system, which labels certain mental concepts as memories, but not others. Concepts that are rather vivid and rich in detail and emotion – episodes we can re-experience – are more likely to be marked as memories.

“Researchers find evidence that neural systems actively remove memories, which suggests that forgetting may be the default mode of the brain.”

New research has shown that your memory is like a Wikipedia entry – you can get in there and edit it whenever you want, but so can other people.

“You probably know that we perceive five basic tastes, and that taste has something to do with the tongue and the brain. But a new study shows just how weird our perception of reality truly is: Scientists showed that all it takes to convince a mouse that their mouth is full of sweet nectar or bitter poison is the manipulation of a few brain cells.”

“Changing a color’s appearance by changing the background or lighting is one of the most common techniques in optical illusions. As the examples below show, colors can change dramatically against different backgrounds. (If you’ve ever held a sock up to something black to see whether it was black or navy, you understand the concept.)”

A nice explanation of the “debate” on what colors people perceived when they saw the picture of some dress online.

Often, it is more difficult to find out what causes a problem than to solve it

Everyday problems usually do not have one ''right'' solution.

This idea of a gullible, pliable populace is, of course, nothing new. Voltaire said, “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”. But no, says Mercier, Voltaire had it backwards: “It is wanting to commit atrocities that makes you believe absurdities”…

If someone says Obama is a Muslim, their primary reason may be to indicate that they are a member of the group of people who co-ordinate around that statement. When a social belief and a true belief are in conflict, Klintman says, people will opt for the belief that best signals their social identity – even if it means lying to themselves…

Such a “belief” – being largely performative – rarely translates into action. It remains what Mercier calls a reflective belief, with no consequences on one’s behaviour, as opposed to an intuitive belief, which guides decisions and actions.

“People who are anxious because of the uncertainty that surrounds them are going to be attracted to messages that offer them certainty. The need for closure is the need for certainty. To have clear-cut knowledge. You feel that you need to stop processing too much information, stop listening to a variety of information and zero in on what, to you, appears to be the truth. The need for closure is absolutely essential but it can also be extremely dangerous.”

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