The Reason We Reason | WIRED - 0 views
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In the early 1980s, Amos Tversky and Thomas Gilovich began sifting through years of statistics from the Philadelphia 76ers. The psychologists looked at every single shot taken by every single player, and recorded whether or not that shot had been preceded by a string of hits or misses. All told, they analyzed thousands upon thousands of field goal attempts.
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After analyzing all the shots of the 76ers, the psychologists discovered that there was absolutely no evidence of "the hot hand."
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It's at this point that our faulty reasoning mechanisms kick in, as we start ignoring the misses and focusing on the makes
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In other words, we seek out evidence that confirms our suspicions of streakiness. The end result is that a mental fiction dominates our perception of the game.
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Why'd they do this? Tversky and Gilovich were interested in testing the "hot hand" phenomenon, which occurs when NBA players are convinced that they're hot, on a roll, in the zone.
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This is the sort of mental mistake that seems ripe for fixing by natural selection, since it always leads to erroneous beliefs and faulty causal theorie
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We'd be a hell of a lot smarter if we weren't only drawn to evidence that confirms what we already believe.
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And this leads me to a fascinating and provocative new theory of reasoning put forth by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. In essence, they argue that human reason has nothing to do with finding the truth, or locating the best alternative.
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Instead, the function of reasoning is rooted in communication, in the act of trying to persuade other people that what we believe is true. We are social animals all the way down.