Overcoming Bias

liamw wrote: »

I've been particulary interested in understanding various cognitive biases recently - I have this forum and some vids (thanks Malty) to thank for that.

Recognising our cognitive biases are so important. I'm strongly in favour of teaching these in schools in a critical thinking class.

This article is incredibly interesting:
List of Cognitive Biases

Any more favoured vids on the topic?

Enkidu

I think they're really cool, basically the try to apply formal reasoning in its proper strict sense to everyday issues, even using probability theory, e.t.c

Undergod

I'm not convinced about that blackmail thing - it's not at all comparable to whistleblowing. Informing on companies that are corrupt or polluting the environment is in the public interest, but exposing David Letterman's affairs is not

Enkidu

I prefer when they stick to philosophical or social issues, since they often come up with points of view I never considered. However on scientific issues they are much poorer,

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.