Category: Intuition

Police Body Cameras: What Do You See?

July 29, 2016

Interesting set of videos that shows you the limitations of what we can learn from body cameras on police officers. It also raises issues around how our prior knowledge, expectations, and experiences affect what we see when we interpret a given situation.

“This confirms what Professor Stoughton has found in his own presentations with judges, lawyers and students: What we see in police video footage tends to be shaped by what we already believe.

“‘Our interpretation of video is just as subject to cognitive biases as our interpretation of things we see live,’ Professor Stoughton said. ‘People disagree about policing and will continue to disagree about exactly what a video shows.’

“Race can also play a role. While Professor Stoughton’s work did not seek to determine how the race of the driver affected viewers’ conclusions, numerous studies have shown that some sort of conscious or unconscious bias is present in all of us, including law enforcement.”

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/01/us/police-bodycam-video.html

Are GMOs safe? Yes. The case against them is full of fraud, lies, and errors.

July 17, 2016

“GMO labels won’t clear this up. They won’t tell you whether there’s Bt in your food. They’ll only give you the illusion that you’ve escaped it. That’s one lesson of the Non-GMO Project, whose voluntary labels purport to give you an “informed choice” about what’s in your food.”

“That’s the fundamental flaw in the anti-GMO movement. It only pretends to inform you. When you push past its dogmas and examine the evidence, you realize that the movement’s fixation on genetic engineering has been an enormous mistake. The principles it claims to stand for—environmental protection, public health, community agriculture—are better served by considering the facts of each case than by treating GMOs, categorically, as a proxy for all that’s wrong with the world. That’s the truth, in all its messy complexity. Too bad it won’t fit on a label.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html?wpsrc=sh_all_tab_tw_top

The Go-playing program captures elements of human intuition, an advance that promises far-reaching consequences.

March 29, 2016

Is AlphaGo Really Such a Big Deal?

“This ability to replicate intuitive pattern recognition is a big deal. It’s also part of a broader trend. In an earlier paper, the same organization that built AlphaGo — Google DeepMind — built a neural network that learned to play 49 classic Atari 2600 video games, in many cases reaching a level that human experts couldn’t match. The conservative approach to solving this problem with a computer would be in the style of Deep Blue: A human programmer would analyze each game and figure out detailed control strategies for playing it.”

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160329-why-alphago-is-really-such-a-big-deal/

Believing What You Don’t Believe

November 7, 2015

“t’s not that people don’t understand that it’s scientifically impossible for their lucky hats to help their team hit a home run or turn a double play — all but the most superstitious would acknowledge that. It’s that they have a powerful intuition and, despite its utter implausibility, they just can’t shake it.”

Forget ghosts and zombies this Halloween. Americans’ greatest fear is their government.

October 22, 2015

“Fear can impact behavior. The Chapman researchers found that nearly one-quarter of Americans said they’ve voted for a political candidate solely out of fear. Fears also often ebb and flow with the news cycle. Remember the crippling anxiety around the Ebola crisis last year, even though the chance of catching the disease was infinitesimal?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/10/21/forget-ghosts-and-zombies-this-halloween-americans-greatest-fear-is-their-government/

Gamblers, Scientists and the Mysterious Hot Hand

October 20, 2015

“The opposite of that is the hot-hand fallacy — the belief that winning streaks, whether in basketball or coin tossing, have a tendency to continue, as if propelled by their own momentum. Both misconceptions are reflections of the brain’s wired-in rejection of the power that randomness holds over our lives. Look deep enough, we instinctively believe, and we may uncover a hidden order.”

Planet Money Podcast: Episode 644: How Much Does This Cow Weigh?

August 9, 2015

An interesting phenomenon that has been proven true many times over but seems so counterintuitive it is hard to believe. When asked to guess the weight of a cow or the number of jelly beans in a jar, often the average of all the guesses is extremely close to the correct answer. Even more accurate than many “experts'” guesses. This is an interesting case in which we can prove something true mathematically but still have a hard time believing. Overall great podcast.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/07/430372183/episode-644-how-much-does-this-cow-weigh

How can we fix unconscious racism?

July 8, 2015

“Racial prejudice has its roots in children’s natural drive to carve the world up into categories. Can research do anything to fix this?

“Racist stereotypes, at their root, come from quite a fundamental learning mechanism. Humans are able to learn and adapt so quickly because they are excellent at making generalisations about the world based on very limited experience. Take dogs, for example – a toddler might reasonably conclude after meeting just two or three that all dogs are furry, bark and have tails that should be treated with some caution.”

http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/jul/08/how-can-we-fix-unconscious-racism?CMP=twt_gu