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Category: reason

Two Flaws of Human Rationality May Make It Impossible to Solve the Climate Crisis

January 5, 2016

“In working toward a climate deal, the leaders face high odds. Sweeping changes are needed, but the political will for change does not appear up to the task. The rational thing to do, of course, is to save the planet. But the way that human rationality works makes it unlikely that even the best minds working conscientiously will be able to do that.

“There are two fundamental problems: a collective action conundrum, and a preference for benefits in the short term.”

http://bigthink.com/praxis/two-flaws-of-human-rationality-may-make-it-impossible-to-solve-the-climate-crisis?mc_cid=f607b9a6a4&mc_eid=34e2887073

Can you be a scientist and have religious faith?

January 5, 2016

“I’ve been a scientist for as long as I can remember. Children are born scientists; they experiment with everything, are naturally inquisitive and through this exploration they learn about how the world works. And I’ve never grown out of it. Of course, for many people, their modes of thought change as they find or are brought up with faith. Some manage, somehow, to hold religious beliefs alongside a dedication to the rationality of science.”

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4889/can-you-be-a-scientist-and-have-religious-faith?mc_cid=f607b9a6a4&mc_eid=34e2887073

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/

A User’s Guide to Rational Thinking Cut through flawed assumptions and false beliefs — including your own — with these strategies.

October 20, 2015

“Irrational thinking stems from cognitive biases that strike us all. “People don’t think like scientists; they think like lawyers. They hold the belief they want to believe and then they recruit anything they can to support it,” says Peter Ditto, a psychologist who studies judgment and decision-making at the University of California, Irvine. Motivated reasoning — our tendency to filter facts to support our pre-existing belief systems — is the standard way we process information, Ditto says. “We almost never think about things without some preference in mind or some emotional inclination to want one thing or another. That’s the norm.”

http://discovermagazine.com/2015/july-aug/16-user-guide-rational-thinking

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.”

What is wrong with the way we think?

October 19, 2015

“A Q&A with social psychologist Richard Nisbett, who researches the processes of reasoning and decision-making.”

Today, the notion of “smart-thinking” is ubiquitous. This huge publishing field was prefigured by the work of social psychologist Richard Nisbett who in 1977 published an empirically researched article that showed that many of our choices and preferences are influenced by factors outside our conscious awareness. This was ground-breaking and it became one of the most cited articles of the decade. Nisbett, who is Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition programme at the University of Michigan, has published numerous books over his long career. The latest is Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking. Here, he discusses some of his ideas.

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4923/what-is-wrong-with-the-way-we-think?mc_cid=af192e18ce&mc_eid=34e2887073

List of Logical Fallacies or Fallacies in Argumentation

October 14, 2015

“There are different kinds of logical fallacies that people make in presenting their positions. Below is a list of some of the major fallacies.  It is a good idea to be familiar with them, so you can point them out in a discussion, thereby focusing the issues where they belong while exposing error.

“It is true that during a debate on an issue if you simply point out to your “opponent” a logical fallacy that he/she has just made, it generally gives you the upper hand. But then, merely having the upper hand is not the goal: truth is. Nevertheless, logical fallacies hide the truth, so pointing them out is very useful.”

https://carm.org/logical-fallacies-or-fallacies-argumentation