[LINK] Cracked on PitMK, Fundamental Attribution Error, Confimation Bias and More
It’s Cracked, so it’s not exactly the highest scientific authority on the matter, but still a decent read.
It’s Cracked, so it’s not exactly the highest scientific authority on the matter, but still a decent read.
Aside from being technically true, I disagree with your sentiment. Various Cracked blog articles are where I often direct people to learn about rationality and related topics. Of course, they re-use a lot of their material. See also
http://www.cracked.com/article_18388_6-logical-fallacies-that-cost-you-money-every-day.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_17142_5-ways-common-sense-lies-to-you-everyday.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_18704_5-mind-blowing-ways-your-memory-plays-tricks-you.html
http://www.cracked.com/funny-1314-logical-fallacy/
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-double-standards-were-all-guilty-of_p2/
http://www.cracked.com/article/127_5-ways-to-hack-your-brain-into-awesomeness_p2/
And for the lulz:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/learn-your-motherfuckin-science-with-the-icp/
Agreed; Cracked can be surprisingly intelligent on matters like this. Though perhaps that’s confirmation bias because I’m a fan of the site, but I’ve always felt they have a strong rationalist bent.
Those last two on the list are second-page links.
Note that the last one ironically doesn’t explain rainbows correctly.
Impressive. It’s a surprisingly good introduction to these biases, and it’s presented in an easily accessible manner.
Nitpicks: their advice is pretty awful, as being aware of cognitive biases isn’t enough to overcome them, although it is the first step in that direction. The piece didn’t have too many citations, either, but it’s Cracked.com so I’m willing to forgive that.
I don’t understand why you say their advice is pretty awful. The link you give argues that being aware of cognitive biases may cause irrational people to merely ascribe them to others as a rhetorical ploy, but the cracked.com article always recommends recognizing them in your own thinking.
I like their advice, looks quite solid to me. Perhaps you could elaborate?
After re-reading the article, “awful” was too strong a word. But I still think their advice is bad.
On rationalization (#5):
This is actually pretty good, it’s definitely the best piece of advice in the article. The reason I linked to Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People: when I first learned the concept of rationalization (I was pretty young), I went around accusing all my friends of doing it during our political discussions. It’s wasn’t until I read Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People that I recognized the retrospectively-obvious wrongness of using “rationalization!” as a counterargument. This isn’t explicitly stated in the Cracked article, but it is more strongly implied than I thought after my first read-through, so I’ll retract my criticism on this point. The rest of their advice, though, is much worse:
On neglect of probability (#4):
Saying “don’t throw probability out the window” doesn’t really accomplish anything—you have to be aware of the cognitive landmines that stand in your way when you do use probability, otherwise you may end up being worse off than before. Additionally, there are specific ways in which we abuse probability, and each of these errors have to be overcome. (Examples: base rate neglect, gambler’s fallacy, conjunction fallacy, scope neglect.) You also need to know how to correctly use probabilities (Bayes’ theorem, simple probability theory, etc.).
On paranoia (#3):
Maybe I’ve been reading too much Robin Hanson, but this isn’t always good advice. People generally don’t believe things for the reasons they claim, and though taking other people at face value is usually the most polite option, it isn’t always the most correct.
On correspondence bias (#2):
This may be good relationship advice, I don’t know, but it definitely won’t help you overcome the fundamental attribution error. They don’t really tell you how to overcome this bias at all.
On ignoring the facts (#1):
This is mostly true—and frighteningly so—but, again, it isn’t helpful. It’s basically saying that nothing will stop you from believing what you want to believe, and no amount of studying cognitive science will change that. While it is true that completely overcoming cognitive biases is probably impossible without significant brain modification, to argue that this invalidates studying rationality is a fallacy of gray.
What do you mean? Every section had links to relevant information, including journal articles and the notably well-sourced Wikipedia.
I was thinking more along the lines of something like this. Is that too high a standard for a Cracked article? Yes, it probably is.
I wasn’t counting Wikipedia, but now that I think about it, yes, Wikipedia does count as a reasonably reputable source. Therefore, I will revise my original claim and simply say “I wish there were more citations.”
If you plan on reading the article, you should probably do so before reading this comment so as not to bias your eye.
I originally misread the article title as “Logical Fallacies That Make You More Wrong Than You Think” which had me placing a high level of confidence that the title was a deliberate shout out to LessWrong. I was made sad when I re-read it and saw it’s “Wrong More” rather than “More Wrong”. Still, the article gives me a strong “the author is familiar with Less Wrong” vibe. Anyone else picking this up, or is this confirmation bias on my part?
Probably confirmation bias. Note also that caring about cognitive biases has become a lot more popular in the last few years. You Are Not So Smart is another example of a popularization. They now have a successful book. Another recent successful book on this subject was “Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me” so there are a lot of sources to see this sort of thing now other than LW.
I saw this and thought of submitting it to LessWrong, but it appears once again that classes have reduced my LessWronging speed.
I was in somewhat of a hurry to get it posted because I had a three hour lab coming up, and figured someone else would post it before too long. :-)
It is an excellent read indeed, and the illustrations are hilarious, thank you!