I don’t disagree at all. Also, the millions of Jews in areas subject to Nazi control had an enormous variety of differing constraints and circumstances.
No matter what, in order to find an unambiguous example of “motivated skepticism with grave consequences” from history (rather than in the context of an academic experiment), Luke is going to have to do his homework. First, the rational course of action has to be demonstrably certain. As you correctly point out, hindsight bias is a real problem. Second, Luke has to show that the actor not only behaved irrationally, but specifically suffered from “motivated skepticism,” rather than some other form of irrationality.
You would need a control group of other people at the time who made the ‘correct’ decision due to lack of a certain bias to indicate the bias was present.
I don’t disagree at all. Also, the millions of Jews in areas subject to Nazi control had an enormous variety of differing constraints and circumstances.
No matter what, in order to find an unambiguous example of “motivated skepticism with grave consequences” from history (rather than in the context of an academic experiment), Luke is going to have to do his homework. First, the rational course of action has to be demonstrably certain. As you correctly point out, hindsight bias is a real problem. Second, Luke has to show that the actor not only behaved irrationally, but specifically suffered from “motivated skepticism,” rather than some other form of irrationality.
You would need a control group of other people at the time who made the ‘correct’ decision due to lack of a certain bias to indicate the bias was present.