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That's easy: Tribalism. I remember someone saying that the extraordinary thing about the election was that the result was so ordinary. People voted along party lines like they always had.

When a belief becomes a part of your identity, facts no longer matter. Information does change your factual beliefs but not your attitude/position in general. The brain also does motivated reasoning and will find counterarguments for any inconvenient facts. If Trump is caught lying he's not an immoral liar, he's a strategic smart guy playing the opposition etc.

It is important to note this is a universal feature of all humans. We all do top down motivated reasoning. Republicans are not idiots, they just happened to be republicans when an idiot was elected president. It can, and does happen to all of us.

This program explains some of the psychology behind it:

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2...

He and his friend bitch about how they are being exploited, and then BUY THE COFFEE ANYWAY. I think the moral of this scene was supposed to be about how the rich exploit the poor, but I think it was really "idiots will be idiots".

I haven't seen the movie, but it might be a good example of the Sunk Cost Fallacy as well. They already put in the "cost" of the wait in line, so there's the emotional desire to get SOMETHING out of that time spent.

"25 years with Linux, however, and i'm not giving up now..."

Sunk cost fallacy.

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2...

The Misconception: You should focus on the successful if you wish to become successful.

The Truth: When failure becomes invisible, the difference between failure and success may also become invisible.

Survivorship Bias; You Are Not So Smart

Technology and big business are making it so Mom and Pop local businesses cannot compete because of volume and the better price points while simultaneously making the quality of our goods and services suffer. I have a few fans's from the early 1900's that still work today. If I go to Walmart and buy some cheap fan, I am lucky if it lasts 3 or 4 years of 247 operation, ending up in a landfill because its cheaper to buy a new one than fix the old one. I have a lot of shop equipment from the 40's and 50's I inherited from my father and work great to this day without ever needing a repair, beyond a little oil or grease every few years. I drive a 47 year old car, still with original paint and interior, and has only had handful of parts replaced. Runs like a champ and looks far better than modern cars. Oh and thanks to technology, I can play my music, use some map app, and use my cellphone via its FM radio.

Here is an easy example. Many people believe old things represent a higher level of craftsmanship than do new things. It’s sort of a “they don’t make them like they used to” kind of assumption. You’ve owned cars that only lasted a few years before you had to start replacing them piece by piece, and, would you look at that, there goes another Volkswagen Beetle buzzing along like it just rolled off an assembly line. It’s survivorship bias at work. The Beetle or the Mustang or the El Camino or the VW Minibus are among a handful of models that survived in large enough numbers to become iconic classics. The hundreds of shitty car designs and millions of automobile corpses in junkyards around the world far outnumber the popular, well-maintained, successful, beloved survivors. According to Josh Clark at HowStuffWorks, most experts say that cars from the last two decades are far more reliable and safer than the cars of the 1950s and ‘60s, but plenty of people believe otherwise because of a few high-profile survivors. The examples that would disprove such assumptions are rusting out of sight. Do you see how it’s the same as Wald’s bombers? The Beetle survived, like the bombers that made it home, and it becomes a representative of 1960s cars because it remains visible. All the other cars that weren’t made in the millions and weren’t easy to maintain or were poorly designed are left out of the analysis because they are now removed from view, like the bombers that didn’t return.

Similarly, photographer Mike Johnston explains on his blog that the artwork that leaps from memory when someone mentions a decade like the 1920s or a movement like Baroque is usually made up of things that do not suck. Your sense of a past era tends to be informed by paintings and literature and drama that are not crap, even though at any given moment pop culture is filled with more crap than masterpieces. Why? It isn’t because people were better artists back in the day. It is because the good stuff survives, and the bad stuff is forgotten. So over time, you end up with skewed ideas of past eras. You think the artists of antiquity were amazing in the same way you associate the music of past decades with the songs that survived long enough to get into your ears. The movies about Vietnam never seem to include songs in their soundtracks that sucked.

From: Survivorship Bias by David McRaney, May 23, 2013.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The Misconception: You make rational decisions based on the future value of objects, investments and experiences.

The Truth: Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.

It depends if the op is picking based on emotional investments rather than a business investment.

As the op is "more then willing to switch" meaning he/she is not picking based on emotional investments, he/she surely do not fall under this fallacy. Usually those that do fall under this fallacy are fanboys/girls who pick based on emotion and thus apply emotional investments.

This is known as the Sunk Cost Fallacy. (Hint: That money is already gone.)

Sunk Cost Fallacy
How the Sunk Cost Fallacy Makes You Act Stupid
Sunk Cost

This kind of course is amazing for those who are already looking to stretch their minds and fact-check their own beliefs. For people who are new to the idea and attend the course, it could potentially inoculate them against falling for stupid shit again and again.

The big problem is that this inoculation is non-transferrable. This course will not be as helpful as you would think in showing your "casually racist uncle ... why a claim is bullshit." It won't help with the constant stream of false, gut-reactionary posts and images that are shared on Facebook.

First you have the Backfire Effect, where when someone's deepest convictions are challenged their beliefs get stronger. Your uncle probably shared that stupid post because it "felt right". Arguing against the facts of that particular post will often alienate him and cause his beliefs to be more firmly entrenched.

Still, I am glad this kind of class is being offered.

I've been listening to various podcasts for almost eight years now. A lot have come and gone, but my two long-time favorites are:

Escape Pod - Weekly short-form science fiction. These guys have been around since almost the beginning of podcasting. This is their sci-fi show. They also have horror (Pseudopod) and fantasy (Podcastle) among others.

StarShipSofa - Also weekly short-form sci-fi but more than just stories. This is an audio magazine with regular articles about science news (Delivered by a biology professor), genre history (Delivered by a history professor), interviews and more. It's part of the District of Wonders (Which also has horror, fantasy, and used to have pulp and crime before those shows withered away).

More recently I've been listening to these and getting a lot of interesting thought topics out of them.

The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe - Skeptical thinking, science news of all types (Astro physics, biology, technology, etc), interviews, and more. This one usually runs a bit long.

You Are Not So Smart - Psychology deep dives into various topics (logical fallacies, changing people's minds, detecting bullshit, etc).

You Are Not So Smart

On the Media

The Misconception: You make rational decisions based on the future value of objects, investments and experiences.

The Truth: Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.
Sunk Cost Fallacy: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2...

How many people died on shuttle flights ? How much more expensive was the program than expendable launch vehicles ?

The finish line was an expensive and dangerous vehicle that was more a hindrance to getting into space than a help. Hell we would have been better off just using the 5 billion to restart Saturn V production. The knowledge and materials were considerably more available back then.

Obama, you're kidding MR "Nasa should be about Muslim outreach" ??

An old trick is to write the email and not send it, or send it to yourself. That way you get some catharsis

Problem is that catharsis is a literary and theater concept -- not one rooted in science or human psychology.

I wish I had mod-points. What most of the slashdotter's are missing is that writing the email is just another form of ruminating. Even if you don't send it, all you've done is spend more time being angry and possibly engaging in a bunch of confirmation bias fueled "research" to justify your position. After reinforcing your beliefs you're just more primed to get triggered again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The whole "emotion as pressure to be released" belief is complete bunk

.

There's also the HRDAG. They do a lot of data analysis, but that requires engineering talent. Lots of consultative-type work that has an impact.

See the podcast at YANSS for more info.

Are you sincere in your vehement G+ rants on Global Warming or is this a clever exploitation of humans "Backfire Effect" (when given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly)?

What particularly made me think this at one point was: "Does that kind of language persuade anybody"?

The wording of the first two traits is strong, and easily misinterpreted, like mistaking humility with being a pushover. "Superiority complex" might be better rendered as "the knowledge one can do better than this"; "insecurity" is crippling compared to "the sense that the present condition is unttnable")

I'll add one last one to the trio though: "fails often" or rather, being able to recognize that failure is a milestone in an endeavour, not a gravestone; failure is a better teacher than success. This concept is alive and well amongst entrepreneurs of all cultures, and is essential to not erode the forward drive offered by the "superiority complex."

The ability to digest one's own failure is also an essential trait to continue to foster curiosity and experimentation - an ability easily lost in our obsession of being right first time, embodied by our acceptance of "do or do not, there is no try."

There is a difference between speculating and knowing. Maybe takes time to dig thru gigabytes of information, or decided to release it not all at once to let people assimilate all of it. But is highly possible that had first hand access to that information.

Also, "for a field that is compartmentalized".... maybe really a lot (half a millon? 5 millon? at that range don't matter anymore) of people had access to all that information, or at least all your information, that surely used it in a totally responsible way. Don't fall into the survivorship bias, don't focus in the visible Snowden, but in all the others that had the same access and could had used all that information in other ways.

Is not about countries, is about governments, specially the ones that claim that are elected by the people. The key there is trust.

I administer servers (in particular, mail and proxy ones, to talk about the easiest ones where you can harm privacy) from almost 20 years. In all that time i had access to all the mails of all the people on those servers. When i was hired for that job, i've been trusted with that access, and was up to me to deserve or not that trust, regardless if anyone ever discover that i peeked or not.

Now, will you put your future and the one of your entire family/friends/country in the hands of someone that you can't trust, specially because you already know that is deceiving you? Is not about if is ok or not, we are past that, is about if you can do something about it or not. The situation is just not stable in the long term.

There is also an small addendum regarding trust. We are not talking about a single person here. Snowden could be a case of survivorship bias, you see him, the one that went public and disclosed all of this, knowing that was recently hired and had all that access already. What about the ones that you don't see, that didn't went public, didn't disclosed any of this, and have similar access? We are talking about 500 thousands to 5 millons individuals. You are trusting all your information and all potential misuse of it to all of them too.

Make a ridiculous threat that you *know* will invite revolt, then relent and follow through with the slightly less ridiculous (but still ridiculous) plan you had interned all along.

Next time, scheduled phoning home won't seem so ridiculous. Well, maybe not next time, but the time after that, or maybe the time after that ... but it's coming.

Also known as the Anchoring Effect
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/07/27/anchoring-effect/

Just look at the shit we put up with MS Office and new Windows installations these days. No, you can't just have a disc, you need to spend a half hour entering all your personal info (mostly re-entering those fucking captchas because their shitty forms don't validate interactively) in an MS account so we can keep tabs on you and send you spam. Even then, you're not getting an installation package file, we'll only give you some brain dead all-in-one downloader that only works on *your* computer, provides absolutely no configuration options and doesn't tell you where the installer files are located (though they probably aren't even usable if you do find them). Sure, you *can* get installation discs if you cough up another $15 and wait a week.

Fuck that, I'll head over to TPB and have a an ISO in 15 minutes.

Do you think we'd have willing to choke down this shit sandwich even a few years ago?

So what?

Sure the old drugs are great, but there's plenty of new ones that are great too.

Take statins for example - relatively new class of medication that have dramatically changed the treatment of high cholesterol - which leads to the number one killer of heart disease. Another example - artemisinin - great treatment for malaria, relatively recent invention.

Not to mention the survivorship bias http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/ - there's heaps of old drugs that just aren't used anymore because frankly they were no good and had a ton of side effects. You don't hear about those ones much simply because they aren't used. This gives the perception that 'the old drugs are better' when in truth they were just as bad or worse, and only the good ones have stood the test of time.

But even if it were true - should we then give up drug discovery? Give up the chance to find the next great drug just because the low hanging fruit are already taken? What exactly is the solution to this?

Survivorship bias is around to make very probable you starve to death or lose most of your money as they almost did.

has anyone else noticed that Apple users just don't seem to be happy unless they can convince you "the Apple way" is the RIGHT way? They just don't seem to be able to be happy with a product unless they can somehow get others to think they were "right" and the other way is "wrong"

This is actually a thing:

From this:

The Misconception: You prefer the things you own over the things you don’t because you made rational choices when we bought them.

The Truth: You prefer the things you own because you rationalize your past choices to protect your sense of self.

Personally, I use a Mac and I own an iPhone. I use an HP laptop with Linux for work, and my server at home is FreeBSD. I couldn't care less what type of computers or phones other people use. Maybe I'm the minority?

But seriously, folks. We've got bigger problems than to worry about what kinds of electronics other people buy for themselves.

So, you're exactly right, hairyfeet. It is a personal preference!

Actually, adding a monetary incentive will drive away the altruistic element and may, in fact, reduce the supply. It's called the overjustification effect. You Are Not So Smart run a nice post on the subject here.

As for owning your own body... What's the matter with donation after brain death? Technically, you are dead and incapable of having property.

I remember a few days ago someone submitted a story about piracy for "The Avengers" being low compared to potential profits from them. A few high-ranked comments were like "This is yet another proof that [insert common /. parlance here]". I saw very few comments that stated the most plausible reason: a camcorded action film, with crappy audio and a shaking image, can't compete against the real thing. I thought the same thing: confirmation bias.

People do it all the time. If something can somehow support their views (specially if they don't RTFA) they'll use it as yet more confirmation. "I still don't get why this piece of evidence is discarded by everyone else! They must be delusional or have bad intentions". For example, I imagine this article will be used as evidence for: lack of funding, falling standards in the US, the demise of education, lack of scientific reasoning (maybe they'll even extend it to scientists themselves), and other common /. utterances. I wonder how many of them will actually say what I found out after RTFA...

So, everyone is playing the same game, and scientists are no exception. But hey, that study has numbers on it. At least you can try to replicate the findings, if only the entry barrier wasn't so high: these tests are *hugely* expensive. More collaboration may be a good idea. Shared laurels are better than none, right?

P.S., a nice article on confirmation bias (and other goodies) here.

I used to love the stuff, 2 a day on most work days. I stopped cold turkey at the start of February, giving in to a quarter cup after 3 weeks after a big breakfast when up north. Had half Starbucks "short" this morning because I was just too damn tired.

I was partly inspired by this blog article, partly by health concerns that had developed over the previous few months including a feeling of over-sensitivity to the caffeine, and partly just to see if I could do it.

After the first week of withdrawal symptoms, mostly slight headaches in the afternoon, I was pretty much operating as normal. I think it's good to force one's self out of a habit for a while.

I'll see your blog post and raise you this youtube video.

I used to love the stuff, 2 a day on most work days. I stopped cold turkey at the start of February, giving in to a quarter cup after 3 weeks after a big breakfast when up north. Had half Starbucks "short" this morning because I was just too damn tired.

I was partly inspired by this blog article, partly by health concerns that had developed over the previous few months including a feeling of over-sensitivity to the caffeine, and partly just to see if I could do it.

After the first week of withdrawal symptoms, mostly slight headaches in the afternoon, I was pretty much operating as normal. I think it's good to force one's self out of a habit for a while.

don't be fooled into thinking you can turn a hobby into a career and continue to enjoy it...
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/12/14/the-overjustification-effect/

Here, here!

There's a great blog and book called You're not so smart, and it goes into deep discussion of how people think and behave. and for the most part we aren't open to new ideas, we just cherry pick facts to justify our philosophical positions. It actually takes a tremendous amount of intellectual rigor to look at the MANY sides of an idea to come away with some concise idea of where the reality of the situation lands. This by the way is complicated in this modern age by the fact your search engines are designed to help you find what you're looking for. So if you're looking for justification, not only will you find it, but you will soon be virtually unable to find anything else... the engine will be leaned in the direction you push it. Just as an aside, this is one more reason to look for all sides of a conversation, because you want to prevent your primary source of information from becoming so biased that it becomes just another feedback on your point of view.

In the area of global climate change. We have a lot of very interesting information. Greenland is experiencing TREMENDOUS melting events and there is a huge influx of fresh water into the arctic ocean. The problems with polar bear and brown bears is well understood, including a recent event in which unusually warm coastal water prevents salmon runs in southern Alaska and resulted in serious die off of young brown bears. Glaciers through the Americas, Europe and Africa are disappearing. The loss of glaciers in North America is so pronounced that within 20 years the International Park name "Glacier" may have no glaciers to speak of. Ocean chemistry is changing, and measurable rises in CO2 have resulted in acidification threatening a wide variety of species that require carbonaceous shells (everything from coral to shell fish to crustaceans and their larva.) On the other side, chemical changes have caused a massive increase in ocean jellies (a well known survival response to perceived threat designed to ensure species survival in the face of potential calamity.) We're seeing dramatic shifts in the flowering and fruiting seasons of plant around the world. Shifts in animal migration. Statistical changes in weather patterns consistent with predicted models (increased numbers of floods and droughts and increases in precipitation and storm intensity.) Serious rise in droughts and wildfires in the Western US, Africa and Australia. These are all facts. Part of a larger picture and as some have already said, so complex that we don't understand it. However, we can begin to see patterns emerging. It would be profoundly foolish to ignore these signs, or wait until catastrophic environmental failure became clear and incontrovertible.

Wise money suggests there are a hundred good reasons for looking at ways to conserve energy, become more efficient, find renewable resources and create an energy economy that begins to move people and long term solutions off planet. Wise money suggests that rather than argue and justify a negligent past, it would serve us all best to invent a workable future and to that end, arguing against the impacts of fossil fuels and there growing scarcity would seem (at least to me) like a fools errand.

Or cut out caffeine to your team altogether, be more productive: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/22/coffee/

Oooops! Did I say productive? Me, bad. I meant to be punitive. ;-)

Note to self: Also order coffee machines integrated with intravenous delivery control modules to inject more caffeine when the fatigue level goes above threshold into these bitching and moaning, belly aching malingerers, when their caffeine systems have too much blood in them.

Or cut out caffeine to your team altogether, be more productive: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/22/coffee/

I rtfa and I could care less, noscript > adblock anyways, so if you like opting in to website, noscript still does this I hear, there's also other ad blockers out there. Can you really blame the guy for wanting to make money w his app? If you got a problem go make your own especially on something as trivial as this ad blocker that ppl seem to be bashing left and right.

bonch: consider your signature owned after reading:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/09/11/the-texas-sharpshooter-fallacy/

is the real reason for my post :DDD

This psychological phenomenon is well-known to be one of the most powerful drivers of human behaviour.

People will go to extremes and fight to preserve their sense of self, their ego. After all everyone believes that they are a good, rational person. Anything which contradicts that produces powerfully uncomfortable cognitive dissonance that drives people to rationalise their choices any way they can.

It's an effect which appears pretty much everywhere: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/05/19/fanboyism-and-brand-loyalty/

...The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight!

Adventure!
Excitement!
You'll think that you are smarter than the "other people"!

TLDR version.

>>I suggest http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/02/10/deindividuation/ for further reading.

So your article says that in anonymous crowds, people can act like idiots? And get away with it? Astonishing research. Anyone who has ever participated in an online community knows that's how it works.

It's still absolutely no excuse to riot.

While I don't necessarily disagree, there are other things to consider. I suggest http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/02/10/deindividuation/ for further reading. Any attempt I make to discuss it would pale in comparison.

Sometimes these media scandals are just a distraction from important issues, but other times they're a chance to say "hey, that person you've been praising as the second coming? Well here's yet another piece of evidence that they're complete nutjob, now go back and think about why you were such an idiot before".

Sorry, but evidence doesn't convince people to change their beliefs. Particularly beliefs as strong as politics, and the type of people that support Palin. Indeed it could make it worse.
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

I'm not saying that having control is better, I'm saying that we humans are wired to think that having control is better even when it isn't. So we prefer a larger risk that we can somewhat control to a smaller risk that we can't control.

I'm not absolving her of responsibility because the robber is to blame - they could both be to blame 100%. One person being responsible does not lessen the responsibility of another. What I'm actually saying is that she is to blame, but not for the same thing as the robber. The robber is to blame for committing robbery. The woman is to blame for having taken the risk of being robbed. That is very different from blaming her for the robbery itself. For example any amount of blame that she deserves are also deserved by everyone who did the same thing or took a similar risk but didn't get unlucky the way she did. If she deserved to get robbed, then all of those other people also deserved it, in which case it would be justice to go around and rob all of them since they deserved it - justice is giving people what they deserve. Anyone can see that that is not justice, and therefore we must conclude that she was not responsible for the robbery. She was responsible for taking a risk of being robbed - her responsibility is no more than that of anyone else who takes a similar risk without harm. I don't think those people now deserve to be robbed, and therefore neither did she.

You don't even know that she was aware that she was in a risky situation, and even if she did, all you can say is that she could have expended effort to reduce her risk. But we can all expend effort to reduce our risk. For example we can refrain from driving cars and going outside. Perhaps the risk she took was greater than the risks we all rutinely take, but I doubt it, and even if it was, you don't really know that. Your desire to paint her as "careless" and leave it at that is exactly the Just World Fallacy.

If i was paranormally inclined i'd claim to have psychic powers, but i guess it's just coincidence.

Or the Golden Child effect

The same reason this guy is. The same reason we have placebo buttons--which I'd argue includes those on voting machines. Most people aren't very bright. This is especially true when it comes to anything outside of the specialized training of their chosen career.

I was going to suggest just the opposite. Medical studies aren't like doing physics experiments in the lab: you can't control the minutae of the experiment to anywhere near an ideal degree. You need to have control groups, you need to factor out all possible other causes (and even then, you can be sure you won't catch them all), you need to have long-term observations and follow-up studies. Sometimes you'll see a trend and it turns out it was pure chance. Everyone is different, both in terms of genetic makeup and environment, and that's going to mean that everyone has different reactions to just about anything.

There's clearly room for a great deal of improvement here, but people might need to accept that results of medical studies are never going to be as clear-cut as math papers. I think, and now I'm moving into personal opinion, the most important step-- and this applies to both the media and to scientists who might want to cite or cross-reference something-- is that nothing is ever, ever proved after the first paper. Ever. The first paper on some hypothetical connection really should just be ignored, except for prompting further investigation Like I said above, it needs follow-ups, and experiments with different variables controlled for.

Indeed, we are not so smart.