Slashdot Mirror
Quantum Theory May Explain Wishful Thinking
explosivejared writes "Humans don't always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply 'wishful thinking.' This paradoxical human behavior has resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. But now, scientists have shown that a quantum probability model can provide a simple explanation for human decision-making — and may eventually help explain the success of human cognition overall."
Two experimental tasks in psychology, the two-stage gambling game and the Prisoner's Dilemma game, show that people violate the sure thing principle of decision theory. These paradoxical findings have resisted explanation by classical decision theory for over a decade. A quantum probability model, based on a Hilbert space representation and Schrodinger's equation, provides a simple and elegant explanation for this behaviour. The quantum model is compared with an equivalent Markov model and it is shown that the latter is unable to account for violations of the sure thing principle. Accordingly, it is argued that quantum probability provides a better framework for modelling human decision-making.
The human brain is a complex organ. Unfortunately the kind people at the "Royal Society for Articles Only People with Money Can Read" would not allow me to review this research. I would have found this research much more compelling had they reported a much more thorough sample analysis. I'm going to predict that people from different walks of life would respond differently to the Prisoner's Dilemma game. For instance, if you did this on regular citizens with no history of jail time versus convicts serving sentences, I would expect you to have to adapt your model.
Because you encountered some percentage of "wishful thinking" does not necessarily make that a tried and true percentage unless it is true for human beings in different groups that may affect this decision making. If it truly is quantum mechanics at work, I would suspect that you would see the same percentage in convicts vs non-convicts, Russians vs Americans, women vs men, scientists vs priests, orphans vs parented children, etc. For you see, I'm going to make the assumption that people are deciding on wishful thinking based on their history of interacting with other humans.
I'm also noticing a disturbing trend in "quantum mechanics" being spewed whenever we don't understand something. I caution you that people in the future might look back on this and laugh that such crude research could in any way conclude that quantum mechanics is at work. It's almost as if we assume we understand other possible explanation so it must be the one we don't understand very well. We don't understand photosynthesis --> must be quantum mechanics! We don't understand the human mind --> must be quantum mechanics! etc. Am I saying quantum mechanics has nothing to do with these things? No. I'm just saying I have seen no conclusive proof.
My work here is dung.
That seems a much simpler explanation.
Especially when I see contestants on Deal or No Deal who turn-down $50,000 "banker payoffs" and end-up with only $100 or less in their cases. Pure logic dictates that your odds of winning the big prize is almost nothing, and you should take the banker payoff, but people don't use logic. They use emotion. They "feel" their way through life instead of thinking.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's all well and good to use the mathematical techniques of quantum mechanics in other fields but the math by itself is not quantum theory. I get really annoyed with the "Ohhh something weird and mysterious we don't understand it must be because of QM" nonsense. Hello, decoherence anyone? Outside of carefully prepared states, large collections of particles behave classically. You know, that's why we discovered classical physics first.
Classical decision Theory *does* account for human's decision making. "Personal bias" (aka values) are very much accounted for.
Yeah the summary (obviously didn't RTFA) is dumb. Adding to your point, wishful thinking IS decision making!!! If x is a sure thing, but there is a glimmer of hope for 10x, then you will probably have a proportional amount of people attempt for 10x, even though the failure rate is high.
Ask any restaurant manager in NY or LA about the availability of waitresses to see this demonstrated in the real world.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
How would free will be explained on the quantum level? Randomness or probability doesn't account for free will, either. Free will is simply magic of the mind, a sort of god-of-the-gaps for not knowing the complex web of the interaction between heredity and environment and the many antecedent events acting upon it.
People put Free Will and Randomness in the same basket because they are both non-deterministic. But that's all there is in common. Free Will and Randomness are two completely different things. Random events at the quantum level inside your brain are no different than having randomly-firing electrodes implanted in your brain. It will make your brain's output unpredictable, but it does not constitute Free Will. Or are you suggesting that the Mind somehow controls these Random events at the quantum level?
Technically, an arbitrary physical process (like the functioning of the brain) is based on smaller-scale subprocesses that eventually boil down to quantum-scale interactions.
To claim that this implies that quantum-mechanical behavior would be evident in the larger-scale process shows a misunderstanding of the physics.
Man are you hanging out with the wrong women.
..fear of prison..
The Prisoner's Dilemma is a generalized model for decision-making in a non-zero-sum game (net cooperation must yield more than net defection.) A story involving prisoner's and jail time is only the most popular canonical representation for the game. While I've nothing to say in defense of the researchers' intelligence: to levy criticism that the researchers have perhaps overlooked subjects' aversion to actual prison time is to suggest that the researchers are, perhaps, extremely stupid, and have no idea what they are doing at all.
You're assuming a woman that needs to fight for power. An already empowered woman thinks much like a man but with a more social perspective, with no deception because that kills social relationships. An empowered woman is really a treat to converse with and to know.
How do you find an empowered woman? My advice would be to stop treating women like alien creatures and assuming they're always trying to deceive you.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Not really....most of them really are that way. You really can't ever trust them 100%. Some are better than others, but, you always have to be cautious when dealing with them.
They may say they love you and you are the most important thing, but, you are not. Their financial stability and care of their kids will always outweigh you as their man.
It has been said that women have it made. They have half the money and ALL the pussy.
With the latter, they can get another many to replace you in no time at all. They may be more generally emotional creatures, but, they can turn it all off in a snap too. Guys seem to have the opposite problem, they take awhile to let the shields down, but, after they do...the pretty much lose it if their woman leaves them. That's why you so often see the obsessional behavior of a dumped guy. You rarely see that as much from the womans point of view.
Of course, there are always exceptions and outliers to the rule.
The trick is...as a guy, never let yourself totally go, and never trust them all the way. If you do, YOU lose the dominant role, and you are open to really getting fscked both emotionally, and financially.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Women think that they have more bargaining power than men, and that they can wield this power more effectively by pretending they don't realize they have it. Women are correct in their thinking.
You guys are both kind of sad individuals. You should really hear yourselves. I'm sorry you have both lost touch with what it is to be human and how to interact with others :-(
Your entire post leads right back to the very comment you replied to: "Man are you hanging out with the wrong women".
You said yourself that there are exceptions and outliers to the rule. The thing is, they're far more common than you, like most men, realize. If you act the way you described, you'll be less likely to find them.
You see, for the most part, you have to be the person you want to meet. Like-minded people do tend to find each other. If you want a straight shooter, be a straight shooter. If you play games, don't be surprised if you end up with someone who plays games as well. If you never let yourself totally go, never trust them all the way, and attempt to be dominant — you will end up with someone who never lets herself totally go, never trusts you all the way, and attempts to be dominant.
The previous posters aren't sad individuals
It is sad to lose your humanity. There is more to life than logic and what you think you "know" based on your limited perspective of the world. Love and you will know love. Do not and you will not. It's that simple.
they've simply ... presented our existence in terms that can be explained via the same paradigms that we explain the rest of the animal world.
Well, the same paradigms that you use to describe the animal world, anyway... as if any of our behavioral sciences are more than (very useful) vague abstractions. There's much more to know about life than what our sciences can currently gain a perspective on.
I am afraid I am speaking with people who have already closed their minds to the possibility that what they do not/cannot understand with logic must inherently not exist or be explainable with something besides logic.