The Science of Irrational Decisions

The Rat Race Trap blog has a look at one aspect of the irrational decision-making process humans employ, based on the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. "Professor Ariely describes some experiments which demonstrated something he calls 'arbitrary coherence.' Basically it means that once you contemplate a decision or actually make a decision, it will heavily influence your subsequent decisions. That's the coherence part. Your brain will try to keep your decisions consistent with previous decisions you have made. I've read about that many times before, but what was surprising in this book was the the 'arbitrary' part. ... [In an experiment] the fact that the students contemplated a decision at a completely arbitrary price, the last two digits of their social security number, very heavily influenced what they were willing to pay for the product. The students denied that the anchor influenced them, but the data shows something totally different. Correlations ranged from 0.33 to 0.52. Those are extremely significant."

Comments

Not sure

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Im 50 / 50 on this one

Re:Not sure

[node 3]

Aha! We now have the last two digits of your social security number...

Question. If you were to represent your odds of agreeing with this study as a *nine* digit number, what would it be?

Re:Not sure

[John Hasler]

It makes little sense to speak of "agreeing" with a scientific study.

Re:Not sure

[ZygnuX]

I wouldn't be so sure. Why do you think peer review exists? You may disagree with the methods used, with the conclusions obtained, and lots of things that are subjective and part of a scientific study

Re:Not sure

[pugugly]

Nine consecutive digits of Pi

For a small fee based in the central five digits of your Social Security Number, I'll tell you which nine.

{G} - Pug

So

[MyLongNickName]

Will it help me to understand why I read Slashdot instead of doing something productive with my time?

Re:So

[spun]

Yes. You arbitrarily decided to read Slashdot one day. In order to maintain internal consistency, your brain had to make it seem like this is a good idea, and continually offers up excuses for reading Slashdot.

Re:So

[Idiomatick]

In case you were actually curious which I'm sure you are...

Humans are naturally curious, and we have a love for information. These are great things, clearly evolving to strive for greater knowledge and understanding is a good thing. And a certain level of curiousity is also good. So there are mechanisms in our brain that reward us for gaining knowledge... generally you feel good learning something.

That said, the implementation is terrible. We get rewarded (chemically) for ANY information we learn. There is no natural mechanism that filters out useless information. So at our base we feel equally rewarded learning about britney spears' baby as we do about our political system. This results in you feeling good learning the tidbits of information though they may not be very pertinent to your life. If you are good at trivial pursuit you are likely more of an addict and so on.

Re:So

[snowraver1]

I disagree. I find watching E-Daily, or Entertainment Tonight, or any other celebrity show physically nauseating. It's literally an assault on my brain.

Re:So

[lwsimon]

You probably do it too much, though, as you obviously have never spent any time with a dictionary. If you did, you would realize that you just stated that certain shows show intent to physically harm your brain.

Please use the word "literally" literally in the future.

Re:So

[causality]

I disagree. I find watching E-Daily, or Entertainment Tonight, or any other celebrity show physically nauseating. It's literally an assault on my brain.

That's because such trivia is designed for children who never really grew up. Y'know, the ones who have adult bodies. That's why they think someone else's personal life is so much more fascinating than their own, merely because that person can sing or dance or act. They don't seem to notice that the truly famous entertainers are some of the most out-of-touch people who are least worthy of this kind of adoration. The doctor who finally cures cancer will be an anonymous, unknown figure by comparison.

They're impressed with the entertainer's ability to entertain and that's their only real criteria; any critical thinking or other evaluation shuts down at that point. Their appetite for the superficial and insignificant is absolutely endless, even though those same mental faculties could be put towards educating themselves, establishing deep and meaningful connections with people like their neighbors, and finding real purpose and meaning in their own lives. They see nothing wrong with this or the waste that it represents.

It's an assault on your brain because the underlying message is "it's okay to devote so much time and energy to something completely devoid of any real meaning." There's also the implication that it's okay to form grossly asymmetric relationships instead of mutual relationships, that there is anything healthy or nurturing about this, like when a person learns all about the personal and romantic life of an actor when that actor doesn't even know that he or she exists. The message is that you should eagerly do such things merely because it's encouraged by the industry that was built around it. If you have any understanding whatsoever, how could you do anything but reject this notion?

Re:So

[linguizic]

Studies have shown that 80-90% of everything that humans talk about is gossip. When you think about this from an evolutionary perspective it makes sense. We're highly social animals and our biggest competitors are other humans. Sharing information about the members of tribe is a HUGE advantage. Unfortunately, today we have the same brains that our tribal ancestors did and these brains seem to include celebrities in our tribes, so we eat up gossip about them. The implementation isn't terrible, it's just legacy :)

Re:So

[Mr Z]

You're literally full of it. "Literally" has been used as an intensifier since the 17th Century. Get over it. And before you go off on the author of the article I just linked... He's a dictionary editor. I think he spends more time with a dictionary than any of us.

Re:So

[war4peace]

So at our base we feel equally rewarded learning about Britney spears' baby as we do about our political system.

...Which are both nonsensical, stupid and unrewarding things to learn about and retain. Does that mean there's no escape from idiocy?

Re:So

[The Grim Reefer2]

Cool. This means that I can stop trying to get my wife to make more rational decisions. At least until someone invents a time machine.

Re:So

[Idiomatick]

Exactly. The human brain is like a computer program that has constantly been patched for millions of years. The original intent of the program is completely different from how we use it now. And we have never had a version change or rewrite. Oh and we were programmed by inputting code semi-randomly.

When you think of it from that point of the it isn't at all surprising we have a few hundred stupid flaws.

I'll let someone else come up with a car analogy if they like.

Re:So

[lwsimon]

I appreciate the link, but the improper and confusing use of a word throughout history doesn't make it correct. Even the author of the article you linked decries the use of the word in a confusing manner.

I really did like the article, though :)

Re:So

[Idiomatick]

Grats, i said 'base'. You have gotten over part of it using logic and processing in your fore-brain. That said, I bet you still listen and remember bits of it even if you find it abhorrent. I'm sure I can list other flaws in your brain if you'd like. I'll go with... procrastination, you don't do things as quickly as you could which is clearly inefficient, were you to design a life you'd likely not have it procrastinate. Unless you were trying to approximate a human.

Re:So

[causality]

So, what you're saying is, you're jealous of the ability of an entertainer to entertain, and because you once arbitrarily used the defense that what you do is more worthwhile than what they do in order to get a false sense of superiority, your brain keeps doing it to stay internally consistent?

You remind me of those people who call others "racist" because they disagree with Barack Obama on matters of public policy. Just like them, I am sure that you do it knowing that no one can rationally argue against something so absurd. For one thing, it would require them to prove a negative. That's why you never feel that before making such statements, you have a burden of proof to establish a) that jealousy of entertainers is the only possible reason to suggest that maybe there is something wrong with obsessing over strangers, or b) that the reasoning I openly explained is fatally flawed and that you know how it may be corrected.

Your failure to address or even to recognize that such a burden of proof goes along with your claim, combined with your insistence on making this into a personal matter instead of giving your counter-argument, can be taken as evidence that you are reacting emotionally, perhaps because I offended you. There was nothing malicious in what I said, so your offense is your own and it begins and ends with you. Therefore, you get to deal with it and will receive no relief from me.

I'll give you a free tip for the future: try these tactics on people who are unable to see right through them. You'll be much more "successful" if you really want to call it that.

Re:So

[causality]

Studies have shown that 80-90% of everything that humans talk about is gossip. When you think about this from an evolutionary perspective it makes sense. We're highly social animals and our biggest competitors are other humans. Sharing information about the members of tribe is a HUGE advantage. Unfortunately, today we have the same brains that our tribal ancestors did and these brains seem to include celebrities in our tribes, so we eat up gossip about them. The implementation isn't terrible, it's just legacy :)

That makes a lot of sense to me. Before technology allowed anything other than face-to-face communication, such a tendency might have been valuable. You can, after all, be greatly affected by the decisions of those closest to you. However, it seems to break down due to telecommunications. Telecommunications and mass media mean that this mechanism is being used for strangers that the individual will probably never meet. Due to that, it loses the meaningful function of "staying in touch" that it once served.

I don't know if "instinct" is the correct word here, but I'll use it knowing that there may be a better one. I have always felt that human beings don't have to be slaves to their instincts. Their instincts are strong influences; they are not absolute masters. Wise/enlightened individuals can recognize when following an instinct in a certain way no longer serves their interests. They can find healther and more fulfilling ("higher") ways to take care of the same needs. In this case, they can choose to become more involved in their family and community life instead of adoring strangers who don't even know that they exist. This would, however, require a mindful awareness of the situation and the willingness to perform a little self-examination, what you might call the ability to be in the driver's seat of your own life. These are traits that superficial people are not known for having, which may explain why celebrity-worship is most often associated with people who are childish and easily impressed.

Re:So

[dnahelicase]

I'm not so sure. Sometimes I wonder if I keep reading slashdot in the hopes that one day find something worthwhile. I think it's the principle of sunk costs - the fact that I have invested so much time in it already means I have to keep investing so that I can eventually read that one story that will make me a fortune, more attractive to women, and find that sense of fulfillment that means I no longer need to continuously read stuff on the interwebs...

Re:So

[rawr_one]

I was clearly trolling with a topical claim, but, since you want a serious discussion (or, appear to), let's have one:

I feel like you are underestimating the role of entertainers in our culture; certainly we live in a world where their importance has been inflated beyond belief, but the claim that news related to them is irrelevant and wasteful is flat-out wrong; the people who spend time watching it and absorbing it are not asocial and do not form asymmetric relationships, as you seem to be predicting, but rather use that knowledge they gather to foster their relationships with other people. Knowledge of popular culture actually helps people socialize and form relationships with other people.

Furthermore, you claim that they should be using their time to educate themselves, find meaningful relationships with other people (as I said earlier, pop culture news helps level the playing field here, making it easier to connect with new people, which is where any meaningful relationship has to start), and find real purpose and meaning in their life.

While I can't argue that their time would not be better spent educating themselves, I do posit that our own view of how valuable education is comes at least partially from the culture most Slashdot users come from; we are a community mostly consisting of people that actually like to learn things, which is a trait that doesn't appear in everybody. To the people it doesn't appear in, educating themselves is not going to make their life better, it's more or less going to be worthless.

On top of that, you claim that they should be using their time to find real meaning and purpose in their life; you seem to be assuming that there needs to be more to life than maintaining a healthy and successful social life while being a (generally) productive member of society (or at least being one of the gears that keeps the machine turning). If I'm wrong in this assumption, please call me out on this; I mostly want to clarify this point.

Re:So

[dissy]

In order to maintain internal consistency, your brain had to make it seem like this is a good idea, and continually offers up excuses for reading Slashdot.

Pfft, I don't need excuses. I can stop reading Slashdot any time I want!

Re:So

[Xaositecte]

Language isn't immutable. If a word is used "improperly" over a great deal of time, it eventually acqires that "improper" meaning.

Re:So

[schon]

Remember that the next time someone calls the big tower next to their monitor their "hard drive", or calls their desktop wallpaper their "screen saver", or talks about the time they "programmed MS Office" when they just installed it from the CD.

Re:So

[Mr Z]

I enjoyed the article too. :-)

English is full of confusing words. That doesn't make their use improper, it just makes them potentially confusing. I'm inclined to put "literally" in that category. If I said "I dusted the light dusting of dust off the book," aside from being (purposefully) repetitive, is it incorrect? The verb "dusted" means removing dust, whereas the verb "dusting" (used as a gerund) means adding dust. (Somebody cue "Buffalo buffalo..." guy.)

I do agree with his penultimate advice: "Don't write silly-soundingly." I also agree with his ultimate advice: "Be clear." I don't think either translates to a dictum to never use "literally" in a figurative context. I personally translate these to mean "Don't use the word 'literally' to intensify an already hyperbolic figurative expression, and don't use the figurative sense of 'literally' in a context where the literal sense is also plausible."

The phrase "literally an assault on my brain" doesn't seem all that hyperbolic, and it doesn't seem confusing. Saying something like "jumped so high he literally jumped over the moon" just pushes the hyperbole a bit much. Saying something like "wrote so hard he literally broke his pencil in half," when in actuality he hadn't (maybe he just snapped the tip) is simply confusing to the point of being incorrect. There's a continuum.

If you liked that article, you might enjoy A Way With Words. They actually covered this use of "literally" in one of their episodes, about 42 minutes in. And they actually mention the Slate article. :-)

Re:So

[causality]

I was clearly trolling with a topical claim, but, since you want a serious discussion (or, appear to), let's have one:

I can do things lightheartedly that might appear quite serious. I mean that in the sense that I really don't care if people disagree with me or want to think I'm motivated by a sense of jealousy. I do, however, enjoy the discourse. I like Slashdot because the quality of conversation here is really very good, trolls and everything.

I'll address your next paragraph in two parts.

I feel like you are underestimating the role of entertainers in our culture; certainly we live in a world where their importance has been inflated beyond belief, but the claim that news related to them is irrelevant and wasteful is flat-out wrong; the people who spend time watching it and absorbing it are not asocial and do not form asymmetric relationships, as you seem to be predicting

I only claimed that one type of relationship is asymmetric. That is the relationship between a famous entertainer and his or her average fan. The average fan might learn all about that entertainer's life, strengths and weaknesses, beliefs, and personal relationships. Meanwhile the entertainer is unlikely to even know the name of that average fan. If this is not asymmetric, if it is not the antithesis of mutual exchange, then I would be hard-pressed to name something that is.

the people who spend time watching it and absorbing it are not asocial and do not form asymmetric relationships, as you seem to be predicting, but rather use that knowledge they gather to foster their relationships with other people. Knowledge of popular culture actually helps people socialize and form relationships with other people.

I suspect that if this were true, then the divorce rate would not be so high, but then, actors have not been the best role models for this one. I also draw a distinction between superficial acquaintences who talk about the weather and pop culture versus real friends who share everything and are deeply involved in each other's lives. The asymmetric relationship between the fan and the entertainer is a terrible model for the latter type.

While I can't argue that their time would not be better spent educating themselves, I do posit that our own view of how valuable education is comes at least partially from the culture most Slashdot users come from; we are a community mostly consisting of people that actually like to learn things, which is a trait that doesn't appear in everybody. To the people it doesn't appear in, educating themselves is not going to make their life better, it's more or less going to be worthless.

It's funny that so many people don't seem to recognize a connection between an educational system based on rote memorization instead of curiosity and discovery, and a general population that is turned off to learning and often views it as a terrible burden (have you ever worked a tech support line?). To quote Samuel Clemens, I believe that the Slashdot crowd never allowed their schooling to interfere with their education. For that reason, they have a natural appreciation of knowledge and discovery. I believe that all people are born with this (just consider how many "why" questions small children constantly ask about the world) but often lose by the time they go through the meat-grinder known as public schooling.

So I agree with you that most people undervalue learning and education. I just see that as a product of artificial conditioning and do not view it as the way human beings inherently are. That means it is not set in stone, that people who are this way are not doomed to remain this way for their entire lives. It means it's a matter of what we value, which is something that can change, especially if enough concerned people are willing to speak about it. To think otherwise would be a defeatist attitude.

Re:So

[Xaositecte]

Sometimes people are just deliberately fucking with you

Don't worry about it so much.

Re:So

[rawr_one]

Okay, now we're getting somewhere; for the most part, I have to agree with you, I simply have a few points of contention:

I suspect that if this were true, then the divorce rate would not be so high, but then, actors have not been the best role models for this one. I also draw a distinction between superficial acquaintences who talk about the weather and pop culture versus real friends who share everything and are deeply involved in each other's lives. The asymmetric relationship between the fan and the entertainer is a terrible model for the latter type.

I don't really believe there are a terribly large number of people that try to reconcile the two different relationships; indeed, I believe we are all either naturally or artificially equipped with the mechanisms we need to distinguish the two and be perfectly functional people. In fact, it seems to me that, in a way, these asymmetric relationships they form with celebrities are a way in which they enjoy learning; the tendency seems to be treating celebrities less as people and more as a subject that's continually evolving, one that their friends also find interesting.

It's funny that so many people don't seem to recognize a connection between an educational system based on rote memorization instead of curiosity and discovery, and a general population that is turned off to learning and often views it as a terrible burden (have you ever worked a tech support line?). To quote Samuel Clemens, I believe that the Slashdot crowd never allowed their schooling to interfere with their education. For that reason, they have a natural appreciation of knowledge and discovery. I believe that all people are born with this (just consider how many "why" questions small children constantly ask about the world) but often lose by the time they go through the meat-grinder known as public schooling.

So I agree with you that most people undervalue learning and education. I just see that as a product of artificial conditioning and do not view it as the way human beings inherently are. That means it is not set in stone, that people who are this way are not doomed to remain this way for their entire lives. It means it's a matter of what we value, which is something that can change, especially if enough concerned people are willing to speak about it. To think otherwise would be a defeatist attitude.

Oh, believe me, I understand this all too well. I think most of us can even see it in ourselves (I highly doubt there is a single person here who can claim they have not grown to be slightly less inquisitive than they were as a child), and it's an incredibly distressing subject. That being said, there are already a ton of people that have been turned off to learning, and we can't really fault them for it, nor can we fault anything that panders to them; indeed, it seems that it only resonates with the people who are already part of its culture and does not seem to actively draw people in. It will likely die off (or, more likely, simply scale down) if/when public schooling becomes better, but I feel it's more of a symptom than a problem. I don't feel like it's an offensive symptom, either, just an unfortunate one.

I'll say it this way. If most human beings had deep and abiding meaning and purpose in their lives, we would find ourselves in a much better world. Much of the celebrity-worship, consumerism, and politics of control are actually substitutes for a truly fulfilling existence. So are these roller-coaster personal relationships where people say they love each other, yet act in an adversarial, manipulative manner towards the other person. So is the belief that climbing the corporate ladder in order to make more money is the only worthy use of your time, that the years devoted to your formal education served no purpose other than to obtain for you a position in a hierarchy.

I agree with you wholeheartedly here, but I also feel like it's a subject that's fairly hard to

Re:So

[BlueBayou22]

I think AC was pointing out that you came off sounding jealous. Which, really, you kinda did. I can only assume that the rest of AC's comment was a joke.

Re:So

[linguizic]

You're right, instinct isn't the right word, but your conclusion I think is correct also. Instinct really is a bad word because what is really the case is more affinity than anything else. When our nervous systems interact with the environment we feel pleasure, pain or indifference as a response to the stimuli. Animals aren't hard-wired to just act a certain way, instead animals behave a certain way because their nervous systems reward them with endorphins for behaving certain ways if the response from the environment is conducive to the animal in some way (either as a reward for short term survival of the organism itself or as a reward for the long term survival of the animals genes. The latter providing the strongest rewards). It really is a bizarre way to propagate genes when you think about it this way, but it must be noted that only a subset of the animal kingdom uses this system.

As far as rising above these affinities, it's very hard for us to do, but I think being aware of it is the first step to rising above it. A certain amount of it can be done away with just by changing the environment. Take hunting for instance, ask any hunter that doesn't have to do it why they hunt and ultimately it will be because the feeling of the hunt is powerful. Having never hunted myself, I remain ignorant of this affinity and don't have a strong attraction to hunting. Same thing with the feeling of glory that soldiers get from slaughtering their enemies.

That being said, I think the attraction to certain affinities that have never been experienced can be a driving factor for an individuals behavior. I think it's a part of what we might consider curiosity. Obviously, some people are more curious about some things over other things and this isn't a function of environment. Who grows up in a serial killer household? And yet there are people who are curious about what it's like to engage in acts that the vast majority of us consider outrageous.

Anyway, enough rambling, back to work...

Re:So

[linguizic]

I'm not sure you can talk about intent in this case unless you want to claim some form of Intelligent Design. If that's your thing, ok. But I like Richard Dawkins' analogy that evolution is a blind watchmaker. Ultimately, life is just a chemical reaction that has kept going for a LONG time and the current forms that we see are the result of the reactions that occurred in such a way that the reaction could keep going. I know it's a tautology, but I think that can be reconciled by the fact that the whole system runs on a steady stream of sunlight. Take that away and there's no life.

Re:So

[mhajicek]

Studies have shown that 80-90% of everything that humans talk about is gossip.

That explains why I don't talk very much; I don't gossip.

Re:So

[BooRolla]

It's an assault on your brain because the underlying message is "it's okay to devote so much time and energy to something completely devoid of any real meaning." There's also the implication that it's okay to form grossly asymmetric relationships instead of mutual relationships, that there is anything healthy or nurturing about this, like when a person learns all about the personal and romantic life of an actor when that actor doesn't even know that he or she exists. The message is that you should eagerly do such things merely because it's encouraged by the industry that was built around it. If you have any understanding whatsoever, how could you do anything but reject this notion?

I'm not sure that is 100% fair. What percentage of /. would really rail on playing video games, something that is completely devoid of any real meaning. I don't think as many /.'s would be willing to say it has so little meaning (enjoying yourself is a reward). At least artists, musicians, actors, etc are providing benefits to others, where video games are more localized.

And as far as the asymmetrical relationship stuff goes, I'd be willing to guess gossip has been around since society started. Gossip is mostly asymmetrical.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

Teee hee hee.

My mother in-law just brought her "modem" over to my house because someone at tech support told her that her processor's memory died and needs a new motherboard.

Re:So

[VisceralLogic]

"Literally" has been used as an intensifier since the 17th Century...

...by illiterate ignoramuses.

Re:So

[linguizic]

I talk about average, but I don't gossip either. More often I'm sharing ideas that I'm having about life, the universe, and everything (including the book of the same name). As you can probably tell, one of my favorite topics is evolution and language :)

Re:So

[Hurricane78]

that certain shows show intent to physically harm your brain.

No. You misunderstood it, and in your arrogance did not allow your brain to not be coherent with that. ;)

If you deny that they actually physically harm your brain, you have neither seen those shows, who are basically encoded stultification. Nor do you know how brains work: Input on your senses flows trough your brain's neural paths, altering them in the process. It's called "learning". Or in this case rather "unlearning" (which is really the same mechanism).

P.S.: Any grammar mistakes in this comment are based on it being my third language. Complaints have to be written in my first language, for me to accept them. That would be: Luxemburgish! ^^

Re:So

[Monsieur_F]

I'll stop tomorrow! I promise!

Re:So

[Artifakt]

'Equally rewarding' is a mistaken premise. People may derive internal brain rewards from learning things with no immediate use, but they also get negative feedback when they don't know things that are useful, AND people have some ability (also learned) to forsee negative consequences, so they experience a foreshadowing of 'karma' or alarm at even considering the future at the same time as the initial reward. Rare is the person who puts off doing something yet never blames themselves for procrastination, and rare indeed is the person who finds unearned rewards as sweet as earned ones.

The equally rewarded claim ignores the difference between somebody who has honestly earned a reward, and somebody who gets the same reward but has a fear they will eventually be found out not to deserve it, with unpleasant to dreadful consequences. It assumes people can't really time bind enough to project getting caught at lies. It describes, in other words, immature people's behavior as typical of mature adults.

If you really, honestly think knowing how our political system works is as nonsensical, stupid, and unrewarding as celebrity gossip, then that word, immature, applies to you. I don't blame you if you're angry at my saying that, just so you read on. The actions of that system can be nonsensical or stupid, but your knowing more about how the system works, or doesn't, is both sensible and smart for you. You may not need many parts of it, but there are bound to be important lessons for you in the sphere of politics. Dealing with idiots does not make you an idiot - but not dealing with idiots because you're afraid some of it will rub off on you, may. You can escape from being an idiot - In fact you probably have most of the time. I don't think any of us can claim to have escaped it all the time, I know I haven't.

    But when it comes to politics, there are parts of it where you can master a subject that helps you protect yourself from idiots, so you don't need to escape from them, you can make them leave you alone. There's an escape from idiocy here or there in the political system, but only in re. each one of us, not from idiocy's being loose in the world. How big an escape matters to you?

Re:So

[Javaman59]

Great article! He makes a good case for "literally" used in moderation.

I liked this line, about why it justifiably raises peoples hackles...

The examples usually stigmatized are the ones in which literally modifies a cliché or a metaphoric use that is already highly figurative.

So, "literally an assault on the brain" is OK.

Re:So

[pugugly]

Actually, language being a system for the encoding and decoding of information, yes the socially agreed upon usage throughout history makes it . . . correct.

{G} - Pug

Re:So

[pugugly]

For what it's worth - the sentence I abhor is the "Never Assume - it makes an ass of you and me!" bit of obnoxious cleverness, even more annoying than "There is no I in Team!".

It just irritates the hell out of me, since all logical though is in fact based on *some* set of propositions taken for granted. Euclid is based on one set of assumptions, Riemannian geometries an almost identical set of assumptions. Good thing for both Newton and Einstein Euclid never bought into *that* BS.

"Never Assume" only seems 'clever' to Sophist jackasses that don't want to give any ground in which they might lose an argument - as even Socrates observed, that was the entire point of the Sophists, that by not giving *any* starting ground with which to start a debate, they could switch arguments midstream and be seemingly unbeatable, but could not be counted on to achieve any sort of truth in the end.

Know your assumptions by all means. Be prepared to test them, to notice if an assumption leads to a contradiction, to discard it if it proves untrue.

But "Never Assume"? Never trust the worldview of anyone that thinks that's clever commentary on life.

Pug

Re:So

[ami.one]

Yes its easy, I have given up my slashdot addiction hundreds of times.

Re:So

[Mr Z]

Or the next time refers to a "AA battery" (as opposed to a AA cell, since "battery" should refer to a collection of cells), or any room without a bath a "bathroom", or to a commode as a "toilet" (since the word actually refers to the act of dressing), or someone hits the "gas pedal" (since it's really the throttle, controlling the flow of air).

Oh, wait, you mean to tell me that these are accepted terms for these things now? They're well established as acceptable terms for these things?

Some technically incorrect usage may be common (calling a 3.5" floppy disk a "hard disk", for example), but never become accepted usage. Other technically incorrect usage does become accepted usage.

It wasn't that long ago that the verb "impact" was considered non-standard, as in "This really impacts my schedule" or "Technology has impacted society" or "Impact your world". (You can find impact-as-verb going back to the 1600s, but in a much narrower sense than is used these days.) Nowadays, these examples are widely considered acceptable usage, although there still those who disagree. For example, the Random House dictionary says "Although recent, the new uses are entirely standard and most likely to occur in formal speech and writing." American Heritage isn't quite as keen on it though, weaseling thusly: "[T]he verbal use of impact has become so common in the working language of corporations and institutions that many speakers have begun to regard it as standard. It seems likely, then, that the verb will eventually become as unobjectionable as contact is now, since it will no longer betray any particular pretentiousness on the part of those who use it."

You see a similar weaseling on "literally," if you actually bother to go look. Random House:

Since the early 20th century, literally has been widely used as an intensifier meaning “in effect, virtually,” a sense that contradicts the earlier meaning “actually, without exaggeration” [....] Although this use of literally irritates some, it probably neither distorts nor enhances the intended meaning of the sentences in which it occurs.

AHD:

For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherency of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of "in a manner that accords with the literal sense of the words." [....] The practice does not stem from a change in the meaning of literally itself—if it did, the word would long since have come to mean "virtually" or "figuratively"—but from a natural tendency to use the word as a general intensive [...]"

So there you go.

Re:So

[Mr Z]

I dislike that phrase, but I always get a chuckle out of a related phrase: "Never make assumptions, because it makes an ass of you and Umption." ;-)

Re:So

[Mr Z]

"Actually" works.

Re:So

[benthurston27]

Yeah I don't even listen to music anymore unless someone I know made it. I find enjoying music too personal to get really into someone's music that I'll never even meet.

Re:So

[Sethumme]

Actually, he very well could be using the word "literally" literally. As you said, he stated that he believes certain shows intend to physically cause harm to his brain. If he really does hold the opinion that those shows display reasoning, taste, or behavior so atrocious that the only reasonable explanation for its transmission is to disrupt and whither the synapses in his brain, then he would be accurate in labeling the programming an assault on his brain.

I say sue them all to hell.

Re:So

[inviolet]

That's because such trivia is designed for children who never really grew up. Y'know, the ones who have adult bodies. That's why they think someone else's personal life is so much more fascinating than their own, merely because that person can sing or dance or act. They don't seem to notice that the truly famous entertainers are some of the most out-of-touch people who are least worthy of this kind of adoration. The doctor who finally cures cancer will be an anonymous, unknown figure by comparison.

Well said.

Reminds me of an old saying: Dull people talk about people; average people talk about events; smart people talk about ideas.

Re:So

[Idiomatick]

Never said a word about intent. I did say it was coded semi-randomly. Which is absolutely true to evolution. And I'm fine with most of what Dawkins says.

Re:So

[linguizic]

The original intent of the program is completely different from how we use it now.

Re:So

[Idiomatick]

Woah, man I fail. Sorry, I even reread and didn't see that. Well, nevertheless I didn't mean it like that.

Re:So

[cyphercell]

yea, I switched to online classes it was awesome, the instructor was obviously a M$ shill though, teaching a Microsoft 2007 Excel class instead of the "History and principles of spreadsheets and how excel is unoriginal drivel" like I had expected from a respectable four year university. I tried to point this out several times by listing all the features that M$ had stolen from other more worthy office suites, quoting wikipedia, citing the Openoffice.org features page, debunking logical fallacies other students used to defend M$, and pointing out that Gnumeric has etched a nice niche among scientific users, but she kept on coming back at me asking if I had read the text book, why I hadn't done the homework and other various trolls. eventually I got kind of fed up with the blatant fanboism I had to deal with on a daily basis and began just trying to get first post in the daily discussions. At first some of the Microtards were liek "what the hell does that mean?" I just laughed, and made some in soviet russia jokes. the next few weeks it was much the same until everyone started igoring me. So, I got creative, from editing wikipedia entries, stealing fellow student's login info (hahah noobS!), and DOSing the online classroom during tests!! It was wicked. Then I posted a goatse to the first post of the finals week discussion and there was like this uprising on that online forum. Sheeit. those lusres are just jealuous because thaey hav eto deal with that POS proprietary excel software all day no wonder they're so bitchy.

Anyways, I'm out on bail and back in my mom's basement managing one of my 250 beta projeccts on source forge right now.

Fuck excel lmann!!1

Re:So

[war4peace]

You would be right in every way, especially about the political system, if you wouldn't have made an assumption. That assumption is that I am from US. And I am not. There are countries in this world where the political system is, well, as bad as it gets. And what's played on TV or shown on websites about it is even more nonsensical, because it's shallow, uninformative and plain dull. So I'll pass, thank you :)

Re:So

[that IT girl]

Pfft, I don't need excuses. I can stop reading Slashdot any time I want!

Yeah, me too!

Just let me finish this one article first... last one, I promise...

Re:So

[that IT girl]

I agree with you... and I find watching that type of show (or TV in general, really) incredibly boring. Maybe boredom tends to turn off the part of the brain that would be stimulated enough to "reward" you.

Re:Yeehaw

[Aklyon]

define "big words". do you mean closer to "potato" or closer to "superstructure"

Personalized Ads

[Baby Duck]

Remember those personalized hologram ads in Minority Report? Now, if they know your SSN, they can personalize a "deal" for you at a price you might be more willing to pay for it.

Re:Personalized Ads

[eln]

Mine ends in 0002...damn that Roosevelt.

I'm not one to normally complain about articles...

[Red Flayer]

How the hell did this article make it off the firehose?

There is a quote in the summary from a blog referenced. The blog is not linked to -- instead the only link is to a site (Amazon, I think) selling the book.

Where's the actual discussion of what's in the book? Where's the article (or blog entry)?

If you're going to post a book review... please, include the review. Otherwise it looks like you're just hocking a book.

TFA

[TubeSteak]

http://www.ratracetrap.com/the-rat-race-trap/irrational-decisions-anchoring-and-arbitrary-coherence.html

Editors sleeping on the job
What a sweet job

Re:TFA

[kalirion]

Editors sleeping on the job

They were probably asked to write down the last two digits of the SS# as "the number of hours to sleep on the job" during their orientation.

Re:TFA

[Wonko the Sane]

Maybe they were flying a plane.

Re:TFA

[RyoShin]

The editors were merely following a previous decision. From the first, they never actually edited, so to do so now would be contradictory. It's irrational cohesion. The ad revenue influenced them.

Re:TFA

[prunedude]

Editors sleeping on the job
What a sweet job

Slashdot editors and airline pilots

Re:TFA

[Archangel Michael]

The pilots weren't sleeping .... they were fornicating; filming the new porno (tentatively titled "Snakes on a Plane").

Still, GIGO

[MikeRT]

Your brain will try to keep your decisions consistent with previous decisions you have made.

People tend to forget that logic is just a set of rules. If you load it up with bad data, especially data that is driven by pure emotions, you'll rationalize yourself into neat, coherent clusterfuck. The difference between wisdom and intelligence is that the former is an a priori mental filter for bad data, the latter is just raw capacity. That's why a wise person need not follow a life based on reason alone to generally make good decisions.

Re:Still, GIGO

[Aklyon]

a neat, coherent clusterfuck.

WTF?

Re:Still, GIGO

[iamhigh]

To bring it full circle... you made a logical decision to do x, this sets a rule in your mind that x is true. Once you made x decision, you had no further reason to question that, and you would base many more decisions on that "logical rule". When x is challanged, it would require you to re-think all past decisions that were based on x, which might include who you married, why you took this job, your religious beliefs and other important life decisions.

Is it any wonder our minds are wired to assume we were right and keep on moving in the same directions? The brain is trying to keep you alive; anything you have done up to this point won't kill you, so why would the brain try to change that? That's why few people really have a life changing moment unless forced upon them by war, death, or other bad things. When the going is good, you will keep going.

Re:Still, GIGO

[Bat Country]

Yes, we call that generalized anxiety disorder. You probably don't want that.

Re:Still, GIGO

[Carewolf]

No, if your logic is internally consistent, it will form a valid base of logic-space and will only lead to correct results. The problem is a lot of people have and defend broken logic. It doesn't matter if you rationalize about emotions or the bible, if you can manage to make it coherent you are right. I do admit that cohorent emotions are hard, and the bible itself is incoherent, but those are just examples.

Re:Still, GIGO

[Reziac]

Or to put it more simply "This worked yesterday, so it'll work today too". Clearly a survival mechanism.

Re:Still, GIGO

[element-o.p.]

Once you made x decision, you had no further reason to question that, and you would base many more decisions on that "logical rule". When x is challanged, it would require you to re-think all past decisions that were based on x, which might include who you married, why you took this job, your religious beliefs and other important life decisions.

That's not entirely a bad thing, however (which I think is probably the point of your second paragraph). If you had to re-evaluate every decision you ever made throughout your entire life, you would find that never did anything else. For there to be any progress, you must assume that the decisions that lead to where you are currently were good.

Hindsight may be 20/20, but at some point, you've got to stop second guessing yourself and actually act on your decisions.

Re:Still, GIGO

[517714]

Our brains are wired this way because as predators, it was more successful to continue chasing the same animal from the herd than to continually change targets who were not already tired from the chase. It predates anything we would likely call logic since this behavior is found in lower life forms.

Re:Still, GIGO

[nine-times]

What's more, I would say it's very unclear that we'd be able to live, let alone become intelligent, without such irrational assumptions. This is something that people miss a lot when they talk about intelligence and AI: irrationality is part of intelligence.

Imagine you didn't generally make basic assumptions that your past actions and beliefs were appropriate. Let's say you wake up in the morning and feel a pain in your belly. Well, yesterday and the day before that, you ate a bowl of cereal with milk in it, and that seemed to make the pain go away. But you're not just going to follow habit or assume that it's a good decision. You're going to wake up every morning from now on and try random things. Maybe you'll try scratching your belly with a stick, or maybe you'll throw yourself out the window. How is intelligence ever going to emerge from that?

People are creatures of habit, and people are mimics. We do what other people around us are doing. We role-play and we follow fads and we talk the way our neighbors talk. We see friends and family and people on TV eating breakfast in the morning, and so we do it too. Our brains then try to tie all of that habit and mimicry up in a nice tidy logical explanation so that we can understand what we're doing, so that we can explain it to ourselves and to others.

Re:Still, GIGO

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

People tend to forget that logic is just a set of rules.

Logic is a set of rules, or more truly a class of rulesets. It can be applied usefully or poorly.

If you load it up with bad data, especially data that is driven by pure emotions...

How can data be driven by emotions? I'm not sure I even understand what you're trying to say.

Logic works very well when applied as a formalized method for decision making. It helps to mitigate some of the emotionally driven flaws in decision making. Logic can also be used, after the decision, as a way to provide a reasonable sounding justification for why a decision was made. For pretty much everyone I've ever met (myself included), it is applied as a blend of these two.

A good example is the scientific method. It is a formalized, logical method of forming an opinion and as a result can create differing results over time as more data is gathered. You can apply this method to decide if the planet is warming and what is the most likely cause and what the likely results are and what can be done to change that. Alternately, people can decide one way or the other based upon a decision making method that is not logical and formalized and emotions and logical flaws are much more likely to result in the incorrect opinion being formed. At this point, people can still effectively employ logical rules to defend the decision, but that's all it is, a logical defense of an arbitrary opinion, unless an individual is willing to go back and actually apply the scientific method anew,

The interesting part of this research is it shows how our brains are hardwired to tend not to do that and how other, seemingly unrelated decisions can sabotage our ability to make correct decisions, making formalized methods even more critical to effective decision making.

Re:Still, GIGO

[causality]

Your brain will try to keep your decisions consistent with previous decisions you have made.

People tend to forget that logic is just a set of rules. If you load it up with bad data, especially data that is driven by pure emotions, you'll rationalize yourself into neat, coherent clusterfuck. The difference between wisdom and intelligence is that the former is an a priori mental filter for bad data, the latter is just raw capacity. That's why a wise person need not follow a life based on reason alone to generally make good decisions.

"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

-- Charles Babbage

Re: Still, GIGO

[noidentity]

If I'm trying to get somewhere, not sure of where it is, and don't have anyone to ask, I'm better off walking in the same direction for a while, rather than constantly changing directions. A coherent approach is more likely to yield something useful, even if just "this approach doesn't work", than one that is incoherent. So I can see value in using previous decisions as constraints on future ones, lacking any strong reason to not do so.

Re:I'm not one to normally complain about articles

[Victor_0x53h]

Seriously..

It looks like the blog is here: http://www.ratracetrap.com/the-rat-race-trap/irrational-decisions-anchoring-and-arbitrary-coherence.html

except decisions aren't made in a vaccum

[lapsed]

...so when we're faced with an uncertain decision, we take cues from those around us rather than from our social insurance numbers. As a result, industries characterized by high technological uncertainty -- like those discussed on /. -- tend to be governed less by the the clarity of perfect information in competitive markets and more by inherently social processes: imitation of either past behavior or the behavior of successful competitors.

Re:except decisions aren't made in a vaccum

[Anonymous Monkey]

Think about home sales right now, not long ago homes in my area were selling for about $1,000,000. However the price has decreased to around $800,000 to $700,000 and they are still dropping (Yeah the joy of CA). However homes are being pulled off the market and sitting, vacant, not even being rented. Why? Because they have already decided that they need to get more than the current sale price. Logically, they know it is imposable, and that bubble prices won't be back soon enough to make holding on to the real-estate and paying maintenance profitable. Still they are anchored to one million dollars. (PS My area is mostly people who purchased back in the 60's and 70's and have lived in there homes seance then. Mostly homes for sale are inheritance, or some one who is down sizing because the kids moved away. We don't have many people who bought in the bubble and can't afford to sell because sale price is lower than the mortgage)

Re:except decisions aren't made in a vaccum

[Archangel Michael]

Waiting for prices to climb is a lousy reason not to sell right now. There is no guarantee that the values will indeed rise. What needs to happen is for banks to start selling the houses at whatever value causes them to be sold. PERIOD.

We'll never know the value of the houses if they are not sold, and therefore cannot fully understand the depths of how sunk the economy really is. Banks holding onto houses in foreclosure are NOT good for the economy.

IMHO any Bank that took Federal $ should be required to liquidate holdings at auction. Let's just say the limit to hold a house is 365 days, before forced public auction. If they can get the house sold, great. If not, it goes to auction.

Once houses start getting sold again, and the inventory of houses on the market start to reach nominal levels, then we'll know the TRUE value of houses.

And it would free up a great deal of equity currently being held hostage.

Re:except decisions aren't made in a vaccum

[Kjella]

Waiting for prices to climb is a lousy reason not to sell right now. There is no guarantee that the values will indeed rise.

Actually, there's quite a few models on how the "real" economy should work. But humans are herd animals, when the media tell them to stop buying they stop and start buying they start. Sometimes, anyway. The stock market is just like that, only much worse. It's not like the value of the economy drops or rises by 50% like the stock market does, it's a wierd amplified effect driven by everyone thinking they'll outsmart everyone else on future expectations.

I decided this crunch was the perfect time to buy an apartment. I read all the tea leafs and I managed to hit the bottom pretty well but it had absolutely nothing to do with the real figures, only about expectations about price development, interest rate development, unemployment rate and so on. The media is always boom or doom but you can tell when they're running out of "steam", so to speak.

Paul Simon said it

[handy_vandal]

"A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest."
- Paul Simon, The Boxer

Hmmm

[CorTechs]

Science? ...

Re:Hmmm

[swanzilla]

Correlations ranged from 0.33 to 0.52. Those are extremely significant.

Social scientists might find that significant...I sure don't. It is sort of cute how they think they are performing actual science, though.

Re:Hmmm

[WAG24601G]

Social scientists and anyone else who passed STAT 101 might find that significant[1]. It is sort of cute how you think you are critiquing science.

[1] Previous post explaining the difference

Re:Hmmm

[swanzilla]

I'm not critiquing science, I'm critiquing social science.

Calling a sociologist a scientist analogous to calling a chiropractor a doctor.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sort of cute how you think that you have any credibility to dismiss sociologists when you've already made it obvious that you don't understand basic statistics. But hey, don't let a little thing like facts intrude on your smug condescension.

Re:Hmmm

[hazem]

Calling a sociologist a scientist analogous to calling a chiropractor a doctor.

Are you saying that there is no scientific merit to studying systems of people people and societies? Or are you saying that sociologists don't know how to apply the scientific method in their studies?

If it's the former, that seems to me an ignorant position to take. Social systems may be messier and less predictable than other physical systems, but that just means the job of trying to derive laws of social science is harder than in the "hard" sciences. If it's the latter, why don't you apply some scientific method and publish some ground-breaking paper that will show those sociologists how it's done and win yourself the Nobel prize?

Re:Hmmm

[Blakey Rat]

Are you saying that there is no scientific merit to studying systems of people people and societies? Or are you saying that sociologists don't know how to apply the scientific method in their studies?

I'm going to take option C: He likes to feel better than other people, so he makes fun of them for no good reason.

Of course, I also have a friend who is a licensed Chiropractor and also a licensed family medicine M.D. Try telling him that Chiropractors aren't Doctors... that would be a hard case to make!

Re:Hmmm

[WAG24601G]

AC, you've inspired me to a new sig, less inflammatory than it's predecessor. May the mod points flow.

Re:Hmmm

[Troed]

I was with you all the way up until you wrote "laws of social science". Asimov rest in peace, but no.

Re:Hmmm

[arb phd slp]

Everything is easy when you don't understand the problem

Why are you not logged in when you say this? Well said, indeed.

Yard Sales

[dschmit1]

This is exactly why I never buy anything that is not previously labeled with a price. I will negotiate but not if I have to contemplate a starting value myself.

Re:Yard Sales

[Chris Mattern]

Which is why car salesmen almost always open negotiations with some variation of "name me a price."

Re:Yard Sales

[neo]

Just out of curiosity, what is your social security number?

Re:Yard Sales

[Aladrin]

Am I the only one that names a really low price when people do this? It's not a thrift shop, it's a car dealership. I always feel insulted when people do this.

On the other hand, at a thrift shop, yard sale, or flea market, I feel obligated to haggle. And if they don't give at all, I generally don't buy.

Re:Yard Sales

[Monkeedude1212]

I do. And when they start to explain why it costs $30,000 more then my offer I go "Well why didn't you say it costs $30,001 in the first place?"

Re:Yard Sales

[GodfatherofSoul]

I bet you're one of those jerks who started haggling on the $1.50 ceramic frog from my last yard sale.

Re:Yard Sales

[Archangel Michael]

I'm the guy who saw the $1.50 ceramic frog, saw the maker's mark on the bottom, realized it was actually worth $100, and I could sell it to the antique dealer for $50 and offered to buy it from you for $0.75 and held out the three quarters which you took.

Thank you. :-D

Re:Yard Sales

[noidentity]

This is exactly why I never buy anything that is not previously labeled with a price. I will negotiate but not if I have to contemplate a starting value myself.

So just imagine seeing a price of $1.00 on the item. Would you buy it at that price? If so, double it. If not, halve it. Keep repeating until your answer changes. Now you have prices on both sides. Offer something between. If your offer is accepted, buy the item. If rejected, don't (yes, I don't like haggling; take it leave it is my style).

But I'm generally too lazy to even go through this thought experiment when something is unpriced. It's literally not worth it. It's not that hard to price everything at a yard sale; either have a default price for unmarked things, or divide things into groups with set prices, along with a group where higher-priced things are marked.

Re:Yard Sales

[yoshi_mon]

Heh, most people already know the answer but always forget. Price is set by what the market will bare.

Now of course these days of course we are so used to having prices set and there being no haggling that when someone asks us to name a price we don't know what to do. So really it's mostly the opening move in any sales persons game of trying to feel you out for how much they can milk you for.

Anchoring

[INeededALogin]

Nothing really new here. Decisions making based on anchors is a large part of why we use Planning Poker when doing our estimations. All it takes is that one guy that says everything is easy to influence everyone's brain to under-estimate a project.

Re:Anchoring

[DiegoBravo]

> All it takes is that one guy that says everything is easy to influence everyone's brain to under-estimate a project.

Not exactly.

What TFA says could be translated like:

YOU analyze some (software?) project, and decided (maybe correctly or not) that this is easy.

Next you analyze other totally unrelated task, for example, running 2 km, and you will more probably underestimate the effort (and the other way too.)

It's some kind of auto-suggestion with an interesting prove of correlation.

Re:Extremely significant?

[WAG24601G]

TFS never claimed it was a strong correlation. It's a highly SIGNIFICANT correlation (meaning that the probability that the result occurred by chance and not systematically is very low, less than 5%).

Now, whether or not .33 is a STRONG correlation is another matter. By most definitions, it is not, although .52 would be a moderate correlation. However, the correlation does suggest that about 10-30% (r-squared) or more of the variation in subjects' decisions was accounted for by their social security numbers (accounted for != caused by, but we can make inferences based on the experimental design). Over a lifetime, 10% variation due to random irrelevant factors (like SS number) is serious, and 30% is HUGE. In that sense, it is a meaningful result, even if the correlation is not a "strong" one in terms of proportion.

Re:I'm not one to normally complain about articles

[Red Flayer]

And I just want to give props to kdawson (or whoever) for correcting the oversight... link to the blog is now there.

The implications

[AdmiralXyz]

Our brains favor consistency over correctness... we're finally coming close to understanding the biological origins of conservativism. Here's hoping this research eventually leads to a cure.

Re:The implications

[lwsimon]

As opposed to the liberal belief that killing a violent criminal is bad, but killing an unborn child is good. Or that problems created by government intervention are best solved by additional government intervention.

I'm an Objectivist libertarian, and my beliefs are in fact based on rationality. Both sides of mainstream American politics are equally inconsistent, though the right tends to get things right slightly more often than the left - say, a 60/40 split or so.

Re:The implications

[Colonel Korn]

As opposed to the liberal belief that...killing an unborn child is good.

I'm an Objectivist libertarian, and my beliefs are in fact based on rationality.

beep...boop...DOES NOT COMPUTE! How'd rationality lead you to think that "liberal belief" includes the idea that killing an unborn child is "good?"

Re:The implications

[John Hasler]

After all, why would we want engineers designing bridges to be conservative about safety margins?

Re:The implications

[Culture20]

How'd rationality lead you to think that "liberal belief" includes the idea that killing an unborn child is "good?"

More objectively stated: "Liberal belief" includes the idea that being allowed to kill an unborn child without legal ramifications is "good", but only if the one making the decision is the mother; for anyone else, it's a crime.
For perspective: from a "Conservative" mindset, this is exactly like saying "being allowed to murder is 'good' as it does not restrict our innate freedom to act." Thus, why many Conservatives oppose legalized abortion.

Mods: Please remember what the definitions for Troll and Flamebait are before moderating. I'm reasonably on topic and continuing a civil dialogue without inflammatory language. If you happen to disagree politically or grammatically, that's what the "reply to this" button is for.

Re:The implications

[lwsimon]

Perhaps it was the current President of the United States, who ran on the Democratic Party ticket, stating that a young lady shouldn't be "punished" with a child. Logically, if bearing an unplanned child is a punishment, avoiding said punishment is desirable.

Besides, I wasn't taking a moral stance on either issue, I was merely pointing out the inconsistency in the beliefs of many leftists. If you'd like to modify it as "... killing a violent criminal should be unlawful, but killing an unborn child should be lawful."

My point stands.

Re:The implications

[lwsimon]

Yes, I clarified this point in a response to another reply.

I split from the conservative movement a long time ago due to issues like this. Truthfully, I've not made my mind up about abortion, because I can't objectively nail down when a child should be considered a human life.

It bothers me that so many people hold positions on issues of great importance based on how they "feel", rather than seeking to find the truth.

Re:The implications

[lwsimon]

As opposed to the liberal belief that killing a violent criminal is bad, but killing an unborn child is good.

I like how you folks twist arguments around, and then believe your own bull.

a) Nobody thinks that killing an unborn child "is good". People only think that having a right to do so if the situation demands it is good. Everybody agrees that such situations are far from ideal. You should understand your rights vs. the state's rights to interfere with your life if at all you're any kind of a good Objectivist libertarian you claim to be. And stop twisting words. The word "killing" in "killing a violent criminal" and in "killing an unborn child" is used in completely different contexts. If you're too dumb to understand that, don't try to argue about it or base a belief on it.

The state has no moral right to interfere in an individual's rights, period, provided they are not causing violence against another individual. Further, whether or not you argue that a fetus is a child, I don't see how you can rationally argue that it is not alive.

I did not state a belief on abortion in my post.

b) When there is no agreement on when a fetus becomes a "child", you can't place an arbitrary definition on it and expect people to buy your arguments before debating that through. Makes your claim of having your beliefs based on rationality ridiculous, unless you call blocking your years and screaming your ideology "rational".

This is one reason that I hesitate to use the term "Objectivist" sometimes - because there are those who take Rand's books as gospel and Ayn herself as a god. I'm not one of them. While I've broken from most of Christianity over time, I cannot come to the firm conclusion that there is no creator, because there is indeed evidence that suggests that there is.

A fetus is a child - whether they are entitled to the full legal protections of a person is somewhat debatable, but it is clearly a child.

My choice of words in dealing with abortion was poor, but my point still stands - the parent of my post was calling conservatives inconsistent, while liberals are no less inconsistent.

Re:The implications

[amplt1337]

I'm an Objectivist libertarian, and my beliefs are in fact based on rationality.

Aww. That's cute.

Re:The implications

[Knara]

"unborn child"

Yeah, that's not inflammatory language at all.

Zygotes/embryos are no more children than sunflower seeds are sunflowers. You need to work on that rationality a bit more.

That and "killing a violent criminal" would be fine if we had a flawless justice system, but we don't, so yeah, erring on the side of "not killing innocent people" is preferable.

Re:The implications

[hazem]

"... killing a violent criminal should be unlawful, but killing an unborn child should be lawful."

It seems to me the right, while claiming to be the "culture of life" is equally inconsistent when it chalks up killing innocent civilians as mere "collateral damage".

Re:The implications

[zzsmirkzz]

That's because most people believe that what they feel is the truth. It seems so real, it must be true.

Re:The implications

[farker haiku]

I'm for killing violent offenders, but the problem is that the legal system is so broken that I'm not sure if anyone knows guilt vs innocence anymore.
I'm for abortions, but only in certain cases - extreme hardship for the child, health concerns, rape, etc. There are in fact times when you would be better off dead than alive.

Re:The implications

[Anonymous Coward]

An "unborn child" is known as a fetus.

Murder involves an individual loosing their life.

A fetus is not an individual. A fetus requires another life form physically connected with it to continue to live.

The "liberal belief" does not include the idea that killing a fetus is "good". Actually asking any pregnant woman who does not wish to be will quickly find that answer. Pregnant women often find the idea of having an abortion performed upon them, along with the valued loss of life, a bad thing, but BETTER THAN having a child which will grow up in a slum, or having a child without a father, or worse, with a father that will do the job horribly.

They also believe that they should have control over what is done to their own body.

Plus, if the technology is there people will use it, one way or another. It's much safer having the procedure performed in a doctor's office than in some basement.

Re:The implications

[lwsimon]

A fetus is not an individual. A fetus requires another life form physically connected with it to continue to live.

So, according to your definition, someone who has lost kidney function is no longer an individual? How about conjoined twins which share major organs?

The issue isn't nearly as black-and-white as you make it out to be, and that's why we struggle with it.

Re:The implications

[lwsimon]

We aren't speaking of zygotes or embryos, we're speaking of fetuses.

Re:The implications

[lwsimon]

That was my point.

Re:The implications

[lwsimon]

Then challenge me.

I'm not perfect, and there are certainly conflicts in those things that I take for granted - but when I discover those conflicts, I work to resolve them and reconcile my position.

Re:The implications

[amplt1337]

Well, okay, fine. Let's just start with a couple of your earlier points.

You assert that liberals believe that "killing a violent criminal is bad, while killing an unborn child is good."
Ignoring that there's a good many liberals who are opposed to abortion, it is irrational of you to assume that this is an inconsistency in the thinking of those who disagree with you. The point at which life begins is not well-defined; the point at which human life begins is also not well-defined. Many liberals who support the right to abortion believe that an unborn fetus is not equivalent to an independent human being and does not merit the same legal status. (You can disagree with this, but that doesn't make it irrational; and, contra your elevation of "rationality" as an abstract ideal, there is no strict rational basis from which to choose between the definitions.) Many other liberals who support the right to abortion consider that the rights of the adult mother are more important than those of the unborn fetus, and thus intend to maximize her liberty. (The alternative, forbidding abortion, is a form of government interference that maximizes the liberty of a different person.) In this instance, your rational principles do not offer an indisputable criterion for decision, by virtue of the fact that you must restrict the liberty of one party at the expense of the other, without any voluntary contract between them.
It would be well to avoid "good" and "bad" in these arguments; we're making claims about what is permissible to the government, not the moral standing of any given course of action. The law punishes many just acts and permits many unjust ones.

As to this assertion:
"Problems created by government intervention are best solved by additional government intervention."
More rigorous inspection will demonstrate that many of the problems you attribute to government intervention are not actually due to that cause. (Further discussion of this would depend on examining specific cases.) However, liberals are fully cognizant of the fact that bad government interventions can exist; and their typical solution for such a situation is to remove bad interventions and replace them with good ones, not to keep bad interventions and patch over them.

In any event, though, the reason I pulled out the part of your post that I did is that it is an example of naivete in both how your own mind works and how those of humans work generally. You claim that your positions are founded on strictly rational principles, but that is not possible, on account of the kind of beings that humans are. (Establishing a strictly rational basis for human thought was the project of the Logical Positivists from at least two centuries ago, and they never achieved it; and that entire enterprise has been generally discredited presently). Your beliefs, like everyone's, are derived from certain axioms which are fully capable of being in conflict with each other. That's not your fault; step-by-step logical construction simply isn't how any system of human thought works (including, for instance, human categorization systems).
Personally, I think it is far more interesting to begin with one's conclusions, and use what-if scenarios to investigate the edge cases and thereby deduce what one's principles actually are. I think if you do so, you will likely discover that many of the differences between your positions and those of people with vastly different politics are not due to differences in rationality, but simply differences in axioms (or in the weights given to priorities in conflict).
At the end of the day, though, your claim that your philosophical system is distinct from everyone else's because yours (and your friends') alone is rational, is simply not something that can be taken seriously.
I would be happy to discuss any of your positions further, but I'd ask that you identify which ones you'd like to examine. I don't want to attribute positions to you that aren't yours.

Re:The implications

[Veggiesama]

Truthfully, I've not made my mind up about abortion, because I can't objectively nail down when a child should be considered a human life.

Well, there's your problem.

The question has a false premise. "When does human life begin?" That assumes there's a clear, objective marker that exists before and after life "begins."

Does life begin at conception? No, because the body often gobbles up fertilized eggs, or the body accidentally splits the early zygotes to create identical twins, or a million other wacky things can happen to the embryo. If each time, a human life is destroyed or cleaved asunder with the body's natural processes--well, if you're a sexually active woman, I hope you can hire a good defense attorney for those genocide charges.

Does life begin when the fetus can survive outside of the womb by itself? No, because medical technology is making it possible to survive outside of the womb earlier and earlier, and pretty soon we won't need a woman to carry the child at all.

Does life begin when a child is finally born? Our legal system certainly doesn't think so. Killing a late-term pregnant woman is worth 2 points, after all.

Whatever point someone chooses is arbitrary and probably based on vague notions of "souls" or "consciousness" or whatever. Trying to find the "truth" of when a life begins is like trying to find the precise moment that your milk-drenched Frosted Flakes change from crunchy to soggy.

Re:The implications

[TorKlingberg]

I'm an Objectivist libertarian, and my beliefs are in fact based on rationality.

In my experience, those who think their political opinions are based on rationality and logic are the most dangerous because they are unable to consider the possibility that they may be wrong, even when faced with absurd consequences of their reasoning. Besides, most of the time their opinions are actually based on emotions and self-interest, then rationalized afterwards.

To clarify: Rationality certainly has a place in politics, but remember that facts trumps theory and society is too complex for over-simplified theories, beautiful as they are.

Re:The implications

[williamhb]

I split from the conservative movement a long time ago due to issues like this. Truthfully, I've not made my mind up about abortion, because I can't objectively nail down when a child should be considered a human life.

To be perfectly scientifically pedantic, there is no question about this -- it is a live human organism at the moment of conception. That single cell is most certainly human, and it is most certainly life -- that it has a very high probability of an imminent natural death makes no scientific difference to this. Of course, the pedantic scientific answer probably isn't practically very useful. But remembering it should clarify that the question isn't scientific -- it's not actually "when is it objectively life" but the definitively subjective question "when is it worthy of our protection". As soon as a child is "worthy of your protection", I imagine it is harder for an individual to personally justify an a termination -- no matter how distressing or planned-future-threatening bringing the child to term is, for the deemed-worthy child it is certainly a matter of life and death.

The more complex question -- when should "society" deem a child worthy of protection against its mother's will is yet more subjective. There are occasions when society chooses to allow innocent people to die -- sending soldiers into a foreign war for instance. (And certainly there are some differing subjective views about the last one!) Is "a clear cut demonstration of the rights and self-determination of women" sufficient cause to allow even deemed-worthy lives to be sacrificed? Again, a question that is by definition subjective.

I'm not giving you an answer (though of course I personally have an opinion), but even if I'm not giving you a "moral of the story", the lesson of the story is that science won't get you out of this one -- you're going to have to make a decision about what you value. And politics and democracy will certainly come into play about what society decides it values.

Re:The implications

[deodiaus2]

I can see the conservatives are being ones really standing up for food and shelters of kids born to mothers who did not want or could not afford them.
Yes, the same conservatives and Puritans who value life so much that are willing to get us into a war where we kill people in order to steal their oil. I guess these are the same people that slaughtered the Indians because they were in the way of rich farmland. Or better yet, the same class that has no problem sending poor African and Latino kids to fight and die over assets and lands so that their children will run corporations which will extract profit from those gains.
Praise be Jesus! God Bless America!

Re:The implications

[Knara]

Oh, you mean the stage where the embryo looks vaguely animal-like, has no lungs, barely has a brain with no real CNS, has inoperable limbs and a tail?

Re:Extremely significant?

[WAG24601G]

suggest that about 10-30% (r-squared) or more of the variation

Correction: Cut the "or more". It was left over from a previous version of that comment... if you can believe that I actually read and revise my comments before posting! (although apparently not well enough)

correlation != statistical significance

[crmarvin42]

Apparently I'm in a very pedantic mood today.

Correlation is a measure of how well the model describes the data. So according to the summary, 33 to 52% of the variation in the data was explained by the model. Depending on the inherent variability in the criteria being evaluated, that could be very good or very bad. In my line of work that would be very bad, but for social sciences such as sociology, that is very high. It all comes down to how many variables you can control. The more control, the less variation, the higher the correlation when the model is a good fit.

Significance is a measure of the probability that the response seen is due to random variation or errors in sampling. They may have given a measure of significance in the article, but the summary did not.

Re:correlation != statistical significance

[WAG24601G]

I think you're confusing correlation (R) with coefficient of determination (R-squared). Only 10-30% (cautiously limiting to 1 sig fig) of the variation is accounted for, but this is still huge. See my other post.

Re:correlation != statistical significance

[NoOneInParticular]

It could still be insignificant. An R-squared of 30% based on 3 datapoints is insignificant. On 10000 it is highly significant.

Re:correlation != statistical significance

[WAG24601G]

You're definitely right about that. Since the review doesn't give a p-value, I took it on good faith that it was covered in the book... but then again, a reviewer who doesn't note the p-value probably didn't know what significant meant anyway... hrm...

Re:correlation != statistical significance

[ceoyoyo]

Not pedantic at all. I was going to post the same thing. One of the reasons armchair statisticians (i.e. the correlation is not causation crowd) are always railing against correlative studies is that they don't understand that any measure of correlation also comes along with a p-value indication the likelihood that an actual correlation exists. If that likelihood is high enough, we call it "significant."

Re:correlation != statistical significance

[ceoyoyo]

Never, ever, take that one on faith. Very few people who talk about correlation seem to know the very basic fact that measures of correlation are meaningless without their accompanying p-values.

Like the Slashdotter who calls himself a math geek who insisted that correlation was a load of bunk because some stock market index "is correlated" with the position of Saturn.

Cognitive Dissonance

[Mister Fright]

So, it is basically about cognitive dissonance?

Re:I'm not one to normally complain about articles

[phlamingo]

Hawking, you mean.

Re:Yeehaw

[compro01]

Science basically involved checking whether what "everyone knows" is actually correct, and then trying to find out why.

I wonder if this human trait can shed light on

[raybob]

another current /. headline: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/23/1249256/Data-Entry-Errors-Resulted-In-Improper-Sentences

Think the prosecutors & defense attorneys allowed their set point to be an assumption that the data must be correct ? Sure they did.

And I've always wondered about the moral certitude which seems to guide the decisions of various group adherents, like the Moral Majority back in the 80's. Say even the Acorn folks now. Once the premise is accepted, all further reasoning is derived there from.

I think this is sort of common sense, though and we all know that this is how the mind operates. Otherwise, how could organisms effectively process all of the stimulus information present in their environments with the outcome being a rational decision, in the time span necessary for survival decisions, with the limited 'computing resources' that our brains provide. ?

Don't we all generally accept that human thought processes work from categorization ? Hence we get bad affects like biggotry, prejudice, racism, genocide, etc. along with the ability to decide quickly and hence survive our environment.

Re:I wonder if this human trait can shed light on

[raybob]

Cr@p, missed this on previewing my post: 'effects', not 'affects'. Big pet peeve of mine. I guess my setpoint is that I would never make that mistake !!

Re:Yeehaw

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. I knew the "hurr durr, what good is this study, it's only repeating common sense, what a waste of time/resources" response was coming as soon as I read the summary title, but I didn't expect it would be the first post. Especially since this story is specifically ABOUT the way that people are prone to believe "obvious" things in spite of actual evidence.

Please, get this through your heads: "common sense" (another name for biases gained from anecdotes and cultural groupthink) is often misleading, unreliable, over-broad, or outright wrong. At one time it was "common sense" that heavy objects fall faster than light objects. It was "common sense" that large, heavy objects can't float in water. It was "common sense" that the world is flat and women and blacks are intellectually inferior to white men and that the planets and moons are perfect spheres orbiting in perfect circles.

Science is about testing claims through empirical experiment--sometimes the results match up with "common sense", sometimes they don't. Sure, this story an example of a place where experiment confirmed something that is fairly obvious on its face--but the data goes a long way towards better understanding the WHYS and HOWS of this "obvious" phenomenon. Data is never a bad thing.

Windows

[SnarfQuest]

In other words, a company that installs Windows on its first PC will probably install it on thousands of additions, instead of installing Linux on hundreds.

Laziness and Pride

[Temujin_12]

To me laziness and pride are the two biggest obstacles to rational thinking.

Laziness since, more often than not, simply sitting down and thinking things through you can avoid most irrational decisions. Time constraints can make this difficult. But I'm surprised at how often I see family/friends make poor decisions simply because they don't know how to stop and think. I like this quote from Samuel Johnson since it articulates the fact that easy access to information does not mean people will spend the energy to even look at it (let alone use it wisely):

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

Next to laziness, is pride. This boils down to the fact that culturally we're often taught to focus on being right rather than focusing on what's right. This comes from the illusion that one can own or control truth. I've seen this affect friendships, marriages, professional atmospheres, politics, etc. Truth is independent. You either align yourself with it or continue to live in ignorance. Of course, objective indisputable truth is rare or even non-existent in humanity, but it's the honest, humble desire to align oneself with truth (not the other way around) that's important here.

The wife's ends in 99

[threaded]

The wife's number ends in 99, which explains everything.

Re:The wife's ends in 99

[Locke2005]

Exactly. You should have hooked up with someone whose social security number ended in 69 instead.

So, it is bad to have sales

[mdsolar]

When a store puts a product on sale, and it gets a new customer, it also loses that customer when the sale is off? Interesting that a number sticks so hard, not just the relative scale.

Re:I'm not one to normally complain about articles

[Red Flayer]

Hawking, you mean.

No, I meant hocking. As in, "hocking a loogie". Or as in "hamhocks", e.g. the lower shanks of pig's legs that have too much gristle for regular eating, but are good for soup base, or for adding flavor to boiled greens, just like a slashvertisement would do.

What do paraplegic astrophysicists have to do with poor article summaries and book promotion, anyway?

Re:I'm not one to normally complain about articles

[cayenne8]

A book on 'irrational thinking'....aka "Chicks Think the Darndest Things".

Watch Dan Ariely on TED

[blue_teeth]

For better understanding on Dan Ariely's point, see this video http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

Arbitrary my nose

[hrimhari]

Some clarifications:

- The SSN is not itself important to the experiment. They could have asked for their driver's license and have the same correlation.
- About 40% of the people would base their decisions on a previous decision that was not taken by themselves (starting price in this case), meaning that the coherence would apply to the situation rather than their own decisions.

So what we have here is a confirmation that a significant number of people can be pushed around if they didn't have a previous opinion on the matter. Not exactly novel and I fail to see the arbitrariness.

Looking for patterns

[Nexus7]

Hey, I can be a quack evolutionary biologist too! The mind is constantly trying to cast objects and phenomena into patterns, so that it can identify similar patterns of events that happen in the future. That way, it'll have some idea of how a certain decision turned out in a situation patterned a certain way. So naturally, it doesn't just describe or identify patterns, it also constructs them. So by trying to construct the coherences described in the TFA, it is trying to construct a world in which it has an advantage, because it has a tool (pattern matching) that works quite well in it.

TV advertisers know this.

[Bob-taro]

I'm pretty sure advertisers already know this: "How much would you pay for all this? $100? Guess again! If you call within 10 minutes we'll sell it to you for ONLY $19.99!"

Uhhhh, no...

[MikeRT]

No, if your logic is internally consistent, it will form a valid base of logic-space and will only lead to correct results.

You still don't get it, just like most people who turn reason into a fetish. A 100% perfect logical system is still dependent on the data that it receives. One of those inputs is raw emotion. Another is instinct. You cannot perfectly control them, and are lucky to just control them most of the time.

Re:Uhhhh, no...

[Carewolf]

I don't try to control my emotions or instincts, but that doesn't lead me to think they are related to logic. You questioned logic, but bring up emotions.

Sure doing the right thing when it feels wrong is hard, meaning they are both factors of decision making. Logic and emotions are still completely unrelated however. The existance of emotions does not invalidate the soundness of logic. There is not even a reason to think that using emotional data would be wrong. Emotions are perfectly correct data about how you feel. How you feel might not be based on logic, but neither is the weather or the lotto number. Yes biased data might lead you to "imperfect decisions", but what on earth are you trying to optimize? You are a human being not a robot. Being wrong is okay.

Well-known phenomenon

[andrewagill]

This is a well-known phenomenon. I first encountered it in Phil Zimbardo's Discovering Psychology series (Skip to about 9:30)

Re:Yeehaw

[dissy]

So this science basically involves saying things everyone knows about using big words?

No, science involves proving things people might have thought is true (yet had no proof is true, so can't honestly even claim IS true, as being correct would be only an accident) using normal sized words that you just happen to be on the end of the bell curve which finds them not small enough to understand (and consequently complain about.)

Re:I'm not one to normally complain about articles

[phlamingo]

To hawk is to peddle or sell, or to clear mucus from the throat.

To hock is to pawn.

Whichever meaning you intended, you got the wrong word.

And, from the context, you clearly meant peddling.

Re:Reasing TheDot!

[TaoPhoenix]

Yes.

It increases Dopamine spikes in your brain. Doing Productive Things is boring, so they don't. It's the same brain center as other addictions.

Re:Extremely significant?

[Life2Short]

The correlation coefficient or r value alone does not tell one whether the relationship is statistically significant or not. It is the correlation coefficient in light of the sample size that determines this. So, for example, if we set Type I error at .05, a correlation coefficient (Pearson r) of .33 would be significant if the sample size was 37, but it would not be with a sample size of 30. On the other hand, with sample size of 100, even correlations of .195 are considered statistically significant.

A Couple Small BS's

[DynaSoar]

"something he calls "arbitrary coherence."

And that other call things like behavioral persistance, behavioral momentum, priming, avoidance of cognitive dissonance, etc. He can call it whatever he wants, but that's not going to make the concept his.

"Correlations ranged from 0.33 to 0.52. Those are extremely significant."

Those are correlations, the magnitude and direction of co-variance of two measures. These are positive so they vary the same directions. Correlations, are often done using Pearson's technique and are then given the variable little r. A handy but of work with r is the ability to tell at a glance just how much of the observed variance can be explained by the scores. To do so, simply square them. So the amount of variance explained in these tests are 0.11 to 0.27 (11% to 27%). That means from 73% to 89% of the observed variance is unexplained. In practical terms, that's poor. I know in psychology we tend to accept such low r's as meaningful, but we're about the only ones.

As to "significance": there is no such thing as "highly" (or any other modifier) significant. The significance score, using the variable little p, is what it is, whether you have a program tell you it's equal to or less than a number calculated from the data, or you calculate it and find it to be less than some arbitrary cut off value. If p 0.001 or if p = 0.9, that is the significance level. You can't use the modifiers because significance depends on things like the number of subjects and/or samples, score variance, multiple comparisons between scores, etc. The significance changes. Even with the same data set, if you calculate a second result, you're doing a second comparison which requires a correction factor and that changes p. What significance means in one data set (how many times Mary punches the Bobo doll after watching Homer choke Bart) has nothing to do with another (how many meters depth on average the Earth's surface would be sterilized by all US vs. all Russian thermonuclear weapons), so some dangling, arbitrary "much much MUCH so" means even less, being of zero import but incorrectly suggesting there is.

So those (.33 to .52) are the r values, In calculating them p was also. It should have been reported. I have no idea of the author ever did or not because the references here consist of two blog posts about the guy's work and one about a book on this subject, and zero that I see on peer reviewed journal articles. Now, I'll be the first to tell you that last bit doesn't count for near what people think, but at least they see to it the formulae are followed, one being proper (as in APA format) quoting of statistics. I might have looked up an article to see if the author gets it right, but I'm not about to read a book by someone who either ignores or is ignorant of the fact that the concept he's examining has already been, in much greater depth and clarity than what's given here.

Re:A Couple Small BS's

[ceoyoyo]

There is a difference between something that is "highly" significant and something that is "barely" significant or "almost" significant.

The p-value is a measure of the probability that the result could be obtained by chance. Taking the conventional threshold (p=0.05) for significance, you might well say that a result where p=0.05 is "barely" significant, p=0.06 is "almost" significant and p=0.000000001 is "highly" significant. Those adjectives do have meaning, albeit a fuzzy one that should never be substituted for the actual p-value.

In the case of multiple comparisons, the correct p-value is one you get post-correction and you can perfectly reasonably apply the same almost-barely-highly scale to it. Also note that correcting for multiple comparisons is not always required but depends on how you set up your experiment, which comparisons you decided to do in advance, what conclusions you decided (in advance) you would draw based on different results and exactly what kind of comparisons you're doing.

Re:A Couple Small BS's

[kklein]

Oops, you beat me to it. Now I feel silly for my much lighter post further down. Ditto on everything you said. "High significant" is one of my all-time favorite pet peeves, and I make any author I'm editing strip those adverbs out. It either is or is not. Don't give me this flowery bullshit.

Nice post.

Re:A Couple Small BS's

[DynaSoar]

There is a difference between something that is "highly" significant and something that is "barely" significant or "almost" significant.

The p-value is a measure of the probability that the result could be obtained by chance. Taking the conventional threshold (p=0.05) for significance, you might well say that a result where p=0.05 is "barely" significant, p=0.06 is "almost" significant and p=0.000000001 is "highly" significant.

Your comments re: multiple comparison are right on and so not quoted. I'm re-taking issue with the significance.

There most certainly is NOT any "highly", "barely" etc. significance. In your examples, 0.06 and 0.000000001 ARE the significance. They are exactly (more accurately they are less than or equal to) that number. You are comparing them to 0.05, having been told that it is the acceptable significance level. That is wrong as a football bat. There is absolutely nothing in statistics that says 0.05 is a limit of any decision making. That decision should come from the design and the data. Despite this complete lack in the field of statistics, we have psychology colleagues running around spouting and respouting this as if that will make it so. Question them as to why. If they understand statistics they will explain stuff like methodology vs. tradition and admit I'm right. If they don't, they will not explain anything, but will rather reword and repeat what they said, and start to get defensive. The only thing they can assert is that they choose to consider 0.05 acceptable a priori. They can then say a p value obtained is either greater than or less their arbitrary cut off point.

One of the coolest things about getting a doctorate is being given the ability to tell your teachers they're wrong, though you'd better be able to prove it. I took issue with this 'significance" thing, with the procedure of doing EEG analysis by first comparing hemispheres, then major lobes, etc. in a very ritual of baseless computation; and finally with how many samples should be required to do evoked potential analysis.

As to the first, my source was the statistics professor who teaches all graduate psych stats for us. He explained it as I have, but better and with real examples and numbers. For the other two I was given references. I looked them up. They said nothing like what I was told. In fact they both said essentially that a researcher should know what they're doing and why, should explain clearly what they're doing and why. They (one considered to be the department's in house stats expert) had been quoting each other since studentship and never once questioned what they were doing much less researched it and read the very works they "knew" by heart.

If 0.05 were "acceptable", and of course mediated with correction factors if necessary, the entire body of fMRI research would fall to pieces. The analysis technique, SPM (statistical probability mapping) uses p values as the scores used to say whether a voxel shows "activiation" and how much. Due to tens of thousands of comparisons, the correction factors are enormous, the raw 'acceptable' p value for each having 6 to 20 digits. One must balance alpha and beta errors and adjustable correction factors in order to get a reasonable looking result. Despite being confronted with proof that significance is a matter of design and data, not something a priori, many psychology people set aside their beliefs to get an fMRI pub out, then pick them back up later.

Science can be used to tell what's happening, how it's happening and sometimes why it happens. But that's investigations into nature. The researcher should be able to prove they know what they're talking about by telling why they are doing something. Not to do so is to admit they don;t know why, only what and how, and have no way to know whether those techniques are right, or waving dead chickens.

Given how often my colleagues will insist that continuous spatiotemporal transloction of gallus based design correction factor applicators are necessary, and will simply repeat this when asked why this is so, it is little wonder that people that know why they do what they do look a little sideways at psychology. The "modifier" significance issue is one of the top sideways looks.

Re:A Couple Small BS's

[deodiaus2]

One interesting thing I learned in statistics is that often just the fact that certain things exhibit significant correlation, then there is a high probability they they are interrelated.
A case in point is how events are treated in the pharmaceutical industry. It is just enough that events are correlated that one makes a judgment about efficacy. One cannot possibly study all the chemical interactions that can and will occur. So, it just comes down to a calculated guess. In fact, there are lots of drugs which have both positive and negative effects. One approach is to administer the drug and to moderate the negative counter effects via other drugs or therapy. This is one reason why people say that the cure is often worse than the symptom. For example, 100 years ago, mercury was used to cure syphilis. Too bad I can't think of other examples, but this mode is used in many fields where one cannot control the experiment or the nature is too complicated to be quantified or modeled.

Re:A Couple Small BS's

[ceoyoyo]

I think the problem here is that we are defining "p-value" differently. A p-value is supposed to be the probability that your result is due to chance alone. With that definition, a p-value is meaningful: the threshold for "significance" is set at p=0.05 because, if the experiment was done correctly, there is a 95% chance that the result is correct. Yes, it's kind of arbitrary and some people prefer different thresholds, but the p-value itself is meaningful and different p-values CAN be compared. A 5% chance the result is erroneous IS different than a 0.0001% chance, and you would be justified in saying that the latter is a better result: that it is more highly significant.

However, lots of people use statistics and some of them are kind of sloppy. They produce "p-values" that do not indicate the correct probability that the results were obtained by chance. Let's use your example, fMRI, although any statistical imaging technique is prone to the same problems. When I started doing imaging, fMRI results were usually given as coloured maps where the colour scale indicated the z-score, (or other score depending on the particular distribution that was used as a model). Some hard core statisticians might argue with that usage as well, but it's not as blatantly misleading as using a "p-value" scale, which seems to be becoming more and more common, and should make any real statistician cry. Z-scores are a handy normalized scale. P-values are also a handy, normalized scale, but a bad one to use since they are supposed to indicate something specific - the probability that a result is due to chance.

In an fMRI experiment where you have unwisely decided to use a simple "p-value" scaled image to present your results, each of those "p-values" is correct, provided you had only looked at that one voxel and no other. Since you obviously didn't do that, but rather looked at lots of voxels, those "p-values" are only p-values in relation to the experiment you did NOT do. If you want to be kind they're "uncorrected p-values" or something. To become p-values for the experiment you DID do, those numbers have to be scaled.

There are two ways of correcting for multiple comparisons. You can correct your threshold of significance, or you can correct your p-value. If you do the former, you MUST state the new threshold, and say why it is what it is. If you do the latter, your p-values become what they're supposed to be - the probability that the result is due to chance.

For threshold correction you are absolutely correct - a "p-value" is a nearly arbitrarily scaled number that doesn't indicate anything at all without a reference in the form of either a provided corrected threshold for significance or knowledge of the experiment so you can calculate your own threshold for significance. Preferably the latter, because I may not think X% likelihood of error is acceptable whereas you do. Basically, in this case what is reported is a p-value scale that has been transformed somehow. Sometimes non-linearly. If I disagree with your stated threshold I have to go and calculate my own, For every experiment I look at. It's very difficult to compare the results of different experiments, and the results come down to a simple, semi-arbitrary threshold - it's very difficult to get a bad-good-better understanding. I think this practice is bad in most situations.

For p-value correction, you rescale your uncorrected "p-values" so that they are what they are supposed to be: probabilities that the particular results, in the context of the experiment you performed are due to chance, and any significance threshold you or I decide to use is the same for all experiments. If you like 0.05 and I like 0.01, no problem - no recalculation or scaling is necessary. You can compare p-values meaningfully, you're free to set your own personal threshold for significance, and there is a well defined and consistent difference between, say, 0.1, 0.05 and 0.000000001. That's why you should ALWAYS correct your p-

Re:Extremely significant?

[radtea]

Now, whether or not .33 is a STRONG correlation is another matter. By most definitions, it is not, although .52 would be a moderate correlation.

Without a p-value these are just meaningless numbers, and it is extremely hard to generate a p-value from Pearson's r. Almost any measure of correlation is superior to it, but it continues to get used in the social sciences because "we've always done it that way."

Which sounds a lot like arbitrary coherence to me: the failure to challenge a statistic that has terrible underlying properties is a result of people "anchoring" on it, as they did on the arbitrary prices and wages described in TFA.

To give a concrete example, I once worked with a data-set where 0.98 was a terrible correlation. It all depends on the distribution of the underlying data. Without knowing that, and using it to compute a p-value, you can't say anything meaningful about the significance of a particular r-value.

Re:Extremely significant?

[WAG24601G]

r value alone does not tell one whether the relationship is statistically significant

You're right, and I should have made that point explicit. The Pearson r does not make any indication of significance. I was assuming that the reviewer was aware of the p-value and based his statement on that, but failed to report it. My purpose was to point out that converse, a low r value does not exclude significance either. There's another thread running to the same point.

Re:Yeehaw

[Troed]

"Don't believe everything you think" by Kida and "Kluge" by Marcus are further recommended reading on the topic.

Who'd a thunk

[pipingguy]

Irrational decisions? By college students? Wow, amazing.

Contradiction in terms

[Venik]

Arbitrary coherence is an oxymoron. It is either coherence or it's arbitrary. Decisions we make are never arbitrary, not even when we try to make a random choice. Ariely's experiment found an interesting correlation in the decisions made by the test subjects. However, the experiment was not designed to determine the reasons behind the decisions. Just because you don't understand the motivation behind someone's decisions, does not make these decisions arbitrary. And, obviously, they are not arbitrary since the experiment established a strong pattern to the subjects' actions. Ariely's findings are not exactly new either. Open just about any product catalog and you will notice the same pattern: common, "on-sale", moderately-priced items are tucked at the end of the page containing expensive products that often are not even in the same category. Clearly, we assign value by association in the absence of relevant facts. However, this does not make our decisions arbitrary. What results did Ariely expect his experiment to produce? True randomness from a human brain? I don't think so.

Re:Yeehaw

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, science is about trying to *disprove* things. Most scientific theories are impossible to "prove" completely; what scientists do is try to design experiments which are predicted by the theory to have a certain outcome, and which will probably have a different outcome if the theory is actually wrong. This is an effort to falsify the theory--to show that it is wrong.

The usefulness of scientific theories is not only that they can be used to predict outcomes, but also that we can use them to try and *explain* how the world works. But its generally impossible to *prove* that the theory is correct (and thus, that our explanations that are based on it are also correct). Instead, we build up confidence over time, by trying everything we can think of that might poke holes in the theory.

Example: what we call the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is actually a scientific theory. Many, many experiments have been done which have failed to falsify this theory, so we have a lot of confidence now that it is essentially correct. But still, there might be some subtle nuances to it that we haven't quite figured out yet, and some day, an experiment might reveal them (showing that the theory is in some way wrong, or at least incomplete). If that happens, a new theory will have to be formed to try and account for the differences, and then new experiments will be devised to try and disprove *that* theory.

Hiring...

[evilviper]

This isn't people being irrational, it's just a question of people assigning logic to random data...

If you are interviewed for a job, and you are asked the hypothetical question "Would you take the job for $50/hour", and then are actually offered the job at $20/hour, you'll be very suspicious that something sneaky is going on, and may believe you can get more money out of the negotiation, EVEN THOUGH you would probably have been happy with a $20/hour job up-front. On the flip side, if the first number is ridiculously low, and the second is more reasonable, you have every reason to assume you're luck to get as much as you were first offered.

Obviously, if you KNOW that data is random, you realize that's not the case. However, if you think there's a human behind the scenes, trying to gauge your reactions, it makes some sense.

OTOH, some of these tactics are already used to intentionally manipulate people. Ridiculous MSRP prices, leading to "99% OFF" sales, and similar tricks. Come to think of it, I may have to try using this to re-negotiate my salary...

Not globally irrational

[John Hasler]

While this may lead to suboptimal decisions in individual cases it is rational behavior for animals with finite intelligence and limited and unreliable information (i.e., us). This behavior has evolved because, in the general case, it works.

How to make better decisions - BBC show

[ardle]

Check this out - particularly part 2. In fact, check out part 2 first: it makes you wonder how much we lie to ourselves and post-rationalise. We need to do it.
We get a buzz out of making decisions: therefore there is always an emotional component in "rationality".
However, there is a danger of being lazy, letting others do the thinking and just experiencing the "rational" buzz second-hand.
People can tend to accept outlandish things when they are said in a "sensible" tone-of-voice...

Re:How to make better decisions - BBC show

[ardle]

Oops - where did the link go?
In fact, our decisions can be affected by the temperature of things that we touch! Really, check out that link if you have time!

Re:Yeehaw

[Dupple]

Exactly and a pretty good review of this was posted on Coding Horror a few weeks ago http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001301.html with links to how it's sometimes implemented in a less than ideal way

Re:

[catbertscousin]

I submit that religion illustrates perfectly our ability to make irrational decisions in the absence of evidence, and cling to obviously false explanations in spite of real facts subsequently brought to light.

So does Clippy.

Excellent similar book : Sway

[mattstorer]

FWIW, I'm currently reading "Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior" by Ori and Rom Brafman. It's a really excellent book, similar in topic, and well-researched, and enjoyable to read with interesting real-life anecdotes to exemplify the points they raise. It touches on many different influences that affect our decision making processes.

http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Behavior/dp/0385530609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256331144&sr=8-1

Re:Yeehaw

[BluBrick]

I think you misspelled "potatoe".

Complex determinism and local characteristics

[mrclevesque]

Subjects use "arbitrary" factors to influence their decisions and they also take into account everything else to varying degrees. The brain "decides" the best it can and that includes relying on things like white matter, memory, and all its input up to, and, including the experiment's demand characteristics.

Assuming arbitrary and erroneous factors are quantitatively qualitatively different; we use all our resources to decide and if some of these factors and the degree they influence us seems arbitrary it is only because the decision process is more complex than we understand.

Re:Yeehaw

[pugugly]

Ha - do it right - a theory is only *scientific* if if it makes predictions not already observed, making it falsifiable upon finding out those predictions failed. So by it's nature a scientific theory can never be proven 'completely' - that would imply it had no more predictions to make.

Sorry - got into an argument with a conservative the other night, been reading my Popper - {G}. It amazes me how many people will present articles that have no verifiable information in them as 'proof' that flu vaccine is dangerous, the health care plan is going to destroy our economy, et al.

Pug

Re:Extremely significant?

[Tacvek]

The social security numbers were just a way of having people choose completely arbitrary non-biased numbers as a base price to make a buy/don't buy decision against. Credit card numbers or phone numbers could have been used instead, or even assigning each person a completely random two digit number. The whole matter is that once they make a decision at some price, it appears that this is fairly likely to influence the price they would bid for it in an auction.

Since the initial price consideration is arbitrary and random, a shared previous cause (or influence) of both the initial decision price, and the bid price can be ruled out with high confidence. The bid price causing or influencing the initial price is similarly all but impossible. That leaves either the initial decision price causing or influencing the bid price, or the correlation found being a mere freak occurrence.

Re:Extremely significant?

[Tacvek]

Yes, distribution information is needed, or a measure that takes distribution into account is needed for the numbers to mean much.

Since we are working with a sample of the human population, if we were hopping to know the correlation in the population as a whole (which is probably more useful than the correlation in the particular sample), we would want a rho value range for some confidence interval, although admittedly getting a rho value for the particular sample in question is a necessary first step.

11% - 27% of the shared variance

[kklein]

Just want to point out that even though the correlation coefficients are definitely significant, that isn't effect size. Squaring the coefficients will give you a better idea of the size of the effect we're talking about here. In this case, the effect was found to account for about 11% to 27% of the shared variance. This is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but it also doesn't mean that you can really bet on it.

I'm not one of these "social science isn't science" trolltards. I just like to remind people to think in effect sizes to temper their enthusiasm. This is interesting stuff, no matter what, but having a couple quick 'n' dirty formulae for calculating effect size in your mental pocket will keep your reality check intact.

.33 to .52 isn't much!

[ami.one]

0.33 to 0.52 ? That doesn't seem too much of a co-relation to me.

Re:Extremely significant?

[RazorSharp]

But correlation is not causation, and if there is one thing sociological/psychological studies are consistently guilty of it's blending the two. They're grasping at straws, and one needs only common sense to realize this. If you're filling out a survey, do you treat it as a serous issue, which requires contemplation? Maybe. Is it possible that a larger percentage of those with higher last two SS numbers were wealthy than those with lower, thus willing to bid higher? Who knows. Studies like this are conducted all the time and they get only published when there's a "strong correlation." Please. This is far from conclusive and relies too heavily on conjecture (assuming correlation = causation). Your claim that "we can make inferences based on the experimental design" is highly questionable in this instance considering the small size of the group and only moderate correlation.

Here's a chess analogy. When I play white I never consider my first move, it's usually the same. When I play black my first move is predetermined by white's first move. I've played enough games of chess to know the immediate consequences of the opening moves. Similarly, you don't contemplate how to pump gas every time you pull up to the pump, you just do it. But when the chess game gets 5+ moves in you can't rely so heavily on prior knowledge because it becomes more unlikely that the board is exactly set up the same as it ever was before. On the flip side of this, you cannot contemplate every single piece and every single possible move b/c the human brain doesn't play chess the same way Big Blue does. But unlike Big Blue, the human can dismiss the rook which is boxed in by pawns, it can recall patterns and reapply them to the game at hand. But especially in late game situations you can rely less and less on prior knowledge. Like if the gas pump doesn't work like you'd expect it - you have to rethink what you know.

But the reliance on knowledge isn't a fallible weakness as this professor believes. We're able to assess a situation and determine whether depending on past knowledge is logical or not. "The fact that the students contemplated a decision at a completely arbitrary price, the last two digits of their social security number, very heavily influenced what they were willing to pay for the product. The students denied that the anchor influenced them, but the data shows something totally different." The fallacy is in the sentence. "Heavily influenced" when the truth was "moderate correlation." Furthermore, the data doesn't "show something totally different" it "SUGGESTS something different." Whenever the professor conducting the study uses hyperbolic and ILLOGICAL language and is trying to sell a book on the very subject, the results of the research become highly suspect. Grasping at straws.

Did he really expect to prove that the only beings capable of rational thought are irrational? Aristotle is turning over in his grave right now. From Amazon: "Duke University's behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores the hidden forces that shape our decisions" - a moderate correlation got turned into "hidden forces" - what a bunch of rubbish. A better example of an irrational decision is buying this guy's book. Statistics be dammed.