The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I am starting to write a new article about cognitive biases. Not because I feel like I have so much original to say (most have been discovered by psychologists already), but because I feel like this is so central to all my other theories.

Okay. Here is an early draft of the article:

http://www.archania.org/the_never-ending_battle_against_our_cognitive_biases.html (http://www.archania.org/the_never-ending_battle_against_our_cognitive_biases.html)

I didn't find any bias for this, so I invented one myself and called it "The illusion of homogeneous perfection".

(https://image.ibb.co/doM8sv/homogeneous_perfection.png)

I made this script that simulated the average value of coin tosses all up to a 100 000, and you can see, it is quite a bit of difference between 100, 1 000, 10 000, and 100 000. It doesn't get really close to an average value of 0.5 every time, before around 100 000 tosses. So imagine how much better a study based upon 100 000 individuals is, compared to a study based upon 100 individuals. At 100 coin tosses, it looks like you can get an average value anywhere between 0.65 and 0.35, which is quite a lot of uncertainty.

(https://image.ibb.co/hNzWzk/law_of_large_numbers.jpg)

When I think about how harmful different drugs are, I often think about what condition people seem to be in that are using the drugs. Now I am thinking that maybe we can judge how harmful ideologies are according to what condition people that believe in the ideologies seem to be in. For example, many religions seem to limit how people develop their understanding. But even agnostic or atheistic ideologies can be intellectually limiting unless they focus a lot on overcoming cognitive biases. One of the most healthy types of ideologies a person can have, seems to be something like what Eliezer Yudkowsky has (the author of lesswrong.com (http://lesswrong.com)), since it focuses so much on overcoming cognitive biases.

EY is't exactly the author of LW. He was a founding member and wrote the original 'sequences' which form its core, but it's really basically a Reddit+Wiki for rationalists.

(https://image.ibb.co/gVGcN5/adherence.jpg)

(https://image.ibb.co/nF0fAQ/math_to_science.jpg)

Did you mean to say something in response?

Also, science can be and indeed usually is done without Bayes rule.

Bayesianism is a much more accurate description of ideal Science, than Karl Popper's falsificationism. Popper’s central idea that scientific theories should make bold falsifiable predictions, seems to be nicely captured by Bayes’ theorem, since it gives more weight to a hypothesis the more unexpected an occurrence is without the hypothesis. Bayesianism is also not a binary approach to Science, like Karl Popper's falsificationism.

(https://image.ibb.co/fqajn5/bayesianism_vs_falsificationism.jpg)

That most scientists don't even know about Bayes' theorem is scandalous. Scientists probably make many, many , stupid mistakes just because they don't understand Bayes' theorem.  I am not interested in what can be and usually is done by scientists. Most scientists aren't exactly flawless. I am interested in what gives the best description of ideal Science, and Bayes' theorem certainly gives a much better description than Karl Popper's falsificationism, or any other theory of Science.


http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/researchers/francois/RESEARCH/RESEARCH_NOTES/SCIENTIFIC_NOTES/Popper-as-an-exception-to-Bayes.html (http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/researchers/francois/RESEARCH/RESEARCH_NOTES/SCIENTIFIC_NOTES/Popper-as-an-exception-to-Bayes.html)


https://arbital.com/p/bayes_science_virtues/ (https://arbital.com/p/bayes_science_virtues/)

I have started writing on this article now, about how science branched off from mathematics with conditional probability and Bayes' theorem.

http://archania.org/how_science_branched_off_from_mathematics.html (http://archania.org/how_science_branched_off_from_mathematics.html)

I have added a section about the fallacy of rosy retrospection to my page about cognitive biases:

(https://image.ibb.co/iMP4mk/rosy_past2.jpg)

I think this cognitive bias heavily influenced the last presidential election in the United States. It probably also heavily influenced the decision in the United Kingdom to leave EU.

I think the more important problem in the last US election was more along the lines of 'don't trust people who don't criticize themselves'.

That seems to apply equally much to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, so I don't know how that would affect the election in favor of Donald Trump.

In general, we should of course have presidents that are more self-critical. Not a lot of politicians are self-critical however.

You don't hear her criticize herself out loud, no, but there are visible symptoms of the process going on. Like, say, not running her mouth all the time.

I agree. Anyhow. Trump's slogan: "Make America Great Again", seems to appeal directly to the fallacy of rosy retrospection.

Here is a quote from the book I am reading about intellectual curiosity and the scientific revolution, which shows how retarding this retro way of thinking can be.

(https://image.ibb.co/hM1S7Q/chinese_medicine_17thcentury.jpg)

I think that with the election of Trump as well as with Brexit the main issue was that there are a lot of dissatisfied unheard people in these countries, and they just got ignored by the anti-brexit and US democrat party, because 'if you vote for brexit/trump you're dumb, close minded and stupid'. By putting ourselves above them we created an easy win for a person that DOES speak to them.

I think youtuber vihart explained this better than I could.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td5xFxiEuQQ

Very good video. Seems like a very nice and intelligent woman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_Hart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_Hart)). Would love to have people like her working for me, with teaching mathematics and music to children in my educational facilities.

Anyhow. Her conclusion seems to be that support for Donald Trump correlates most strongly with old age. Then it is of course old people suffering from the fallacy of rosy retrospection. This cognitive bias should also increase as we get older, since we strengthen the cozy memories from the past more and more as we get older.

The best way to fight against the fallacy of rosy retrospection, is probably by keeping the mind occupied with learning new things all the time. Then we won't have a lot of time for retrospection, and we won't fall into the trap of romanticizing the past.

I must admit, that I have suffered quite a bit from this bias myself, for example by romanticizing the first time I played Star Control 2 as a child. 

And ever since the election they've been realizing that he didn't really speak for them either...

That's politics. Smoke and mirrors.
It is not about idealism or about improving the world or country that you live in, atleast not on those levels. It is about power and remaining in power.
Don't get me wrong, there are people who work through idealism and generally don't participate in malicious, shady acts to gain more power, but by the fact that they don't do 'whatever it takes' to gain power they never make it to the level that the US Presidency is at.
In the end I guess it comes down to choosing which puppetmaster controls our strings, with their strings being controlled by hidden puppet masters of their own.

That model doesn't seems optimized for seeming worldly and cynical rather than for working well. What sorts of malicious acts brought Obama or Carter to power?

Here is a business idea:

Make a TV-series about cognitive biases, where each episode investigates a specific bias.  Wikipedia lists more than 180 cognitive biases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)), so you should have enough material for a lot of episodes.

If this is done well, I am sure you could make a lot of money from it, and it would be educationally beneficial to humanity.

(https://i.imgur.com/3xFPi2M.jpg)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_effort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_effort)

I have also written a bit about a few more cognitive biases.

http://archania.org/the_never-ending_battle_against_our_cognitive_biases.html (http://archania.org/the_never-ending_battle_against_our_cognitive_biases.html)

In physics - current follows every path. Just, those with lower resistance take more current. At fixed source voltage, parallel paths do not impact each others' current (if the source is not a perfect voltage source, there will be effects).

Interesting. Seems like I am suffering a bit from this tendency to use simplistic explanations myself....

Is this better?

(https://i.imgur.com/6GKW1qK.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/dxqpsrN.jpg)

http://archania.org/the_never-ending_battle_against_our_cognitive_biases.html (http://archania.org/the_never-ending_battle_against_our_cognitive_biases.html)

If you're not going to base that on real events, I'd make it fully fictional.

It was originally intended just as a model, where I would use "Country A" instead of Israel, "Country B" instead of Palestine, and write "Hypothetical Conflict". But then I thought I could use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since it might be easier for people to relate to.

If I am going to make it factual, I wouldn't just need to base it on real events. I would also need to thoroughly analyze the Israeli and Palestinian history curricula.  That would be a lot of work.

Also, the graph might not look as symmetrical if I base it on real events. Then one of the sides could just say; "but hey!, look at the graph! they have way more transgressions against us, so we are right", which kinda will make them miss the point entirely.

So maybe it would be best to go back to write "Country A", "Country B", and "Hypothetical Conflict".

But what do you mean by fictional? The bias itself certainly isnt fictional.

I meant country A and B, only perhaps names instead of letters. Also, doesn't need to be countries. Montagues and Capulates seems like a decent pair.

Fixed it:

(https://i.imgur.com/jPTjrHD.jpg)

http://www.archania.org/common_biases_we_need_to_understand.html (http://www.archania.org/common_biases_we_need_to_understand.html)

I love this. Now the cognitive bias article starts like an attack on nationalism  ;)

Perfect for a progressive word democracy agenda.

I just finished reading this book:

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51GU9UXlbAL.jpg]https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51GU9UXlbAL.jpg)

https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592407366/ (https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592407366/)

I really liked it. It was super informative. The guy that wrote the book also has a website: https://youarenotsosmart.com/ (https://youarenotsosmart.com/)

I have now ordered this book:

(https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1317793965l/11468377.jpg)

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555/ (https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555/)

Apparently it is written by the guy that started the whole cognitive biases movement.

The problem is that you didn't even define what is cognitive bias?
The difference between the left and right is that the left is pro diversity of Demographics and the right is pro diversity of opinions.
The first choose to control people's thoughts.

Edit: Also not all cognitive biases are bad.
For instance sexual preferences IS cognitive bias.
There are people who say that straight guys who wouldn't give a chance to trans women in romantic aspect are bigots.

Cognitive biases are systematic errors, or predictive errors, in normal thinking for humans.

(https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BA-AX478_BOOKS__G_20111220115403.jpg)

The upper one looks shorter, but they are actually equally long. This is a systematic error in our perception.


This does not seem like an accurate description of what is different between the left and the right.


Sexual preferences, food preferences, music preferences, and so on, are not cognitive biases.

Do you have an example of cognitive bias that is not an optical illusion?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/The_Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_%28jm3%29.png/750px-The_Cognitive_Bias_Codex_-_180%2B_biases%2C_designed_by_John_Manoogian_III_%28jm3%29.png)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

Yes, I see those cognitive biases in arguments on the internet.
And to have people be able to "work around it", like recognizing when they do it themselves or other do it, they need to study Philosophy and be exposed to a diversity of... opinions.
I don't see how diversity of ethnicities got to do anything about it, unless you say there is something inherently different in people from different ethnicity that affect the diversity of opinions.
It's kind of like how activists complain that black children don't have black teacher to identify with.
Does that mean that white and black people are so different that a black child cannot identify with a white teacher?

Edit: I think that you are correct that people have "toxic prejudice".
An ideology is not toxic, you can think about an ideology you don't agree with without believing it.
So it's more an emotional prejudice than that some ideas are toxic.
I used to call it "hidden agenda".
For instance, you would see a lot of Feminist hate white men or hate the West.
So, they don't say it up straight "We hate you".
What they do is that on every subject matter they argue things(different things) that their end result is bad for white men.
This is hidden agenda.
For instance you could say that some Feminist pro for immigration from Syria, actually want it because they hate white men and want to replace them, but they would make excuses like it's good for the economy(proven to be false) or they are perscuted and poor(most of them are work immigrants and not even kids, 30 males).
So this is a hidden agenda that make them choose a different argument for every subject that hides their true intent.

It's like, you want an end result of B, but you don't want to tell why you want that. So instead you argue something else that will lead to the same end result without having to disclose your real reason.

This might, or it may not, be the case. I doubt that all feminists hate white men, and I doubt that all feminists want to have more immigrants from Syria. There are probably some feminists that want to have more immigrants from Syria, but not necessarily because they hate white men and want to replace them.


It is true that people often aren't completely aware of their own motivations. However, I don't necessarily think that you have insight into their true motivations either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion)

You can tell what is their true intention if you do intersection of several issues.
They have different arguments for different issues that don't seem to be consistent and make sense.
For instance Feminists might say they want to end violence against women, yet they support Shaira law or Muslims which treat women badly.
So from all their different argument you can extract their true intentions, kind of like how you would find the real wave form if you have enough samples.
This is not introspection, there is a fallacy for almost anything.
I could say you are using the fallacy fallacy. Which you view everything as a fallacy.

Edit: And sure, not all Feminists. I am talking about third wave Feminist, which also don't like the old generations of true Feminists.
The old Feminist will be gone soon, and then Feminism will be what it is now with young people.

A more recent example. Ben Affleck has become a sort of Feminist and some sort of pro women/pro equality guy. He has been vocal about it.\
Yet he had many incident throught his career of sexual harrasment, maybe even assault, and indecent exposure in front of women.
This is a guy who does becomes a white knight to cover on his own behavior.

Someone smart said that it's easy to say whatever you want but it's not easy to do.
So people could say all sort of things that sound noble, that doesn't mean they actually act like that.

I wonder what is your true intention for being so concerned about the real motives of feminist women.

What is your concern with "toxic ideologies". You are the one trying to prove you can tell other people's ideologoy and thoughts are wrong and toxic and yours are right and noble. You are the one encoyraging overeach and control.

Is that so.... Well, when it comes to cognitive biases, I have just as much of them as any other person. We all have cognitive biases. Even machine learning algorithms are prone to certain biases.

If cognitive bias is inherent to Human biology then you cannot do much about it. Your approach wouldnt work.

Cognitive biases are inherent in human biology, but the more you are aware of your cognitive biases, the more you can try to prevent yourself from falling into them.

I can for example never see these 2 lines as being equally long:

(https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BA-AX478_BOOKS__G_20111220115403.jpg)

But if I know that they are equally long, I can learn to be distrustful of my eyes when I see such lines.

Yes, but the lines case is a geometric problem, while arguing something non mathematical isn't as straight forward.
We don't really have tools to measure the toxicity of "ideologies" and even if we do, what if they would measure that open borders and things you are for are also toxic?

Edit: Also people have different taste. Like some people like different kind of foods, they might like also different kinds of ideas.
People are born different, almost no two people are identical(unless we are talking about identical twins and even then they have differences).

What makes you think I am for open borders?

The "one Democracy" thing.

Ok, but that doesn't necessarily imply that I want to have open borders:

(https://i.imgur.com/lLC60yw.jpg)

http://www.archania.org/criteria_for_a_healthy_democracy.html (http://www.archania.org/criteria_for_a_healthy_democracy.html)

I don't necessarily even think California should be forced to have open border to the other states in US, unless they want to. I generally think it is a bad idea to force immigration upon a population that doesn't want immigrants.

Ahh, this actually make some sense.
Though World government is the one most prone to corruption and tyranny of the majority.

Yea, basically I agree people SHOULD behave better. I am not sure it has hope though.
It's also a matter of game theory.

While some people are evil, some people are altruistic but most are opportunistic.
So the opportunistic would go with whatever benefits them, whether it's the right or bad thing to do.
I am not sure if this kind of behaviour is acquired or you are born with.
Some people would like to say children are like a blank slate, but it's not true.
Children are born with different personalities and abilities, this might prove "educating people" will never actually work.

For instance, there is now DNA diet. Which is fitting the diet according to your DNA. If your DNA can determine which diet is best for you, why can't your DNA determine other cognitive things?

So, I agree most people are opportunistic and not very kind. I am just not sure any amount of ideology or effort can easily solve this though.

Well, lets say that 70% of your personality is determined by your genes, while only 30% of your personality is determined by your upbringing. Still. those 30% can mean a lot. Here are some estimates of genetic influences in different personality traits:


https://www.scienceofpeople.com/much-personality-genetic/ (https://www.scienceofpeople.com/much-personality-genetic/)

A few hundred years ago most people were illiterate. Today, most people are literate. In some countries children speak 2-3 languages when they are 4 years old. In other countries, people speak only their mother tongue when they are 4 years old.  A baby is not a blank slate, but a baby can develop very differently depending on what it is exposed to during childhood.

It's more like... babies who don't have proper conditions don't fulfill their potential, but they are born with this potential.
But I think a 2 years old infant already have a very defined unique personality.
Think that the child brains starts to develop before it's even born.
But yea, if a child is being abused in his first 2 years of life, he will develop very poorly.

There is a regression in literacy and intelligence in the last 200 years though.
The reason is that natural selection based on looks might converge to a lower(yet still higher than without it) IQ.
200 years ago your chances of survival and bringing children were very dependent on your intelligence.
Now you don't really need to be very intelligent to survive and have children. It's more random or based on physical attraction.

Again, you need to think about it as a game theory.
In a game theory, certain conditions lead to certain results.
Does the world we live today makes the "kind people" "win"?
If the conditions are good, few kind people can turn into the majority.
If the conditions are bad, even a society with mostly kind people will regress into a less kind society.

You need the right conditions.
There isn't a very big reward for being intelligent or kind nowadays.
If a kind person is surrounded with a lot of nasty people, he might turn himself into a nasty person as well.

So that starting point is that most people are selfish, nasty and opportunist.
How can you make the kind people manifest?

(https://screenshots.firefoxusercontent.com/images/100dd0fc-3671-48b6-8001-296953dc11a0.png)

https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/ (https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/)

There is a regression in the West though, but 3rd world countries do have more literate people.

Can you please provide evidence for your assertions. I seriously doubt that there is regression in western Europe/USA, but if there is, it would be great if you provided me with evidence.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-05-25/western-iqs-drop-14-points-last-century-study-says

I saw the counter argument is the Flynn effect, but that includes the entire world. The IQ in the entire world might be rising, but it's getting lower in the West.

That is about IQ, not literacy, but I think this is highly controversial. Here is from a review article written 3 years after the one you gave me:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616300198 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616300198)



Also, IQ is determined to a large degree by genetics (around 75%), while many other personality traits are determined to a larger degree by culture and upbringing. I don't necessarily think people will get a much higher IQ with a better educational system, but they might get more informed and mentally healthy.

I think they are manifested by the women choosing to be with 'bad guys' rather than with 'kind guys'.
This will make them have babies which are less kind, resulting in a society which is genetically less kind.

I am not convinced that this tendency very large. I think more women are interested in choosing wealthy guys, although I think most women would be happy with a guy that does his share of housework, and has a stable work situation with a decent income. In general, I think it might be harder for a woman to find a decent guy, than for a guy to find a decent woman. Women are much more centered around the mean, while guys have a much higher standard deviation. This doesn't just seem to be related to IQ, but to behavior in general.

(https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-929b67e5b164c180d10d9ece5773f03f)

Like for example, some feminists argue that most business leaders are men, and use this to argue that our society is unfair. But there are also more men in prison....

When you look only upon one side of the spectrum, it is actually selecton bias.

I have added this bias to my page now. I guess this makes Sargon happy.

(https://i.imgur.com/elEcrcP.jpg)

http://www.archania.org/common_biases_we_need_to_understand.html (http://www.archania.org/common_biases_we_need_to_understand.html)

Thank you for putting that 'if' in there - it is not entirely clear that this is actually the case. It is plausible and has a non-overwhelming degree of evidentiary support. Also, there's not so much need for it to be IQ. There are several things it could be.

After reading about it in this brilliant book:

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41RtytNpsfL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555 (https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555)

I have added a small section about "the law of small numbers":


http://www.archania.org/biases/ (http://www.archania.org/biases/)

This makes me think... if there really is a higher variability in IQ for men than for women, could that be because women have 2 x-chromosomes, while men only have 1? The x-chromosome has about 155 million base pairs, while the y-chromosome only has about 59 million base pairs. So women have about 96 million base pairs more than men.

The human genome has about 2.6 billion base pairs.  96 million / 2.6 billion = 0.0369, or 4.7%. So women have about 4.7% more DNA than men. Shouldn't this also make them a bit more "average" according to the law of large/small numbers?

Women have 2 versions of all these genes, while men only have 1 version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Genes_on_human_chromosome_X (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Genes_on_human_chromosome_X)

So... it seems like women actually are somewhat superior..... or at least women have higher genetic diversity (would be somewhat equivalent to less inbreeding).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_intellectual_disability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_intellectual_disability)

I have now rewritten the section about selection bias in gender studies:

That is so speculative you had better have it marked clearly

Exactly what do you think is so speculative? Here are the x chromosomal possibilities for males and females. Nothing speculative about that.

(http://www.archania.org/biases/probability-distribution-for-x-chromosomal-genes-in-males-and-females.png)

Also, there are many genes on the X chromosome related to neurological development. Nothing speculative about that either... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_intellectual_disability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_intellectual_disability)

I have now added this diagram and a reference to an article about x-linked intellectual disabilities to my page about biases: http://www.archania.org/biases/ (http://www.archania.org/biases/)

I found this in another article:


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563255/

If 30% more males are retarded, then males should also be overrepresented among the most clever people, otherwise females should have a higher IQ than men.

This makes perfect sense if the semifunctional combinations on average aren't as good as just having one functional gene. And we know that several dysfunctional proteins aren't just neutral. In many cases they actually cause harm.

I am currently writing about regression to the mean:

(https://i.imgur.com/CMbjAp9.jpg)

http://www.archania.org/biases/ (http://www.archania.org/biases/)

Here is an article about something I read about in Kahneman's book:

Experts vs. Dart-Throwing Chimps

(https://sidoxia.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/chimp-darts1.jpg)

https://investingcaffeine.com/2012/07/08/experts-vs-dart-throwing-chimps/ (https://investingcaffeine.com/2012/07/08/experts-vs-dart-throwing-chimps/)

I just added this bias based upon research by Daniel Kahneman:


(http://www.archania.org/biases/overvalued_and_undervalued_probabilities.png)

http://www.archania.org/biases/ (http://www.archania.org/biases/)

Also, I found a course about Behavioral Finance at coursera (https://es.coursera.org/learn/duke-behavioral-finance (https://es.coursera.org/learn/duke-behavioral-finance)), which seems to be related to prospect theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory) which Daniel Kahneman got the nobel prize in economics (https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-facts.html) for.

The opposite problem on high probabilities is more common. People are much more overconfident on likely things than they are underconfident.

This isn't just my opinion. This is based upon tons of research by Daniel Kahneman and various other people. Anyhow, he wrote that people tend to either ignore the problem completely, or they tend to overvalue the problem if they affirm it at all. And there are lots of examples; like paying for expensive insurances, being scared of flying, or being scared of terrorists.

Here is a wikipedia article about the "Certainty effect": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certainty_effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certainty_effect)

You can also read more abot it here: https://sites.google.com/site/skepticalmedicine//poor-decisions-and-prospect-theory (https://sites.google.com/site/skepticalmedicine//poor-decisions-and-prospect-theory)

And here is the original publication by Kahneman and Tversky: https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/suz/dam/jcr:ffffffff-fad3-547b-ffff-ffffe54d58af/10.18_kahneman_tversky_81.pdf (https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/suz/dam/jcr:ffffffff-fad3-547b-ffff-ffffe54d58af/10.18_kahneman_tversky_81.pdf)

I think what you are refering to might be the pseudocertainty effect, which is to completely ignore the element of uncertainity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudocertainty_effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudocertainty_effect)

I kinda agree with you that this is highly prevalent, but people don't necessarily need to feel certain about probable things. They can also feel certain about rather unlikely scenarios, such as is given in many religions. I am definately going to write more about the pseudocertainty effect.

I also found this bias which is closley linked to this:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglect_of_probability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglect_of_probability)

I have added two more biases:

(https://i.imgur.com/S5MrioH.png)

https://www.archania.org/biases/#The_straw_man_fallacy (https://www.archania.org/biases/#The_straw_man_fallacy)

For example, Black Lives Matter was somehow taken to mean that white lives don't. wtf no.

That may be because the statistics for how many whites are killed by police in the USA was/is ignored by the movement's argumentation. More whites were/are killed by police. The counter argument to that was that proportionately, more blacks are killed by police than whites, but that counter argument is itself countered by considering the crime statistics showing blacks commit more crimes than whites proportionately and so naturally would end up in more violent encounters with police proportionately.

So Black Lives Matter can reasonably appear to only care about or disproportionately care about black lives (and this issue runs deeper than a misinterpretation of its name).

It's still a massive stretch.

Nice to see you again Deus Siddis. I remember arguing with you before I got banned from here many years ago.

I would rather join an organization called: "All lives matter", but I guess it is okay to make a group called "Black Lives matter", since that seems to be something worthy to focus upon right now. The problem with organizations like that, is that things can change in the future, and the only good thing to focus upon in this aspect forever seems to be that "All lives matter". And that might even include animal lives, for example in order to preserve biodiversity.

Anyhow. It is a fallacy to say that people announcing that they care about one thing, necessarily don't care about other things. The organziation is not called "Only black lives matter", as far as I know.

I agree that assuming the name by itself implied such a thing is a massive stretch.

But at a deeper layer than the name, if the very rationale for the movement depends on filtering the facts such that only black lives are considered and white lives are ignored, then I can understand how people would associate that bias with the name.


Hah, old times! Well your new subject matter is considerably more interesting and diverse than the many dissertations on multicellular diatoms. :D


I do not think the name was poorly chosen, either. "Black Lives Matter", "White Genocide", etc. succeed at grabbing attention and focusing it on the issue those who created the name feel is real and important. America is a big and noisy place, so maybe without at least some implied hyperbole an issue will never float to the surface of people's political awareness.

Juffo-Wup acknowledges the existence of un-Voidable Non
when we are faced with such, we join, absorb and wait for our opportunity
to learn the weakness that will allow us to Void the Non.