nerfhammer

New study on choice blindness in moral positions

13y

Change blindness is the phenomenon whereby people fail to notice changes in scenery and whatnot if they're not directed to pay attention to it. There are countless videos online demonstrating this effect (one of my favorites here, by Richard Wiseman).

One of the most audacious and famous experiments is known informally as "the door study": an experimenter asks a passerby for directions, but is interrupted by a pair of construction workers carrying an unhinged door, concealing another person whom replaces the experimenter as the door passes. Incredibly, the person giving directions rarely notices they are now talking to a completely different person. This effect was reproduced by Derren Brown on British TV (here's... (read 155 more words →)

152

101

Replying toNew study on choice blindness in moral positions

nerfhammer13y

The video shows the mechanics of how it works pretty well.

Replying tobinomial variance problem

binomial variance problem

What's the name of the principle that variance increases further from 50%?

Replying tobinomial variance problem

binomial variance problem

75% choose program A

binomial variance problem

A Poisson process paradox

14y

Found in an old Kahneman & Tversky paper:

There are two programs in a high school. Boys are a majority (65%) in program A, and a minority (45%) in program B. There is an equal number of classes in each of the two programs.

You enter a class at random, and observe that 55% of the students are boys. What is your best guess -- does the class belong to program A or to program B?

14y

From Steven Pinker's latest book:

Suppose you live in a place that has a constant chance of being struck by lightning at any time throughout the year. Suppose that the strikes are random: every day the chance of a strike is the same, and the rate works out to one strike a month. Your house is hit by lightning today, Monday. What is the most likely day for the next bolt to strike your house?

The answer is “tomorrow,” Tuesday. That probability, to be sure, is not very high; let’s approximate it at 0.03 (about once a month). Now think about the chance that the next strike will be the day after tomorrow, Wednesday.

... (read 314 more words →)

Replying toNew front page

New front page

I, for one, really like it.

Replying toNew cognitive bias articles on wikipedia (update)

Glad you like it. There are zillions more where that came from

Replying toNew cognitive bias articles on wikipedia (update)

What if I want to write, then sell it? Something that might be achievable could be like what Skeptic's Dictionary or You Are Not So Smart did, they started out as websites that slowly filled out and were ultimately published as books.

(Why isn't there a Singularity Institute Press?)

Replying toNew cognitive bias articles on wikipedia (update)

Vastly, vastly more likely.

Everyone once in awhile someone sends me a link to an article on wikipedia saying I would find it interesting... and as a matter of fact, I found it especially interesting: I wrote it!

Or, I added a quote to Daniel Kahneman's page that has since appeared in almost every bio of Kahneman that I've seen since. For example, David Brooks wrote a column on Kahneman a few months ago and used the same exact quote I added, so that's millions of people indirectly.

Boggles the mind, really.

Replying toNew cognitive bias articles on wikipedia (update)

Criticism is totally fair. I was getting frustrated with it, so I decided to get something done quickly that I could replace later. So, there are flaws.

It's supposed to stop cycling if you mouseover it.

Ambiguity in cognitive bias names; a refresher

14y

Also conjunction fallacy has been expanded.

(update) background

I started dozens of the cognitive bias articles that are on wikipedia. That was a long time ago. It seems people like these things, so I started adding them again.

I wanted to write a compendium of biases in book form. I didn't know how to get a book published, though.

Anyway, enjoy.

108

Announcing rationalist blog aggregator

14y

This came on the nyc list, I thought I would adapt it here.

Cognitive biases have names. That's what makes them memetic. It's easier to think about something that has a name. Though I think the benefits outweigh the costs, there is also the risk of a little Albert: a concept living on after the original research has been found to be much more ambiguous than first realized.

There are many errors that are possible with respect to named ideas, and despite being studied generally scientifically, cognitive biases are no exception. There is no equivalent to cognitive biases as the Académie Française is to French.

Let's describe some. Here they are:

different people in different fields will "discover"

... (read 693 more words →)

Seeking rationality-related blogs

14y

After input from many of you guys and the NYC group, I am announcing planetrationalist.com

There's a lot of different directions this sort of idea could go in, but I figured that this could be a good-enough first effort.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think.