Cognitive sophistication does not attenuate the bias blind spot (2012)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Example: compared to most people, I am "better" positioned to understand what's going on in Ukraine - my dad and both inlaws are from there and speak the language. I grew up in former USSR and speak fluent Russian so I can also watch and read things closer to the source.
And yet, I don't claim to understand anything that's going on in Ukraine because ~none~ of the information I see can be considered unbiased. So I can chose to believe one set but not the other set of data or I can say "I am not equipped to understand this."
Meanwhile, tons of people who are objectively less equipped to suss out the situation, don't feel this hesitation to have an opinion. Intellectually, if you ask them 'does propaganda exist, and is it amped up in a war situation' they will say 'of course, every time' and then they'll go and believe what they read (be in in a Western or Russian source, doesn't matter.)
This is not a complaint, it's actually something quite empowering to understand.
I try to be as open and honest as possible about my biases, and constantly reexamine my current and past beliefs.
The only place I could get a different view was Yandex who rigged their search results to show a bunch of small anti-US bloggers since the Ruskies run Yandex. Also RT right near the top.
So I have to choose between a bunch of shills the US and it’s MSM puppets promoted, or a bunch of shills the Russians promoted plus some bloggers who would believe the US is responsible for cancer and heart disease.
None of these search engines promote sources which could be seen as relatively neutral like Al Jazeera or Chinese news or whatever. I never see people promote random substacks of independent media. Almost everything I read about this war is planted by government shills of one sort or another that are boosting search results and so on. I was around for the Iraq war and yeah that war made it incredibly obvious how THROUGHLY untrustworthy the mainstream media is regarding war reporting and their love of killing the innocent with lies. I’ve fallen for propaganda before because it’s impossible not to because there’s such a freaking torrent of it.
For all I know it could be an elaborate prank (unlikely as that seems).
The human sense of reality boils down to “this input seems real enough to accept as fact”, and internalising that idea really helped me to stop and listen to the people in my life.
The point of the comment that started this thread is: how would you know?
All you know is that in war, propaganda is ubiquitous, and that the way propaganda "feels" when it has worked is that 'oh, I know what's true."
Now given that you are likely far removed from the conflict and are fairly limited in sources of information about it - what are the odds that you stumbled on the truth, vs you had consumed/bought into propaganda? They'd feel the same way, which is more likely.
And I say that independently of what your actual views are.
I had to read this twice to check this is what had actually been written..
I don't know how many, if any, of the charges that have been levied against Ukraine are true, but given the history of the US, we should know better than to assume that we are on the right side, or that we are being told the whole truth.
And we obviously aren't being told the real reason for the war. If torturing people, invading another country, and firing missiles at civilians were sufficient reason to oppose another country, we wouldn't support the Saudis.
In terms of valid reasons to go to war, i dont think any of the reasons russia provided really make sense, even if you consider the other side extremely biased.
Just because both sides are very biased, does not mean you can't critically evaluate the arguments. Bias means you should be cautious not discard all reasoning.
> And we obviously aren't being told the real reason for the war. If torturing people, invading another country, and firing missiles at civilians were sufficient reason to oppose another country, we wouldn't support the Saudis.
Moral justification for wars always differ from geopolitical reasons. That is true for literally every war ever. In this case its pretty obvious that its a fight over what russia's sphere of influence should be along with various strategic resources in ukraine (oil, port access). Letting russia invade a country for essentially deciding to have closer ties to the west, is a terrible precedent for the west, because other countries will see that and be less likely to pursue ties. So its not really a surprise they got involved.
A violent revolution in which the democratically elected pro-Russian President was driven out, followed by "pro-Russian unrest"[1] and civil war between the new government of Ukraine and separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine who support the old government (and Russia)[2].
That war had been ongoing for eight years when the Russians justified the invasion of Ukraine by recognizing the separatists as independent states calling for Russian aid.[3]
And historically, the US has considered intervention in a civil war to be sufficient justification for invasion. It's hypocritical to argue that it's ok for us but not for Russia.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukr...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014%E2%80%9320...
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_concerning_the_events_...
The European Court of Human Rights ruled last month:
> Among other things, the Court found that areas in eastern Ukraine in separatist hands were, from 11 May 2014 and up to at least 26 January 2022, under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. It referred to the presence in eastern Ukraine of Russian military personnel from April 2014 and the large-scale deployment of Russian troops from August 2014 at the latest. It further found that the respondent State had a significant influence on the separatists’ military strategy; that it had provided weapons and other military equipment to separatists on a significant scale from the earliest days of the “DPR” and the “LPR” and over the following months and years; that it had carried out artillery attacks upon requests from the separatists; and that it had provided political and economic support to the separatists.
https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/pdf/?library=ECHR&...
That certainly doesn't mean western Ukraine is "under the jurisdiction of" the US, so I don't see how that claim is justified about Russia.
And your own source acknowledges that the violence began before the Russian presence:
> In early March 2014, pro-Russian protests began across eastern regions of Ukraine, including the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (“Donbass”). Some of the protestors formed armed groups and the violence rapidly escalated, with pro-Russian separatists seizing public buildings
Note that's in March, before "the presence in eastern Ukraine of Russian military personnel from April 2014 and the large-scale deployment of Russian troops from August 2014 at the latest"
The US has no comparable presence of military personnel in Ukraine, its armed forces have not taken control of any region of Ukraine. Furthermore, the aid that 50+ countries provide is in official support of the internationally recognized government and not of a mix of thugs and Russian intelligence operatives who have violently stormed a government building.
> And your own source acknowledges that the violence began before the Russian presence:
Yes, and Russia "had provided weapons and other military equipment to separatists on a significant scale from the earliest days of the “DPR” and the “LPR”".
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-allies-step-up-sanct...
What would the US do if tens of thousands of Americans asked for help after a coup in another country?
If you assign equal weight to NASA and flat earth websites you might as well conclude that apparently there is controversy among so-called "experts", so who knows, maybe the earth is round and maybe it isn't. You can think this way, but it's clearly bullshit. While NASA isn't magic and they have made mistakes and have lost spacecraft, their level of credibility isn't equal to flat-earthers.
The governments of the United States (and the European and Asian democracies) and Russia both have agendas and both push narratives they want you to believe. This is true. But if you think the democratic and totalitarian governments are equally trustworthy you're deluding yourself.
To entertain that example: I've been to the southern hemisphere and I've seen the toilet flush the other way. I've seen the curvature of the earth from an airplane.
Perhaps more importantly, there's consensus among many disconnected and conflicting parties (eg: Soviet and US space programs)
And even most importantly - I don't see the motive to lie. NASA's funding isn't contingent on the earth being spherical.
That's totally different than a hot war going on right now, where the belligerents disagree on everything from what led up to it to how many casualties there are on each side. That's probably the most difficult situation for you as an outsider to suss out - your own information is low and there's a big reward for making you see one narrative or the other.
That’s a myth, by the way.
I guess technically, the water flushes the same way but it looks backwards to you because you're looking at it upside down.
The totalitarian Saddam Hussein said he didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, which was true, and the democratic government of the United States said he did, which was false.
A million people died because people decided to trust a democracy more than they trusted a totalitarian government. Because they trusted the largest media outlets of that democracy who all helped sell the governments lies. Because that level of analysis simply isn't good enough.
If people at the time had only listened to uninvolved third parties, nobody would have died, as they were pointing out the flimsiness of the democracies case.
Just ask yourself: who benefits? (aka follow the money). For example, short term: where the increase in military spendings go?
On basic facts: you could compare economic military power of various countries (order of magnitude is enough), the number of countries bombed (order of magnitude is enough), the number of military bases (order of magnitude is enough), etc. Then make your own conclusions.
That is just how war works.
Bias, at least for me, means erroneous or misleading.
I think all people are biased and imperfect, but that doesn't mean that all communication is biased. Unbiased communication takes a lot more work, but isn't impossible.
1 a : an inclination of temperament or outlook
especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment : prejudice
b : an instance of such prejudice
This is important because, as another commenter in this thread said, we always have an imperative to act amid imperfect information.
edit: Obviously you can choose to not act, but inaction seems like the opposite of empowerment to me.
Language and data however are different. You can have unbiased communication and data.
The statement 2 + 2 = 4 in the base 10 number system is unbiased.
To say unbiased language does not exist is saying that truth does not exist.
The context we're talking about is how much we can understand about a war. I understand that Russia invaded Ukraine, and that nothing Ukraine's done even begins justifies a full on, bloody invasion.
I do think understanding biases important in determining how you act. Both in this crisis in future ones, and hopefully hopeful and avoiding future ones.
When it comes to the Ukrainian crisis, I think a major bias in the common understanding is neglecting the choices the US made that let us do the current state. That's not to say that it is the US's fault, but I think it is reasonable to ask how we got here and could it have been avoided with different choices. Should it have been avoided if it could have been?
So far, the war has been one of the best things to ever happen to US geopolitics since the Cold War ended
I don't know about "unduly" but I'd say that out of all situations, war is probably the one where we can except the most extreme bias.
War literally means "we are willing to kill and die to win this" - so obviously "lie and spin" is going to happen whenever possible.
I think you are overly equating the aggressor with the victim. The victim is more "we are willing to kill and die to avoid having <something> forced on us".
While there are degrees of uncertainty, we must not, in turn, ignore facts.
Given all of this, its probably best not to focus so much of ones thoughts and efforts on these things you will never fully understand, things that really don't make a difference in your day to day life, systemic things you can't even change even if they did, when there is just too much to focus on that's much more pressing in life where you can make some actionable changes, like the events that take place right in your neighborhood or in your very home. News is fine for entertainment, but people should see it as such, not the absolute source of truth (if there even is such a thing given all the latent variables for anything at all).
Of course, there's no money in convincing people to go work out, clean up their house, read some books to improve their skills, to tinker on some personal project. There is plenty of money in convincing people to put all of that aside, however, and be locked into the content you drip out thats coated in advertisement, so that's where the incentives lie. Not in self help or betterment, but in maximizing the return these organizations get from offering you as a product for their customers whose business exists to milk you of your wages.
* I'm defining act broadly here as any kind of policy choice. Sending humanitarian aid, or not sending it. Sending military aid or not sending it. Voicing our support, or not voicing our support. Encouraging surrender, or not encouraging surrender.
My only question is: how much propaganda came from states, vs. people taking an idea and running with it because it's a narrative they want to hear?
Some things are so huge, they become obvious if you just try to think & consider some numbers.
Things you have first hand experience with, I can agree you can decide is obvious.. anything where your main source of information is the news/internet? Not a chance
Contrary to this are the individual fallacies of overconfidence and the collective fallacy of the genius halo effect.
There is also a tendency to failure aversion by avoid domains outside of performant ones.
The safest assumption is: 1. Your areas outside of performant ones are lacking until proven otherwise with feedback. 2. Don't worry about not being an omnipotent polyglot, polymath. Seek excellence, just don't go crazy or drive everyone else nuts. Theory of mind and frame taking by considering putting yourself in others' proverbial shoes isn't necessarily something people are born with, it has to be taught and learned. Some people do have harder times because they have to intellectualize it if they are emotionally disconnected from others and/or themselves, or have a neurotype that doesn't lend itself to smooth observation of social and situational state of others.
I once had a job where I was part of the supporting technical crew for some very smart people with some truly impressive accomplishments. A colleague and I sometimes groused about the challenges of working with “universal domain specialists.”
Christ, I sound like a minister giving an unsolicited sermon at the holiday festival.
Hope and perseverance are the essential ingredients.
If you're bad with (people, men, women), then do the hard work to not be.
If you suck at math, ball up that judgment and set it outside.
If you have a dead-end job, starting a business is paperwork and office furniture. Find something (action or item) people will pay more for than it costs but give a little extra than they paid for. Be rational, honest, reasonable, and work as smartly and consistently as possible. It's not easy, but there is much potential power in one's own hands and mind. Now, I sound like Anthony Robins. :)
To play devil's advocate, though, I do think that something is lost if everyone stops themselves from asking questions on the grounds that everyone has good reasons for everything they do and therefore there's no point having thoughts about someone else's job. Even if you assume the first part, the second doesn't follow. Understanding other people's jobs helps you work better with them, and if you don't understand the purpose of something they're doing, that probably indicates an opportunity to understand them better. Second, looking at it from the other side, we all benefit from answering beginner questions. What's the difference between the innocence of a child and the innocence of somebody who has studied physics their whole life and never had to support a piece of software? When children, or physicists, ask questions that are hard for us to answer, we can learn something in the attempt.
The only difference between being posed "dumb" questions by a child and an adult from another field is if they think you're an idiot. (Honestly, that isn't even a difference. We just don't mind if children walk around thinking adults are all idiots most of the time. We expect differently from them after they grow up.)
Reading between the lines, I think some people regard the momentary joy of thinking you see something that someone else doesn't as a bit of corruption in the soul, a moral root cause. I don't think it's a bad thing, though. Imagine playing chess against someone much better than you and getting excited because you think you can take a piece and get a winning advantage. The odds are very high that you are wrong, or that you're going to take the piece and then lose anyway, but what are you going to do? You're going to take the piece, pose them the question! Or else there's no fun in playing the game. Some people would argue that the excitement that arises in your mind at that point is wrong, not just in the sense of not being supported by reason, but a morally wrong response, arrogant, disrespectful of the better player, a toxic feeling that we should strive to eliminate and certainly strive not to show to other people. But it isn't necessarily, and we don't have to take it that way.
Where it can change from innocent to annoying and even toxic, depending on how people handle it, is when the expert can't provide an answer that satisfies the innocent. At that point the innocent (or the expert) might get angry or condescending, or might simply badger the other person in a time-wasting way, insisting that the matter can't be dropped until agreement is reached. Or one or both of them might walk away thinking the other person is an idiot.
But that doesn't have to happen. They can let it go gracefully. The innocent can walk away thinking, "I don't understand their reason for doing that," the expert can walk away thinking, "I don't know how to explain it to someone with their background," and they both have food for further thought.
This is the worst part. Being fully aware that people are biased and that you are not a special exception to that isn't helpful. You're still just as likely to let bias influence your actions, and you'll probably try to justify yourself as having good reasons for your biased actions.
“A system cannot understand itself without help from outside the system, because prior experiences will bias objectivity, preventing critical analysis of the organization.” — Edward Deming
So, yes and no. That's why self awareness, perhaps via proper meditation, although I thought it was some hippy shit at first, is actually valuable.
I really don't think everybody is equally biased. Some people at least try to use reason and science to guide their beliefs, why other will systematically deny all evidences. Also people who are aware of biases are more likely to recognize their errors when called out with logical arguments.
Sure, but they also do so for specific reasons, like that considering evidence failed them in the past in some significant way. Possibly they just didn't do it right, but it's just incorrect to think people are the way they are for no logical reason.
(I think that’s what you meant?)
Maybe some people are better at avoiding bias than others, but from my experience people will be better in some areas while still prone to it in other areas.
Or is it just another exercise in futility where the actual exercise is just part of the thing that make me biased in the first place?
I’ll go first. I see a therapist every other week. I hope that gives me an outsiders point of view.
But I think I have identified a way to know where my biases are could be strong. When I get a really uneasy feeling when I start to think about making changes in a certain area. And I don’t know if it’s a rational fear or just a sunk cost fallacy.
What I find really scary is that I have hard time understanding if I am just fooling myself or being rational. Because it’s always my own mind coming up with explanations, so the actual process looks the same to me.
I read a book called “Quit” recently and it gave me a lot to think about regarding biases and quitting different endeavors. Can recommend.
I like the book "The Righteous Mind". It took me a month to read; it's emotionally difficult, not intellectually difficult. You can't blame people for their gender or skin tone; you also can't blame them for how they were raised - people pick up deeply held beliefs as children that are very hard to see or address.
> What I find really scary is that I have hard time understanding if I am just fooling myself or being rational. Because it’s always my own mind coming up with explanations, so the actual process looks the same to me.
The mind is a rationalizing system. It makes things you do feel rational. After I left organized religion, I fell in love with rational skepticism. Then I found that most public "skepticism" is just debunking, not gathering evidence for things you should believe in; and that most "rationality" is just post-hoc rationalization of existing beliefs.
I’ll have to check out the book you recommended. Speaking of righteousness, I have noticed in myself that it’s a very addictive feeling. I get off on it. I don’t think that’s a good thing though.
+1
I learned about this was when someone posted this article on HN some years ago:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200808051003/https://nautil.us...
The happier and more confident someone is the more biased they tend to be.
The less confident someone is the less biased they tend to be.
Because you use the word "scared" I'm thinking you're not a confident person and therefore you're highly highly unbiased.
As a human, to live a happy life, we are evolved to be more biased then not. It is the cruel irony in life that your quest to seek the unbiased truth leads to less happiness.
I'm too lazy to cite this but there is actual research showing this. People who lie to themselves tend to be happier and more successful and people who are more honest with themselves... Tend to suffer from depression.
If you don't believe a word I say, then great, you're doing well. And you're really smart! Leave me a snappy reply showing how you disagree then go on and live your life.
If you agree with this post, then I'm sorry.
And not just programmers themselves: more than once I have heard a manager say, Let’s ask a programmer, they are smart!
* Try to replace any judginess you feel, with curiosity
(Easier said than done - but a little humility is a great first step towards getting to that curious state of mind)
Curiosity places understanding something ahead of justifying something. It makes self-interrogation easier and less threatening to the ego. It makes engaging with those who hold differing beliefs more about understanding/exploring, and less like doing battle.
That's my theory anyways, but it could be my bias talking.
And I fail at taking my own advice, often. ;P
It does not at all prevent me from having bias, but it at least, with effort, on a case by case basis, lets me adopt someone else's bias.
After all, there is no unbiased person so what's the point?
Preventing people with genetic defects and recessive carriers of genetic defects from reproducing whether through execution or restriction does definitively eliminate the defect if such policies were implemented well.
The short period of suffering during the culling has the reward of completely eliminating the targeted genetic diseases.
I find that it is rare to find someone who is able to think rationally about the topic above. A lot of people have to rearrange the logic of potential solutions such that it fits within a moral framework. They cannot disentangle the logic and keep their analysis completely separate from their own ethics.
Executing someone with a genetic defects is logically speaking the most definitive way to stop that genetic defect from spreading. Restriction costs resources and has the potential for failure.
You see what I'm saying? Being completely unbiased is a form of psychopathy. But it does let you see truths others are unable to see. Eugenics targeted at actual known genetic defects in both sufferers and recessive carriers does logically lead to a better outcome then the moral path. If you just let natural selection play out the defect could just stick around causing suffering across many many generations of people.
But this is the extreme example. The extreme example triggers moral reactions which in turn becomes a mirror to your biases.
A more realistic example is: "do I eliminate the jobs of everyone whose livelihood depends on success in the oil industry to stave off the impending catastrophe of global warming?"
In the end, one would be justifying a decision based on a bias.
It's the apple and oranges argument people often use with programming languages. They think every programming language is just a tool in a tool box, good for one thing bad for another. They preclude the possibility that certain programming languages can be good for almost everything or that other ones can be complete crap for just about all applications. There is no logical reasoning that precludes either of the aforementioned languages to exist. It's illogical and it's biased to think everything is fair and balanced.
Logically speaking, executing the people with clearly defective traits is overall beneficial to society. There's no other way to reason around this. You can try but it'd be a biased endeavor as your specifically searching for reasoning to counter mine for the sake of creating the contradiction itself.
It's our biases that prevent is from acting this way.
It's easy to stray off topic here. My point is that we can never fully disconnect ourselves from our biases. The fact that it's so hard to think about eugenics from a neutral perspective without getting confused proves my point. Even you aren't addressing my original point right?
You got so caught up in the ethics of eugenics that you're trying to rationalize why eugenics is wrong... which isn't even the main point.
A truly unbiased person, who likely doesn't fully exist, would be able to say that eugenics is the most correct solution, but he would say that he wouldn't act out on it because he's an illogical creature with morals.
There's a disastrous fallacy in this argument: that you can define a total order on societies (or, if you prefer, the world in a particular state) and objectively claim "this one is better than that one". And even if you could define such an order, it would be based on moral considerations... And of course, you have not even the vaguest hope of objectively measuring this order either.
If I eliminate genetic defects from society, society will be better. If I cure cancer, society will be better. If I cure smallpox, society will be better. Or should I use philosophical pedantism to question the smallpox vaccine?
Again you're using very broad, extremely pedantic logic in attempt to keep your logical scaffold of the world consistent with morality. That is human bias 101. Why are you using this line of thought for small pox and not for eugenics.
It's obvious why. Becuase eugenics has a sacrifice of lesser cost then the cost of inaction. But our morality isn't evolved enough to deal with cost benefit analysis. We go with only zero cost solutions only because our moral instincts are simplistic.
But this is also not the main point. The main point is basically how hard it was for you to separate the analysis from the morality. You couldn't. You had to target eugenics specifically with overly pedantic logic in order to keep your logic consistent with your morals.
[If you really think eugenics is "the logical conclusion", and want one of several possible, reasoned arguments against it: consider what the actions required for eugenics do to the structure of society and its values]
>[If you really think eugenics is "the logical conclusion", and want one of several possible, reasoned arguments against it: consider what the actions required for eugenics do to the structure of society and its values]
We do it for the pets and the livestock we raise, no problems there. We have a healthy community of happy dog pets in the US created from eugenics, genocide, castration and neutering. However, Dogs are mostly unaware of the overarching horror of their existence so this is one way to make the "logic" work with human societies. Make them unaware.
Again not the point here. The point is bias. How can you think Eugenics is so wrong, but then be perfectly ok with it when it comes to dogs? Your mind casts blind spots and illusions throughout your decision making framework so you are unaware of how inconsistent and biased it is.
We have no choice but to follow it though. No amount of logic will make you curl in disgust at dog eugenics as it does with human eugenics.
But breeding a dachshund is eugenics. You are selecting for desired traits and not allowing undesirable dogs to breed.
Like, it technically works.
We don't do it because it also means violating people's privacy and autonomy. And that's just wrong. The mechanisms are inhumane.
We choose the former not because of logic, but because our moral instincts are evolved to be reactionary rather then analytical. We only feel it's wrong, but in actuality it is not consistent.
It's the same biases that cause us to view Thanos as the villain in Avengers. Without getting too pedantic, in a way, he's actually right.
There's also the issue of the definition of "suffering". Once you control for the traits people mostly agree are detrimental, where do we stop? Do we control for height? Intelligence? Decreased propensity for certain behaviors? Where's the line?
And no, Thanos was not right. Thanos was written by a fucking moron. It took Earth about 50 years to go from 4 billion people to 8 billion. So, in the most generous interpretation of his action, he gave the universe 50 more years. Next, it's kind of implied that it was all life, including animals. You know, livestock. And then you also have the matter of plant life. If that was or was not affected. Regardless, cutting out half of all life also cuts roughly half of your resources as well. It also ignores that at 4 billion people, we were doing a fucking bang up job of thrashing the environment still. And it ignores the fact that there's just a better answer, make more stuff. Or change reality so that far fewer resources are consumed through certain actions. Make energy free. Make it so people don't need to eat. Everything is on the fucking table. The Infinity Stones are essentially limitless. His justification in the films just do not hold up. Both in reasoning and execution. At least in the comic he was doing it to get laid. As base as that is, it's a reason with no issues.
You aren't trying to put together a conclusion from facts. You're trying to put together the facts to fit your conclusion. Don't you find it convenient that everything tends to have a clear moral solution?
In the universe described by the movie, Thanos is right, the heros fought him Despite them knowing he's right. The pedantic details of Thanos being right in reality is not what I'm referring to here, I'm referring to Hollywood Movie logic and how both the audience and the characters went along with it.
>There's also the issue of the definition of "suffering". Once you control for the traits people mostly agree are detrimental, where do we stop? Do we control for height? Intelligence? Decreased propensity for certain behaviors? Where's the line?'
That is off topic. The point is eugenics for diseases with clear detriment to humanity. It's like I asked you "Should I eat a hot dog." and you're like "What about a pizza, what about 2 hot dogs? What about scarfing down your throat all the food in the entire restaurant? Where is the line??"
> That is off topic. The point is eugenics for diseases with clear detriment to humanity.
You want to say I'm twisting logic to fit my definition of morality but then drop this. You're redefining eugenics to imbue it with a meaning it does not have. The words "clear detriment" are themselves very weaselly. What is a "clear detriment"? Is Down Syndrome a clear detriment? How so? Society can support people with Down Syndrome. They can have a decent quality of life. Are they suffering?
Where the line of "clear detriment" is very relevant. Because you may think it stops at getting rid of sickle cell anemia. But someone else may want to get rid of Down Syndrome. And someone else may feel that being under 5'0" is a clear detriment. Some proponents of eugenics thought being Jewish or black were a "clear detriment". So before you go any further, you're going to have to really lock down what you mean by "clear detriment".
And you may say "Obviously not X or Y". But that's just assuming the people making the breeding choices think like you. I don't like making that assumption.
It's pedantic because it's not the point. The in-universe logic was that the heros didn't even consider Thanos's argument. It was automatically wrong and the audiences go along with it.
>The words "clear detriment" are themselves very weaselly. What is a "clear detriment"? Is Down Syndrome a clear detriment? How so? Society can support people with Down Syndrome. They can have a decent quality of life. Are they suffering?
No but support services to aid them are. Down syndrome would be a candidate for elimination if you truly were unbiased. Completely curing down syndrome from society as we know it has implications for all of society and generations that is by far more beneficial then the sacrifice that would otherwise be used to get there. This is the unbiased conclusion. And yes, what I am saying here is that the logical conclusion involves slaughter.
But of course I wouldn't do this. I'm incapable of this because it's too morally abhorrent. But I am unbiased. Meaning I am aware of the logical conclusion. Other people who are biased cannot separate the logic from the morality. They have to twist the logic to make sense with the morality. Which is what you're doing here.
>Some proponents of eugenics thought being Jewish or black were a "clear detriment". So before you go any further, you're going to have to really lock down what you mean by "clear detriment".
They were wrong. But according to the best of their knowledge at the time they acted logically. Which is my point here.
You're coming to conclusions based off of emotions and biases such as disgust. You're incapable of talking logically about eugenics without bias, you have to cast it off as a sort of horror; which it is, but then again the topic here is bias and you are unable to separate out the bias.
Why? Why is that the "unbiased" conclusion. You keep claiming this, but don't justify it. Also, you don't have to kill a single person. You do know that, right. You can just let people with Down Syndrome finish living out their lives. The point would be to not have any more kids with Down Syndrome be born. Which would mean not letting people with Down Syndrome procreate, probably through forced sterilization. And also aborting fetuses that test positive for Down Syndrome. Obviously, you'll miss some. Because that's life. But you don't have to kill anyone. I don't know why you have such a murder boner. But eugenics doesn't have to involve the active slaughter of a single person.
The fact that you think it does shows that you really aren't thinking about the problems or solutions.
And you'd note, I actually agreed that eugenics works. It will breed out whatever trait you want bred out. And that the reason we don't do it is because it involves ripping people's autonomy from them. And that is wrong. We should not do to others what we wouldn't allow be done to ourselves. And there's the knock on effect that we cannot agree on the clear detriments.
> They were wrong.
Why? Why is having Down Syndrome a "clear detriment" but not being black? Would you rather be black or white? Why? You could make a pretty good case that society, as a whole, would be better off if we all were one uniform skin color. So that it would be to the benefit of society if we were to breed out certain levels of melanin.
> But according to the best of their knowledge at the time they acted logically.
Racism is hardly logical. It has no basis in logic. It requires the mental gymnastics you so readily accuse others of. This is not a position of disgust, this is a position of rationality. Melanin levels shouldn't determine how you are treated by others. And the solution isn't to breed out melanin, the solution is to remove the power of the people making it harder for those with increased levels of melanin.
The resources needed to support such a person have a negative effect on the parents and society in general. That is why it is unbiased.
You can let them live out their lives sure this is one way to do it. But not as effective as termination right? Monitoring people for their entire lives and controlling their behavior costs a lot of resources and is no guarantee. Slaughtering people who have down syndrome and the people who are recessive carriers guarantees categorically the defect is eliminated.
>And you'd note, I actually agreed that eugenics works. It will breed out whatever trait you want bred out. And that the reason we don't do it is because it involves ripping people's autonomy from them. And that is wrong. We should not do to others what we wouldn't allow be done to ourselves. And there's the knock on effect that we cannot agree on the clear detriments.
Yes agreed. It's "morally wrong" but your sense of morals do not align with the most logical action that benefits society and lives in aggregate.
>Why? Why is having Down Syndrome a "clear detriment" but not being black? Would you rather be black or white? Why? You could make a pretty good case that society, as a whole, would be better off if we all were one uniform skin color. So that it would be to the benefit of society if we were to breed out certain levels of melanin.
The detriment of down syndrome is clear. Resources used to support these people are expensive and they provide no benefit to society.
Your solution for a uniform color logically works. It can work from both directions actually. Slaughter all people with pale skin or slaughter all people with darker skin then everyone will have the same color skin. Logic. Both solutions will obviously have side effects that run deeper than just solving the skin color problem.
>Racism is hardly logical. It has no basis in logic. It requires the mental gymnastics you so readily accuse others of. This is not a position of disgust, this is a position of rationality. Melanin levels shouldn't determine how you are treated by others. And the solution isn't to breed out melanin, the solution is to remove the power of the people making it harder for those with increased levels of melanin.
Racism is actually behavior that is seen world wide across disparate cultures and civilizations meaning that it likely biological in origin. A biological origin indicates that it is a trait created through natural selection indicating that an aspect of racism aided human survival. We don't fully know the implications of that behavior in the modern world but historically there is some hidden logic behind that behavior that allowed the trait to be genetically universal. The complexities here make this specific topic too complex to fully analyze from a purely logical perspective, we simply don't have enough information.
We do know that skin color correlates with certain certain genetic traits. For example black people also tend to have frizzy hair. This does not preclude behavior either. Eliminating people solely based off of the color of their skin inevitably will have other effects because of these correlations.
In-universe, I understand (from the youtube videos 'Comics Explained :) ) that Thanos is in love with Mistress Death, so naturally he favours a solution that kills a lot of organisms.
Out-of-universe the writers needed a villain. So they had Thanos do something evil. As the other poster pointed out, it was also a fairly dumb solution, given exponential growth.
Either way, he has a glove with the literal power of the universe and he chooses a comically evil way to fix it. Obviously as it is a comic book.
The important point is that thinking the Thanos 'solution' is somehow rational is based on an arbitrary choice of what is important - life, freedom, nature, order, etc.
>Out-of-universe the writers needed a villain. So they had Thanos do something evil. As the other poster pointed out, it was also a fairly dumb solution, given exponential growth.
Audiences are more sophisticated nowadays. A generic evil villain wouldn't fly. They made Thanos a villain that was acting, from his perspective, in the universes best interest. But of course audiences nowadays are so sophisticated that even Thanos is still considered generic.
>The important point is that thinking the Thanos 'solution' is somehow rational is based on an arbitrary choice of what is important - life, freedom, nature, order, etc.
I don't think so. Thanos justified his actions with an explanation. The heroes didn't counter his argument. Why? Because the writers were playing off of our moral instincts. The heros don't need to justify shit because the audience automatically writes off genocide as wrong even if it means ultimately saving the universe from civilization eating itself. The writers relied on biases within the audience, which is my point.
The writers wouldn't be able to do this if the audience wasn't biased. A truly unbiased audience member would be like, "WELL wait a minute, thanos sort of has a point, however flawed, why isn't iron man giving a counter argument?"
The audience just accepts Thanos's explanation as evil without thinking and that's that.
As a side note:
It would've been really good if the next phase of the MCU after end game was humanity dealing with a resource constrained universe. Thanos ends up being right and the moral enigma and consequence of the avengers actions makes them question their place in the universe. Was Thanos the villain or the tragic hero?
Audiences are THAT sophisticated nowadays. The multiverse thing is clever but the movie arcs are still good guys vs. bad guys. We need more sophisticated plots that have audiences question classic tropes of good and evil.
The Dark knight was so good in this regard, but strangely no other movie after that was able to copy the way they had joker play with morality.
Also, the only counter argument Iron Man needs is "Why does Thanos get to decide?"
Not to mention, Thanos's response after everyone is snapped back is to remake the entire universe in his image. Like that was possible from the start and he just didn't do it.
We can also argue that Thanos is operating from a place of emotion, not reason. He's responding to the trauma of his own planet. And since his planet fucked it up so hard, he doesn't believe anyone could do any different. Not to mention, we don't even know if his plan would work in the long run. They didn't try it on Titan and it was only 5 years out in Endgame. There's an adjustment period when half of your population disappears.
Did you miss the part where the Joker was wrong in the movie? He expected the boats to blow up, but they didn't. Humans didn't descend to their basest instincts.
A "sophisticated audience" would see Thanos's plan for the bad writing it is. It requires the audience to question no further than the writers' assurances that it would work. With stuff like the ARC reactor, sure, it's magic, handwave away. But population growth is something we do kind of know about. At best, Thanos's plan only delays the catastrophe he claims is coming.
You want a movie to "question classic tropes of good and evil", Black Panther was right there. Killmonger was right. What Wakanda was doing all those years was wrong.
Worst part of the movie IMO. The acting during this part seemed so fake. The fact that everyone including the prisoners just went with it didn't seem realistic at all. The ultimate choice should have been left ambiguous and darker here. Perhaps both sides ended up trying to blow each other up but batman stopped it somehow. They had to insert some hollywood idealism here I guess otherwise it woulda been too dark.
>You want a movie to "question classic tropes of good and evil", Black Panther was right there. Killmonger was right. What Wakanda was doing all those years was wrong.
Joker did it better imo. Much more darker and it questioned the classic mythology of batman. Killmonger didn't dig as deep and wakanda/black panther isn't as established so their's no controversial questioning of a classic mythology.
>Not to mention, Thanos's response after everyone is snapped back is to remake the entire universe in his image. Like that was possible from the start and he just didn't do it.
Yeah I wouldn't call it bad writing outright. But they needed the classic good and evil face off at the end to pull off that final climatic battle. They sacrificed consistency and perfect writing with a short cut here to lead into the climax. It's deliberate imo.
> You complain of others twisting logic, then justify Thanos with "the writers said so".
The writers exploited the human capacity to twist logic in their writing. A good movie isn't built upon logical consistency. It's built upon emotional impact. Emotions dull when exposed the the same thing over and over so writers need to constantly come up with creating new patterns for plot twists. But you can see in their writing they exploit human biases. That was the point here.
>We can also argue that Thanos is operating from a place of emotion, not reason. He's responding to the trauma of his own planet. And since his planet fucked it up so hard, he doesn't believe anyone could do any different. Not to mention, we don't even know if his plan would work in the long run. They didn't try it on Titan and it was only 5 years out in Endgame. There's an adjustment period when half of your population disappears.
The writers made him out to be doing (from his perspective) mostly logical choices and deliberately ignoring his emotions. His own death at the beginning of end game and the murder of his daughter are evidence of this.
But of course there is that change in heart at the ending; The shortcut the writers took for the final battle where he just became evil. Avengers isn't a literary masterpiece with internal and external consistency. It first and foremost must hit emotional high points that need to come at the expense of consistency.
Nice. On the other hand, we must remember that biases can be, and are, exploited: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
Putting oneself in the other’s place is the least one can do. But in politics, for example, all you will find is that there’s no right or wrong but rather opposing interests (of which there may be more then two). Then all you can do is start to appeal to the irrational - faith (religion), hope (expectations), love (e.g. patriotism), etc.
Edit: "Both Sides"-ing an issue can be dangerous. Many times, there is actual harm on one side, and mere discomfort on the other. You may not be describing "both sides"-ing; but this could be read that way.
I would say it as "identify the deeply held beliefs that got this person to their viewpoint"
Previous statement:
This can be dangerous, depending on how it is done. I would say it as "identify the deeply held beliefs that got this person to their viewpoint"
It just helps understand how deep it goes, and therefore how challenging it might be to persuade someone out of it. It doesn't change my own beliefs on the matter.
The best approach is probably somewhere in the middle. I can think of instances in people i know where they have deeply held beliefs that they don’t challenge that lead them to all sorts of conclusions. But I also know people who have deliberated on topics in depth to reach the conclusions they have. That is not to say that they are without bias, but their viewpoints are consequences of more than just deeply held beliefs.
I think what can be lost in these conversations is the differentiation of a cognitive capacity and the drives to use that capacity. What are the conditions that have lead to your drive for empathic perspective taking? What are these conditions and are these conditions scalable to the world at large?
You need a top for testing rationality. Here's a nearly definitional one: you're being rationale when your explanation convinces people other than just you.
They're fallacies because they're not acceptable in a rigorous proof, not because they're entirely without any place in thinking through a problem.
Even science comes down to peer review.
Would you care to also tell me your understanding of the word, so I can figure out whether I need to change my understanding or not?
Detectable | Undetectable
Fixable | Unfixable
Workaround | No-Workaround
Cost of workaround (Big O)
Individual | Society
Non-Meta | Meta (Bug is created by several other bugs recombining into a functional or dysfunctional cluster)
Some bugs you cant fix, cause society depends on it while also suffering with it. Humanity sized Behaviour DBs and Datamining is the real Psychology!
I do think we can look for evidence that we are at least limiting the impact of our biases. For example, if you don’t change political affiliations at least once or twice in your lifetime, that’s probably a sign you’re controlled by your biases and not really as free or rational as is optimal. What’s the old saying, if you aren’t a liberal in your youth you have no heart; if you aren’t conservative as you get older you have no brain. But I think moving in the opposite direction is also a good indicator of free thinking. A foolish consistency is the hob goblin of little minds. Dynamic thinking is the only real thinking. We should grow and evolve overtime.
1) Receive information.
2) Assume that I am being lied to, manipulated, shaded, data elided, whatever, sometimes by accident, sometimes by intent, but at least several levels removed from whomever delivers the information.
3) Seek out information that says the exact opposite.
4) Repeat Step 2.
5) Start looking for little tricks: what has been left out? If we are judging person X for act Y, are we not judging other parties for Y? Is the timing convenient for a distraction?
6) Resign myself to a state of uncertainty in a world of lies.
It's hard to believe that you can't train yourself into hypervigilance and extraordinary awareness. Practicing with intent is a very different animal from "cognitive sophistication" (however the paper defines it).
My personal observation (ie read this as anecdote, not data) is that skeptics frequently choose to select as their expert the lone dissenter in the field. My interpretation is not that the skeptics I know are truly skeptics, they're contrarians who don't trust institutional knowledge or consensus.
Basically, among credentialed experts on any given topic, you can find opinions going every which way. So bringing in an expert to bolster your point is meaningless, because they are brought in because of their preexisting opinions which as you note sometimes run against the rest of the field. Another technique is to bring in someone with contrary opinions and one with favorable opinions, and basically not give them much shot to speak or force them on the defensive for everything they say with both your expert and the moderator. Then you can say you soundly defeated that critical opinion of the topic.
Take the famed scientist Issac Newton for example, despite all his scientific knowledge and logical reasoning he wasted the second half of his life trying to turn other metals into gold, alchemy - based nothing more than biblical text.
Big brain does not prevent ideological blindness.
Of course we're far too bright and sophisticated to fall into such folly today. You won't fond modern peoples, for example, having passionate arguments about the meanings of text generated by mechanical / statistical processes.
Prior to the atomic model invented several hundred years later, given there was examples of metals turning into other metals (i.e. iron turning into steel, copper turning into brass)...
I don't think there was much of a reason to think that the transmutation of metals into Gold wouldn't be possible. And it in fact sort of turns out to be possible in certain circumstances. We can make gold from lead (although it requires a particle accelerator).
More branding than reality, since we accomplished their projects later — transmuting elements and detecting the aether.
Ironically, this seems to be a cognitive bias — we never update our first impression nor put together a story across terminology changes. Carlo Rovelli gives an interesting talk on how we’re too quick to dismiss ancient scholars.
It's like they're using poorly chosen basis vectors, and muddling some concepts we now understand to be distinct: They seem to have associated energy and/or thermodynamic heat with the element of fire; the gaseous phase with air and buoyancy, the liquid phase with water, the solid phase with earth and gravity.
It's very clear why the model stood for as long as it did despite some remarkably clever people looking into it. It actually fits the empirical evidence pretty well.
Arguably this was accomplished using the work of alchemists. Ontologies tend to progress through stages of differentiation of components("stamp collecting") followed by integrative models. Mendeleev doesn't find periodic patterns in elements without alchemists first inventorying elemental features.
He used dates and accounts of ancient myths for many of his data points.
Combing the bible over and over for clues, wasting much of his talent and decades on false leads.
Flawed research leading to dead ends despite his brilliance.
Which is the point of the post, intelligence does not make one immune to bias.
Newton took a lot of intellectual paths, from tinkering with prisms to thinking about the paths of the heavens. Only looking back can we say “oh, you wasted your time investigating x and y, but z was right on. Why didn’t you just bat 1000?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
'Esoteric interpretations of historical texts'
From this lens, alchemy becomes a form of spiritual meditation. You can argue that such things are meaningless endeavors. But this is itself a subjective take. What are meaningful endeavors really?
If I want to take a nihilistic frame, I'll strengthen your comment and say it's impossible to avoid meaningless endeavors.
Inevitably one must pick their bias and arrive at their narrative.
So the analysis of perception of that bias and bias blind spot strike me as interesting but rather useless.
This is a good argument for devolution, IMO. Today’s politics is too large-scale and winner-take-all to accurately represent all its constituents. For instance, a topic like immigration in the US has no solution that will appease everyone, because there are so many different viewpoints that conflict with each other. We should let smaller populations with a higher level of concurrence govern themselves accordingly.
Here’s a link to the full study.