#CognitiveBiases
I'm not posting this in agreement. Or not full agreement, anyway. It's been posted and shared on my feed in facebook. As a general principle: Absolutely. Your opinion about my experience is not as valid as my experience... usually.
The problem is that I'm a social scientist. That word "opinion" is carrying a lot of weight. If someone's ideas of what a non-lived experience is like are based on supposition, best guesses, and their own experience, then the graphic is valid: lived experience is much better.
However, if an "opinion" about my lived experience comes from the reported lived experiences from relatively representative thousand or so people, the opinion is probably more valid, for certain purposes/contexts.
"Validity" always has a context or target. No matter how much amazing research I have about a certain issue, my knowledge is never as good for an individual as that individual's lived experience. However, if "valid" means "generalizably true across lots of individuals," then one person's experience will never be as valid as a reasonable (lots of weight on that word) summation of many others' experiences. Another detail is whether one's interpretation of one's experiences (especially interpretation of causality) is necessarily more valid than interpretations by others who haven't lived the experience.
If you're feeling uncomfortable about this analysis, consider a parent whose child develops autism. The parent is fully convinced their kid's age 2 vaccinations were the cause. That parent has definitely had an experience, which included seeing their kid vaccinated, then seeing autism symptoms emerge. None of that means the parent's interpretation of that experience is accurate. No, the vaccines did not cause the autism, but try telling the parent that. They might tell you that they lived the experience so their interpretation is right.
And they're still wrong. Yes, the experiences they had are theirs and valid and valuable. That doesn't mean nobody else can have a more valid opinion about their experience--specifically, a more valid opinion about the causes of their child's autism.
This dynamic applies in many areas of our world: are soldiers' views of American foreign policy always more valid than non-soldiers" views? The soldiers lived the foreign policy experience, after all. Are a patient's views of their disease/diagnosis/disorder etc. always more valid than the views of medical professionals? The patient lives the experience, right?
In plenty of domains and applications one's lived experience should not be questioned by those who didn't live it. I'd say this should be the default in living our lives (hence my lack of concern about this meme even though I don't quite agree with it). However, the vague use of terms in messages like this might contribute to a belief, as Asimov said, that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge" (not Sagan; thanks, @courtcan) fueled by the insistence that one's interpretations of one's experiences are superior to all other interpretations.
The Mind as Semi-Solid Smoke
This post continues the series on Socratic Thinking, turning the space-and-place lens inward to examine the mind itself. Human minds can be thought of as an imperfect place with the ability to create their own insta-places to navigate ambiguity.
On the Trail (1889) by Winslow Homer. Original from The National Gallery of Art. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.Exploration in any real or conceptual space needs navigational markers with sufficient meaning. Humans are biologically predisposed to seek out and use navigational markers. This tendency is rooted in our neural architecture, emerges early in life, and is shared with other animals, reflecting its deep evolutionary origins 1,2 . Even the simplest of life performing chemotaxis uses the signal-field of food to navigate.
When you’re microscopic, the territory is the map; at human scale, we externalise those cues as landmarks—then mirror the process inside our heads. Just as cells follow chemical gradients, our thoughts follow self-made landmarks, yet these landmarks are vaporous.
From the outside our mind is a single place, it is our identity. Probe closer and our identity is nebulous and dissolves the way a city dissolves into smaller and smaller places the closer you look. We use our identity to create the first stable place in the world and then use other places to navigate life. However, these places come from unreliable sources, our internal and external environments. How do we know the places are even real, and do we have the knowledge to trust their reality? Well, we don’t. We can’t judge our mental landmarks false. Callard calls this normative self-blindness: the built-in refusal to saw off the branch we stand on.
Normative self-blindness is a trick to gloss over details and keep moving. Insta-places are conjured from our experience and are treated as solid no matter how poorly they are tied down by actual knowledge. We can accept that a place was loosely formed in the past, an error, or is not yet well defined in the future, is unknown. However, in the moment, the places exist and we use them to see.
Understanding and accepting that our minds work this way is a key tenet of Socratic Thinking. It makes adopting the posture of inquiry much easier. Socratic inquiry begins by admitting that everyone’s guiding landmarks may be made of semi-solid smoke.
1Chan, Edgar, Oliver Baumann, Mark A. Bellgrove, and Jason B. Mattingley. “From Objects to Landmarks: The Function of Visual Location Information in Spatial Navigation.” Frontiers in Psychology 3 (2012). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00304
2Freas, Cody A., and Ken Cheng. “The Basis of Navigation Across Species.” Annual Review of Psychology 73, no. 1 (January 4, 2022): 217–41. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020821-111311.
Depressive realism is the paradoxical finding that people experiencing active #depression are often more accurate in their judgments of the likelihood of success, good things happening, or the level of control they have over those things than people who are not depressed.
It's paradoxical because non-depressed people's illusions about control, predictability, and good things around the corner actually lead to more good things happening, on average, because those illusions are motivating. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy for many people (at least compared to people having a depressive episode) based on an inaccurate understanding of reality.
The USA seems to be investing heavily right now in widening the outcome divide between realistic pessimism and unrealistic optimism: The "grind culture" or "hustle lifestyle" shit blames anyone with motivational issues for their circumstances and praises anyone with good circumstances, no matter how much or little they had to do with those.
None of this is new. I just think we're dialing it up.
2/
A manipulation technique also known as "microtargeting": "a type of personalised communication that involves collecting information about people, and using that information to show them targeted political advertisements" [3].
[3] on #microtargeting:
- "it exploits personal data [...]
- conceals its true nature [...]
- allows [...] to make incompatible promises to different segments of the electorate". Potentially targeting #CognitiveBiases by opaque/foreign #misinformation & #disinformation
Hello Folks!
My name is Stefano, nearing the completion of my #PhD in #HealthScience, with a focus on #DigitalHealth, #CognitiveBiases, and #PublicHealth
I never thought I’d find myself pursuing a PhD, but hey, as the song goes: life has a funny way of sneaking up on you!
Passionate about #movies, #yoga, #swimming and #climbing.
If you’re working on similar topics, feel free to connect. I’d love to hear about your work, publications, and experiences in academia!
Webye 
#AntiCapitalist demonstration idea:
Visual representations of gross wealth inequality at county fairs all over the country. Jars of 1,000 marbles next to 1,000,000,000.
Set that right next to the Brain Games cognitive biases cake demo.
Zur strukturellen Wurzel von Verschwörungstheorien - Trump und die Primitivität heutiger "Politik"
10 YT Shorts about common cognitive biases: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnIoibm0mLcgEQoj3DeV4QfikFx3naAjp
Daniel Kahneman Wanted You to Realize How Wrong You Are
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/03/daniel-kahneman-death-psychology/677903/?utm_source=feed #biography #BehavioralEconomics #CognitiveBiases #judgment #heuristics
What I admired most about Danny #Kahneman was neither fame nor popular books, but *useful* #research.
Some of the most famous #cognitiveBiases were revealed by #Tversky & Kahneman's #DARPA-sponsored research. It's summarized in this unclassified 1977 technical report: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA056667
I admire scientists who do research useful enough for institutions of high-stakes decision-making to pay for it.
(he/him) #101essays #cognitivebiases - The choice-supportive bias is when you tend to view something more positively if you have actively chosen it, overlooking any shortcomings it may have.
#101essays #cognitivebiases Confirmation Bias: Our minds tend to favor information that aligns with our existing beliefs, a phenomenon known as Confirmation Bias. This leads us to filter out opposing viewpoints and only seek validation for our thoughts. In essence, we create a bubble of self-affirmation.
#101essays #cognitivebiases The clustering illusion refers to the tendency to perceive patterns in random data, such as seeing a particular color everywhere due to subconscious preferences. This phenomenon involves creating connections that appear meaningful to the individual, even though they may be purely coincidental to others.
#101essays #cognitivebiases Conservatism Bias is akin to the anchoring bias, where we tend to hold onto beliefs simply because we adopted them first. This bias involves a reluctance to embrace new information, even when it may be more accurate or beneficial.
#101essays #cognitivebiases Understanding the Negativity Bias: Our tendency to focus more on negative news stems from perceiving such information as more significant and impactful. As a result, our attention is naturally drawn towards bad news.
#101essays Anchoring Bias, a key concept in #cognitivebiases, refers to our tendency to be overly influenced by the initial information we receive. Our perspectives are often shaped by our upbringing, primarily by our parents' viewpoints that we first encounter. In negotiations, the initial offer sets the tone and establishes the boundaries within which the discussion unfolds.
#101essays #cognitivebiases Extrapolation Bias: it refers to our tendency to use our current circumstances as a basis for predicting our future. We often mistakenly believe that our present situation will remain constant over time. This bias can lead us to make inaccurate assumptions about how things will unfold in the long run.