belief

Oversimplifiers vs. Difference Deniers: a dynamic regarding group differences that leads to rage and confusion

December 17, 2023
Here's a misery-filled dynamic that I believe commonly plays out regarding small observed differences between groups: (1) Two groups have a small (but meaningful) difference in their average value of some trait, with heavily overlapping distributions. (2) Some people ("Oversimplifiers") observe this difference (in their everyday life or media reports) and turn this small average difference into a (sometimes very harmful) oversimplification: "A's are like this, B's are like that." (3) O...
More

The many forms of belief

October 11, 2020
Image by Izhak Agency on Unsplash
What does it mean to believe? We often say things like "I believe..." and "they think that..." But what do we really mean by a "belief"? It's notoriously tricky to define. For starters, we sometimes think of beliefs in binaries (true vs. false) and other times in probabilities (a 90% chance of coming true). We sometimes would be willing to bet on our beliefs ("I'll bet you $100 that New York City is not the capital of New York State"), and other times we wouldn't be willing to bet (e.g...
More

Three Types of Nuanced Thinking

June 15, 2020
image from: https://www.pikist.com/free-photo-vixok
I think that one of the most important skill sets for good thinking is “Nuanced Thinking”: resisting binary dichotomies on important, complex topics. Our brains, too often, are dichotomizing machines. We tend to simplify the world into true or false, good or bad, is or is not. This dichotomizing tendency works well when it comes to relatively simple topics like: • 1+1=2 (true) vs., the Illuminati controls our planet (false)• viruses (bad) vs. puppies (good)• a fedora is a hat; a fedora is no...
More

What Seemed Like Perfect Reasoning Utterly Failed

February 1, 2014
Does warm water sometimes freeze faster than cold water when placed in the same conditions? "Absolutely no way," I said, a mere minute after I heard the claim. "People sometimes claim that NASA faked the moon landing too," I thought to myself. I pointed out why this claim is impossible. As warm water cools it must eventually reach the same temperature that the cool water started at. From that point on, the warm water will behave just like the cool water, but it will have taken the warm water a ...
More

Contradictory Insight

November 7, 2013
I was recently having a conversation with Geoff A. and Jana G. about how to systematically generate surprising ideas.  I then sat down and created this program with them based on our discussion. Take a minute to try it, and generate some insight that you've never considered before! Click here to run Contradictory Insight!
More

Accepting Your Error Rate

June 4, 2012
No matter how intelligent, rational, or knowledgeable you may be, you are going to be wrong pretty regularly. And you'll be wrong far more often than pretty regularly when dealing with complex topics like politics, people or philosophy. Even if you've freed yourself from thinking in terms of true and false dichotomies, and made the effort to convert your beliefs to probabilities or degrees of belief, you'll still be wrong by way of assigning high probabilities to false propositions. Most pe...
More

How Journalism Distorts Reality

April 7, 2012
Journalism provides us with important information about what's going on in the world. But when you consider the incentives that journalists have, combine that with their usual lack of scientific training, and add in the constraints of the medium in which they work, serious distortions of reality can result. Many journalists produce excellent work. But others leave you less informed after reading their articles than before you began. What causes journalistic distortion? 1. Equal time to eac...
More

Don’t Always Desire Your Desires

April 5, 2012
When we reflect on the many things that we could have, some will produce feelings of desire. But when we take an extra moment to reflect on these desires themselves, we find some to be undesirable. The desire to fit in with the crowd may be accompanied by a contrary desire to be unconcerned by what other people think. Or we might long to be reunited with an ex, but feel averse to having those feelings. When our desires and our desires about these desires come in conflict, how can we decide wh...
More

The Nine Causes of Disagreement

December 21, 2011
There are an incredible range of subjects that people disagree about, but only a small number of core reasons that people disagree. When we encounter complex and difficult to resolve disputes, it can be helpful to break them down in terms of these reasons. This process can help give us insight into what is preventing a consensus from being reached. Disagreements can be caused by: 1. Facts. People have access to different information. One person has studied physics, another hasn't. One has spen...
More