overcomingbias.com -> robinhanson.typepad.com/overcomingbias/
Global Warming Skeptics Charge Believers with more Cognitive Biases thanBelievers do Skeptics: Why the asymmetry? Believers and Skeptics mutually accuse each other of 4 more.
Hindsight Bias -- Because the computer models have (admittedly) been tweaked to post-dict past cimate changes, Believers assume wrongly that past climate events were more 'predictable' than they really were, according to Skeptics.
Illusion of Control -- Believers think that human reductions of greenhouse gases will make a large enough contribution to reduce global warming, but Skeptics think that's an illusion.
Ad Hominem claims -- by Believers that Skeptics are beholden to oil company money: by Skeptics that Believers are seeking grant money, are anti-capitalist, anti-corporation, anti-free trade, anti-development/growth, anti-consumer, or are socialist, communist, anarchist, etc.
Status Quo Bias -- Skeptics claim Believers want to keep the climate stabilized at its present level, and Believers claim Skeptics want stability for present manufacturing processes, distribution of wealth, SUVs, etc.
these examples are hardly evidence of predicting the future. Rather, he suggested, it was "a bit newspaper-centric to say that news has not broke 'publicly' if it is being discussed online in rumors but has not appeared in a newspaper." He added that "with more and more kinds of media, there are more and more intermediate levels of info availability." Unfortunately our laws are often based on simple-minded concepts of "public" versus "private" info. For example, you lose your patent rights if your idea appeared anywhere on the web in any form for a year, but you can keep patent rights even if lots of other people said they already thought of your obvious idea.
I wish I could say more about it here, but we don't want to bias your answers. After we get enough answers and analyze them, we'll tell you what we found. Please don't read the comments until you've taken the survey.
reports that recordings of 400 university students found men and women both say about 16,000 words per day: We have developed a method for recording natural language using the electronically activated recorder (EAR) ... participants wear the EAR for several days during their waking hours. All captured words spoken by the participant are transcribed. The data suggest that women spoke on average 16,215 (SD = 7301) words and men 15,669 (SD = 8633) words over an assumed period of, on average, 17 waking hours ... the difference does not meet conventional thresholds for statistical significance.
The method was so easy and they are getting so much criticism for only looking at university students, surely someone will soon do a similar study on older adults. This would be a perfect "idea futures" application - let's bet on the fraction of words women are found to speak in that new study.
says we use visible luxuries and helpfulness in part as ways to attract mates: Conspicuous displays of consumption and benevolence might serve as "costly signals" of desirable mate qualities. If so, they should vary strategically with manipulations of mating-related motives. Inducing mating goals in men increased their willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not on basic necessities. In women, mating goals boosted public-but not private--helping. Although mating motivation did not generally inspire helping in men, it did induce more helpfulness in contexts in which they could display heroism or dominance. Conversely, although mating motivation did not lead women to conspicuously consume, it did lead women to spend more publicly on helpful causes. Overall, romantic motives seem to produce highly strategic and sex-specific self-presentations best understood within a costly signaling framework. This suggests that female luxury consumption, and non-heroic non-dominant male helping, are not done to impress potential mates. Of course they could still be costly signals, but to other audiences.
this entry on George Bernard Shaw and G K Chesterton, I noted that 50 or 100 or 200 years ago, leftists associated progress with material happiness while rightists were more skeptical and tended to say that progress wasn't always such a good thing. Nowadays, the debates usually go in the other directions, with people on the left being less positive about material progress and people on the right saying that things are great now and are getting better.
replied here, analyzing the current differences between left and right as different views on government intervention: Nothing beats a "crisis" to rally support for a big government effort. Right statists constantly drum up moral panics about sex and drugs. Also, Mexicans are "invading" and terrorists will surely blow us all up while singing the Star Spangled Banner at baseball games if we don't allow the executive Jack Bauer to torture military detainees whenever he wants. Similarly, left statists warn that the shores of Manhattan will be inundated by rising oceans and very cute baby polar bears will die in droves. Also, inequality is soaring, threatening the foundations of democracy. And the middle class lives in terrifying "economic insecurity." Once again, it might be helpful to compare with attitudes 50, 100, etc. Shaw, like many other socialists, supported government intervention in the economy and also thought that material progress would give us higher living standards and better lives.
Biased Birth Rates In poor societies richer couples have more kids, but richer societies have fewer kids. This may be because female kid desires are biased low, relative to genetic interests, and in rich societies women have more relative power.
explains in the May American Economic Review: The demographic transition ... In Western Europe, starting in about 1870, real wages began to rise about 2 percent per year. Net reproductive rates fell from an average of three children per woman in 1860 to fewer than two in the modern era. Evolutionary biologists find it puzzling that a species reproduces less rapidly when individuals have access to more material resources. Why was there a positive correlation between wealth and fertility before the demographic transition, but not after? Because of a genetic conflict of interest between mates, evolution could have shaped preferences so that "human females would fail to bear the optimal number of children in the absence of pressure of mates and kin." Thus men would desire more children and women fewer children than their own genetic interest dictates. Differences in birth rates across time and between cultures would occur as one side or the other gains increased leverage in this tug-of-war. In modern economics, women have increased influence in household decisions and, together with improved contraceptive technology, have gained greater control of their own fertility. Malaysian husbands want more children than their wives and, when measurable household bargaining power favors the wife, a couple tends to have fewer children. as the ratio of the wife's nonlabor income increases, couples tend to have fewer children. I've long been puzzled by the demographic transition, and so am excited to hear of a plausible theory that roughly fits people I know. If it is true, and if we now have too many or just enough kids, relative to a social or moral optimum, then empowering women has helped. But if, as I suspect, we now have too few kids, then empowering women may be largely to blame. If you want to play "find a better theory," at least try to explain all the related data, including fertility of the rich in poor societies, and the robustness of the demographic transition to cultures and contraception technology.
this Andrew Gelman post in which he points out that "the right" used to be against material progress while "the left" was for it, but Nowadays, the debates usually go in the other directions, with people on the left being less positive about material progress and people on the right saying that things are great now and are getting better.
my skeptical take on those who use happiness research to argue that consumer capitalism is making us miserable, and continues: Th...
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