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On Thinking and Reasoning

stuff On knowing things, and how we get there

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article

Bias reduces noise—if you know <em>roughly</em> what to expect, then being biased by those expectations means you won’t get distracted by less relevant data points.

Bias is good

Article

If you haven’t heard of System 1 and System 2, you’ve probably heard one of its analogues. People who say ‘don’t let your amygdala hijack your frontal lobes’, or ‘get out of the sympathetic and into the parasympathetic nervous system’, or ‘something something vagus nerve’ are using pseudo-brain science to get at the same thing. But the thing everyone seems to have taken away from this book is the thing we always take away—System 1 stuff, a.k.a. bias is a bad thing. This is not what Kahneman was going for. Kahneman was trying to show us how both System 1 and System 2 have their place.
Bias reduces noise—if you know roughly what to expect, then being biased by those expectations means you won’t get distracted by less relevant data points.
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betterment gratification on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture wealth-architecture

article

Many cognitive biases seem like they can be boiled down to a handful of fundamental beliefs, and then belief-consistent information processing (i.e. confirmation bias).

Bias is dead, long live bias

Article

Probably the most consistent theme in my articles is the fact that, although we like to think we’re rational creatures, we are far from it. One of the most obvious places this nervous and ill-fated obsession with rationality plays out for us is in the domain of bias. Since Kahneman and Tversky’s project on ‘cognitive illusions’ in the late 60’s, we haven’t just seen the terminology of bias spread into daily conversation (think ‘confirmation bias’), we’ve also seen this out-of-hand proliferation of all the various ways we’re biased. Over 200, listed on Wikipedia. In theory, you might think this kind of rigour is great. But in practice, what are we supposed to do with all of this? No one’s going around checking their every decision against this endless list. Well, maybe here, we have a way of narrowing things down.
Many cognitive biases seem like they can be boiled down to a handful of fundamental beliefs, and then belief-consistent information processing (i.e. confirmation bias).
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betterment on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

article

Neurotransmitters are psychological snake oil. A confidence game pop-psychologists play with their audience. There is frankly no convincing story of human behaviour made more comprehensible by talking about dopamine.

Neurotransmitters are a confidence game

Article

You might have heard people often talk about the ‘reward neurotransmitter’ or the ‘love hormone’ or the ‘happiness molecule’ and so on. Fact is, although we know about some actions of these neurotransmitters, we actually have very little idea about how those actions play out in actual behaviour.
Neurotransmitters are psychological snake oil. A confidence game pop-psychologists play with their audience. There is frankly no convincing story of human behaviour made more comprehensible by talking about dopamine.
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betterment on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

article

The ‘naming’ problem, where by naming something we feel we have explained it, the ‘language’ problem, where the words we use stop others from understanding, and the ‘question’ problem, where we fail to find the right questions, are common and funny.

There are no levels

Article

Today I want to tell a story. It’s one of my favourites. Certainly my favourite ‘when I was a consultant’ story. Hopefully, we’ll laugh a little, and then I’ll use it to point out three ‘problems’ that often get in the way of us solving other problems. I won’t really have a solution. I just think it’s amusing.
The ‘naming’ problem, where by naming something we feel we have explained it, the ‘language’ problem, where the words we use stop others from understanding, and the ‘question’ problem, where we fail to find the right questions, are common and funny.
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betterment gratification on-being-fruitful on-culture on-thinking-and-reasoning thought-architecture

article

The ‘Great Man’ theory of history has the history of ideas moved forward by individuals. But by thinking of these as ‘Great Ideas’, or better ‘spirits’ of ideas, we’re encouraged to examine their motivations, which is surprisingly effective.

Great Spirits of History

Article

There’s this quote that floats around sometimes. It goes something like:‘If you don’t do the thinking, the thinking will be done for you’. This is usually presented like a bad thing, but really it’s often the only way to navigate the complexity of the world. Here’s one little tool for doing just that.
The ‘Great Man’ theory of history has the history of ideas moved forward by individuals. But by thinking of these as ‘Great Ideas’, or better ‘spirits’ of ideas, we’re encouraged to examine their motivations, which is surprisingly effective.
Read this article

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betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-culture on-politics-and-power on-thinking-and-reasoning thought-architecture
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