Why West Mall Posters are Wrong

Fantastic article. Lots of food for thought there.

"Confirmation bias" is a huge issue for every person on the planet.

Of course, it isn't always a bad thing. "Analysis paralysis" can be just as detrimental to good policy making.
 
Bevo Incognito:

If you enjoyed the article, then I recommend the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.
The Link

He has been a distinguished pyschologist and a pioneer in behavior economics for several decades. The book is a fascinating description of biases and human decision making.
 
Agree with BI, great article.

Lesson 1. Nobody has the complete answer to a complex problem

Lesson 2. Almost everything in life is complex - THERE ARE NO SIMPLE, BLACK/WHITE resolutions.

Lesson 3. Discourse is essential - it challenges our fundamental belief system.

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Being a college grad, but thankfully a pure cynic, it was hilarious to see education had no significant effect on "correctness". I'll theorize that college is just another life experience where you have the opportunity to further steel your beliefs.

I openly vote republican, but would vote democrat if they ever presented a compelling alternative. Provided that it's enough to get over my bias hump
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Pure funny though. Good to see all this pointless banter is just that.
 
As a wise man once said:

"The problem is...Republicans think they're always right, and Democrats know there's a chance they might be wrong."
 
I guess what makes me liberal is that I'm surrounded by conservatives and their factual blind spots are always in evidence, hence irritating. Since I seldom visit with folks more liberal than I, (which I did get to do a lot when I was a student at UT) their denial of reality is less a presence in my life.
 
The article is good because it points out the difficulty in designing bias-free survey questions, which is practically impossible. People think about what the question may be seeking to prove, and they will game the system. I do it, or I just refuse to participate.
Many of the surveys end up asking questions designed to prove the person who designed the survey's point. They don't really want your opinion.
I had to do some surveys while in grad school, and it is a difficult undertaking to try and find people willing to answer honestly.
So when you read the results of the surveys, take them with a grain of salt. They might be well-designed and are statistically significant, but many are not.
Take that question they first mention, "do regulations on housing increase housing price?" Of course they do. But when someone asks that question, it is difficult to just answer "yes," because you are thinking about the implications of the question. Do you want no restrictions of where, how dense, and the standards of construction? Why would someone ask such a dumb question? How do I counteract the stupidness of this question? Do I answer yes, no, refuse to answer in protest, or what?
And I completely disagree with the idea that college education does not matter. I think the more educated will think more about what is behind the question, and answer, not because they don't know that regulations increase the cost of building a house, but due to one of the other considerations listed above.
There are whole college classes for instructors in how to design test questions, which is not an easy task. Same with survey questions. It is hard to accurately gauge someone's knowledge, or even their opinions in a test or survey. They are useful, but shouldn't be relied on as gospel.
 
I'm thinking a poster that continually calls our president by his middle name may not be especially interested in logical, unbiased, fact-based discussion. As this survey shows, people like to hear what they already believe they know.
 
Probably this thread would have gotten the more thoughtful discussion it deserved on Quackenbush's. I, for one, appreciated the article and the reference over to Daniel Kahneman. I just put some valuable reading in on him, cognitive biases, cognitive dissonance, reference class forecasting, etc.

Thanks for the post. Hope it spurred some introspection for at least a few of us.
 
Respectfully, i believe this thread belongs here. To serve as a constant reminder to all of us WM posters that we/they are not always right. And I'm a culprit of this as well, but having a reference point to keep reminding that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I'm wrong in some cases is a good reminder.
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Here's a very worthwhile list of thinking errors--it's from wikipedia, sorry!--but someone has compiled an interesting list that can catalyze some thoughts on the subject, or further research.

Of course, most of the biases apply to other people, but then there was that one that said that we tend to see others as more biased than ourselves(!).

List of Cognitive Biases
 
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