Overcoming bias

[ciphergoth]

http://www.overcomingbias.com/

This site is totally fascinating, and like TV Tropes and Wikipedia, it has that hyperlink-means-staying-forever power.

ETA: I'm going to start adding some especially cool entries here as I find them:

• Belief in belief
• Making beliefs pay rent
• Hindsight bias
• The proper use of doubt

ETA: I can't help but notice that all the essays that make me go "eee!" are by Eliezer Yudkowsky, who also describes the Twelve Virtues of Rationality. I think I have a new hero.

ETA: I'll probably link back to here in another post once I've added a few more links.

• Outside the laboratory
• Human evil and muddled thinking
• How to seem (and be) deep

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting indeed - I must ask you more about this next time we have a chance to have a natter, which should be soon.

What do you think about the study of evolutionary psychology of other animals? One big problem with trying to do it with humans is that you can't tell what's innate and what's cultural, but animals don't have nearly so much in the way of culture.

[juliet]

I am more than happy to talk about it at length, possibly at too much length ;-)

Animals: well, there may still be learnt vs innate issues, especially with social animals. (And it should be noted that I work on the assumption that animals do have some form of mental life and awareness.) The general point about how behaviours may not be "deliberately" selected for also still stands. I've read less animal evolutionary psych but the "observe behaviour X, make up evolutionary rationale Y, state Y as fact" approach still seems to be prevalent.

And of course animal experimentation suffers from very much the same problems as human experimentation, in that the more variables you control, the less normal the environment is and therefore the less typical the behaviour seen. For example, there's been experiments showing that rats have more neural connections and heavier brains when kept in cages with more stuff to do and with other rats to interact with. That's a normal situation for non-lab rats, but an abnormal one for lab rats. So the lab rats that have been being experimented on for the last howeverlong have all, basically, had abnormal rat-brains (& probably lacked in social knowledge). What does that imply for their behaviour, learning, & so on? (Also, I get very angry on behalf of the rats, but I am trying to ignore that bit for the purposes of the argument...)