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

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I can think of better ways of believing in the dragon, but then I'm quite good at that sort of thing...

[djm4]

I can't help but notice that all the essays that make me go "eee!" are by Eliezer Yudkowsky,

In which case, I trust you'll be resisting the Happy Death Spiral.

[juliet]

On the other hand, they are buying into evolutionary psychology rather more than is recommended.

Blindingly obvious flaw 1: it might be true (or at least defensible) to say that Thing X exists in modern beings because of Thing-X bearing ancestors. But it is *not* therefore true to say that Thing X confers reproductive fitness. It might be a side-effect of Thing Y that confers reproduction fitness. It might even be a *bad* side-effect of Thing Y, but +Y > -X so it doesn't matter.

Evolutionary psychology is *all* post-hoc; see above re belief and hindsight. There may be evidence for e.g. men tending to prefer women of particular sizes/shapes, but the "it's because of evolution" bit is entirely unproven. And probably unprovable. (And the research that's done on this often operates on some pretty dubious prior biases - in particular in terms of gender.)

Interesting stuff, though.

[zbyszek.livejournal.com]

OK, that is proving to be quite adddictive.