A Pseudo Psychologist With Nothing To Say

[Bret Cahill]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html

The ball/bat problem is without question the dumbest thing to appear
in _The New Yorker_ in the half century I've been reading the
magazine.

Take the shortcut and at most you are only off a few cents. Time is
money. Anyone with an IQ above single digits would take the short cut
in real life.

Here's an identical problem from the math POV:

The combined cost of two cars is $60,000. One car costs $15 K more
than the other. What are the prices of the 2 cars?

Does anyone think there would be a significant opportunity to make any
money in real life off of those ignorant of 2 step algebra problems?

The fact is these problems don't appear anywhere in real life except
in business, science and engineering where everyone is _already_
looking at the bottom line and _already_ has pencil and paper,
supervisiors, peer review, etc., ready to do it correctly.

You can make money off of the ignorance of the public but it won't be
with 2 step algebra problems. It will be by exploiting the ignorance
of orders of magnitude, integration, statistics, geometric and
exponential curves, etc.


Bret Cahill

 

[Bob Masta]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:48:08 -0700 (PDT), Bret Cahill
<Bret_E_Cahill@yahoo.com> wrote:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html

The ball/bat problem is without question the dumbest thing to appear
in _The New Yorker_ in the half century I've been reading the
magazine.

I long ago decided to ignore this rag... right after they
ran the Paul Brodeur series about the evils of electric
fields, based entirely on hokum and pseudoscience.

It seemed like the New Yorker was really only a *literary*
magazine. All the stories spent a lot of time telling you
about what the interviewee was wearing, what the room was
like, lots of simile and metaphor about his character, and
precious little real information about the topic at hand.
Like the authors wrote because they loved to see themselves
in print, not to convey anything useful.

YMMV.


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v6.02
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
Frequency Counter, FREE Signal Generator
Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI
Science with your sound card!

 

[chiron613]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:48:08 -0700 (PDT)
Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cahill@yahoo.com> wrote:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html

The ball/bat problem is without question the dumbest thing to appear
in _The New Yorker_ in the half century I've been reading the
magazine.

Take the shortcut and at most you are only off a few cents. Time is
money. Anyone with an IQ above single digits would take the short cut
in real life.

Here's an identical problem from the math POV:

The combined cost of two cars is $60,000. One car costs $15 K more
than the other. What are the prices of the 2 cars?

Does anyone think there would be a significant opportunity to make any
money in real life off of those ignorant of 2 step algebra problems?

The fact is these problems don't appear anywhere in real life except
in business, science and engineering where everyone is _already_
looking at the bottom line and _already_ has pencil and paper,
supervisiors, peer review, etc., ready to do it correctly.

And they've probably already seen the trick enough to be able to
avoid falling for it.

You can make money off of the ignorance of the public but it won't be
with 2 step algebra problems. It will be by exploiting the ignorance
of orders of magnitude, integration, statistics, geometric and
exponential curves, etc.

The two-step problem is OK. What irks me is the silly conclusion this
guy arrives at. Smart people are dumb. Sure. War is peace. I know
the drill.

Lots of people might fall for the ball-and-bat trick, if asked a casual
question about it. If they had to spend money, though, I'm sure they'd
be a bit more cautious.

Personally, the only use I've ever made of the _New Yorker_ is to read
their cartoons.

--
Many husbands go broke on the money their wives save on sales.

 

[Frnak McKenney]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:50:46 -0500, chiron613 <chiron613@NOSPAM.gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:48:08 -0700 (PDT)
Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cahill@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html

The ball/bat problem is without question the dumbest thing to
appear in _The New Yorker_ in the half century I've been reading
the magazine.

[...]

The fact is these problems don't appear anywhere in real life
except in business, science and engineering where everyone is
_already_ looking at the bottom line and _already_ has pencil and
paper, supervisiors, peer review, etc., ready to do it correctly.

[...]

The two-step problem is OK. What irks me is the silly conclusion
this guy arrives at. Smart people are dumb. Sure. War is peace.
I know the drill.

Lots of people might fall for the ball-and-bat trick, if asked a
casual question about it. If they had to spend money, though, I'm
sure they'd be a bit more cautious.

I realize that I'm jumping in at the end of a thread I haven't
followed carefully, but I did read the original article (thanks for
the pointer, Bret), and it seems more "superficial" than "dumb", and
fairly mild compared to the reactions to it.

As I interpret the article, it's basically saying:

o David Kahneman has observed some quirks in our thinking
processes (and documented them, not always an easy task).

o People have blind spots, and they're not easy to spot "from the
inside". See also NKJV, Matthew 7:3-4. <grin>

o Being "smart" (SAT scores, in this case) or educated isn't an
infallible guard against making occasional "dumb" mistakes,
especially when one is reacting rather than thinking.

o Although we may have acquired or developed "thinking shortcuts"
(anyone remember "chunks"? how about "gestalts"? ) which allow us
to "jump" to solutions by skipping the intermediate steps, these
can, just as rapidly, lead us to incorrect answers.

This sentence bothered me a bit:

"And here’s the upsetting punch line: intelligence seems to make
things worse."

until I noticed the following:

"...indicating that smarter people (at least as measured by S.A.T.
scores) and those more likely to engage in deliberation were
slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes."

That is, both statements are unquantified: "worse" could mean "45%
more vulnerable", but it could also mean "0.0004% more vulnerable".
All we can assume from the article is that neither having a high SAT
score, or having graduated from Princeton (or MIT, or Harvard) will
keep us from occasionally attempting to pound in a screw with the
wrong size wrench.

The article, like this one by the same author:

The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific
method?
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer

seems to be more of an "alert", more a brief description of a possibly
interesting tid-bit than an in-depth exposition. If anyone is
curious, I turned up this Kahneman interview video which fleshes out
Kahneman's views a bit:

ABC News: Kahneman examines two-speed decision making
( _A_ustralian, not _A_merican <grin!> )
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-11/daniel-kahneman-joins-lateline/4064976

and this T.E.D. video:

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory
http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html

also:

The Marvels and the Flaws of Intuitive Thinking
http://edge.org/conversation/the-marvels-and-flaws-of-intuitive-thinking

Freakonomics: Daniel Kahneman Answers Your Questions
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/11/28/daniel-kahneman-answers-your-questions/

Enjoy...


Frank McKenney
--
With fashionable subjects like physics or astronomy the corres-
pondence between model and reality is so exact that some people tend
to regard Nature as a sort of Divine Mathematician. However
attractive this doctrine may be to earthly mathematicians, there are
some phenomena where it is wise to use mathematical analogies with
great caution. The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent
upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea and the way
of a man with a maid are difficult to predict analytically. One
does wonder sometimes how mathematicians ever manage to get married.
-- J. E. Gordon / "Structures, or Why things don't fall down"
--
Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney aatt mindspring ddoott com

 

[Les Cargill]

Frnak McKenney wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:50:46 -0500, chiron613 <chiron613@NOSPAM.gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:48:08 -0700 (PDT)
Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cahill@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html

The ball/bat problem is without question the dumbest thing to
appear in _The New Yorker_ in the half century I've been reading
the magazine.

[...]

The fact is these problems don't appear anywhere in real life
except in business, science and engineering where everyone is
_already_ looking at the bottom line and _already_ has pencil and
paper, supervisiors, peer review, etc., ready to do it correctly.

[...]

The two-step problem is OK. What irks me is the silly conclusion
this guy arrives at. Smart people are dumb. Sure. War is peace.
I know the drill.

Lots of people might fall for the ball-and-bat trick, if asked a
casual question about it. If they had to spend money, though, I'm
sure they'd be a bit more cautious.

I realize that I'm jumping in at the end of a thread I haven't
followed carefully, but I did read the original article (thanks for
the pointer, Bret), and it seems more "superficial" than "dumb", and
fairly mild compared to the reactions to it.

As I interpret the article, it's basically saying:

o David Kahneman has observed some quirks in our thinking
processes (and documented them, not always an easy task).

o People have blind spots, and they're not easy to spot "from the
inside". See also NKJV, Matthew 7:3-4. <grin

o Being "smart" (SAT scores, in this case) or educated isn't an
infallible guard against making occasional "dumb" mistakes,
especially when one is reacting rather than thinking.

o Although we may have acquired or developed "thinking shortcuts"
(anyone remember "chunks"? how about "gestalts"? ) which allow us
to "jump" to solutions by skipping the intermediate steps, these
can, just as rapidly, lead us to incorrect answers.

This sentence bothered me a bit:

"And here’s the upsetting punch line: intelligence seems to make
things worse."

until I noticed the following:

"...indicating that smarter people (at least as measured by S.A.T.
scores) and those more likely to engage in deliberation were
slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes."

That is, both statements are unquantified: "worse" could mean "45%
more vulnerable", but it could also mean "0.0004% more vulnerable".
All we can assume from the article is that neither having a high SAT
score, or having graduated from Princeton (or MIT, or Harvard) will
keep us from occasionally attempting to pound in a screw with the
wrong size wrench.

The thing is - which mistakes? I took two classes which seem to
be relevant to most of those answers, and both ( stats and discrete
logic ) were in the math department.

Either might also make you a better test-taker. Seriously - I started
*making better grades* after those courses, and not just in math
classes. Why didn't we get those classes *first*???

The SAT is an adaptation of the Stanford-Binet, which was first
used to determine who carried the radio in a fire team in WWII....


<snip>

Frank McKenney

--
Les Cargill

 

[Bret Cahill]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-k...

The ball/bat problem is without question the dumbest thing to appear
in _The New Yorker_ in the half century I've been reading the
magazine.

I long ago decided to ignore this rag... right after they
ran the Paul Brodeur series about the evils of electric
fields, based entirely on hokum and pseudoscience.

It seemed like the New Yorker was really only a *literary*
magazine.  All the stories spent a lot of time telling you
about what the interviewee was wearing, what the room was
like, lots of simile and metaphor about his character, and
precious little real information about the topic at hand.
Like the authors wrote because they loved to see themselves
in print, not to convey anything useful.

For awhile I could guess the gender of the writers 90% of the time
just by reading a couple paragraphs. John Cheever would often throw
me off. . . .

Later the Israelis came out with software that got the sex of the
author right something like 70% of the time. It would probably be a
lot higher if they designed it specifically for _The New Yorker_.

YMMV.

Bob Masta

              DAQARTA  v6.02
   Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
             www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
    Frequency Counter, FREE Signal Generator
           Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI
          Science with your sound card!

 

[Phil Allison]

"Bret Cahill = Bullshit Artist with Nothing to Say"

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html

The ball/bat problem is without question the dumbest thing to appear
in _The New Yorker_ in the half century I've been reading the
magazine.

** It's a very neat example of the issue being raised - you pompous
fuckhead.

Take the shortcut and at most you are only off a few cents. Time is
money. Anyone with an IQ above single digits would take the short cut
in real life.

** Sure, it's the intuitive answer instead of the correct one.

Here's an identical problem from the math POV:

The combined cost of two cars is $60,000. One car costs $15 K more
than the other. What are the prices of the 2 cars?

** The verbal trick is in the 10:1 ratio in the original Q.

You can make money off of the ignorance of the public but it won't be
with 2 step algebra problems. It will be by exploiting the ignorance
of orders of magnitude, integration, statistics, geometric and
exponential curves, etc.

** No one tiny bit relevant to the issues raised in the article or the paper
it was based upon - which obviously went right over your tiny, pointy head.

Smart people ( ie those with degrees etc) are just as likely to hold
irrational and plain wrong opinions as anyone else. Clear thinking is a
mighty scare commodity in a world that for the most part places no value on
it, since it suits almost everyone's interest that the popular lines of
bullshit be believed by everyone.

Witness " political correctness " as a prime example of the above.

BTW:

A group of naive and politically incorrect researchers once attempted to
measure the difference between men and women in relation to irrational /
emotional thinking when presented with a variety of practical, real life
problems.

The difference was found to be very large, way more than expected.

In the conclusions it was stated that the majority of women tested exhibited
such profound emotional bias in their thinking that it could only be
considered as a mental disability.

Ouch .......



.... Phil

 

[Bret Cahill]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-k...

The ball/bat problem is without question the dumbest thing to appear
in _The New Yorker_ in the half century I've been reading the
magazine.

Take the shortcut and at most you are only off a few cents.  Time is
money.  Anyone with an IQ above single digits would take the short cut
in real life.

Here's an identical problem from the math POV:

The combined cost of two cars is $60,000.  One car costs $15 K more
than the other.  What are the prices of the 2 cars?

Does anyone think there would be a significant opportunity to make any
money in real life off of those ignorant of 2 step algebra problems?

The fact is these problems don't appear anywhere in real life except
in business, science and engineering where everyone is _already_
looking at the bottom line and _already_ has pencil and paper,
supervisiors, peer review, etc., ready to do it correctly.

You can make money off of the ignorance of the public but it won't be
with 2 step algebra problems.  It will be by exploiting the ignorance
of orders of magnitude, integration, statistics, geometric and
exponential curves, etc.

Bret Cahill

Same thing from another writer:

The reason intelligent people are more prone to these
"biases" (which is a stupid way to describe time-saving
mental shortcuts) is because those same biases are
actually right 99% of the time. The questions asked were
specifically designed to be intuitively misleading, but
most everyday problems aren't going to play out like
that. Further, intelligent people are better at forming
such shortcuts and employing them to solve problems.
They're useful, and calling them "biases" is incredibly
misleading. It's interesting research, but I don't agree
with how they're framing the problem. And the article
sounded incredibly defeatist about human cognition,
seeming to think that the results of this research
indicate that humans are helplessly lost when it comes to
problem solving. That's just not the correct conclusion
to draw.

- banquosghost

 

[Phil Allison]

"Bret Cahill= Fuckwit"


Same thing from another writer:


** Wot - so you found another usenet troll just as asinine as you ?

Amazing....