On 10/3/12 12:04 PM, Timothy Miller wrote:
Maybe the presumption that regression lines go on to infinity represents a universal human cognitive bias. Humans are not rational creatures, though we like to think we are.
I'm sure it's a human trait. We are very good at pattern recognition, and a straight line is just another pattern.
Bob's comments about having the facts was partly right-on and partly not. I was reading an article yesterday that said we only "hear" facts that we agree with, and which reinforce our already formed views. That's why it is ineffective to present pure facts to counter emotionally-based opinions like religion or politics. You have to alter the bias first before you can use facts to reinforce your argument.
I read an amusing article in Behavior and Brain Sciences. The gist: People are so bad at reasoning that many scientists wonder why they evolved to do it at all. If reasoning is usually wrong, then it would not likely have any reproductive value. One theory is that people don't reason to be right. They reason to win arguments for the sake of increasing their social status. That would explain 99% of political and religious conversations, wouldn't it?
The same article I read says that humans are mentally lazy. We need to choose what we consider because if we didn't, we'd expend all our energy evaluating things. So instead we find what works and presume from there. The problem with this is that sometimes what works most of the time doesn't always work universally.
I don't have a link to the article unfortunately because it came in through the RSS feeds I scan daily and it has now evaporated into the ether. But it was on Ars Technica yesterday.
Conversely this is why talking heads on TV and experts commenting on the future state of the internet get it right about as often as a monkey with a dart board.
But given enough time they can reproduce Shakespeare. :) -- Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
