Rational Quote of the Day
"To find real answers we need to understand the real problems, not sensationalized caricatures of the problems spread on the internet."Brian Dunning
Brian was specifcally speaking about the internet myth that there is a large island of floating trash in the middle of the Pacific. However I find this advice applies to just about any issue lately. Obama's death panels, global climate change, torture, etc. etc.
More on Confirmation Bias
For a few months I’ve been doing my best to lose a little bit of weight. I’ve basically just been eating smaller potions and walking on my lunch hours. The biggest motivator that I have is that my new office has a small workout room with a scale. I’ve made it a habit of starting the day off by checking my weight and recording it. In order to make sure that my results are meaningful I always measure under the same conditions. It’s always dressed for work at 6:45am and having only had a small breakfast. I even make sure that I don’t have my phone or any change in my pockets to be sure that the results aren’t artificially skewed.Tuesday I had something to do after work and I didn’t want to show up in my AT&T uniform so I wore a nicer shirt and some different shoes. As I walked to the scale I realized that the results may not be accurate. I didn’t know if my outfit was heavier or lighter than what I usually wear. Just before I stepped on the scale I recognized that I was about to fall victim to my own confirmation bias. If the scale had read a little lighter than the day before I was ready to accept that as evidence of my diet and exercise was working. However, I was also fully ready to accept that if I was a little heavier that it was not my fault, it’s the differences in my wardrobe. As soon as I realized this I refused to step on the scale.
I bring this up again because lately I’ve seen far too many examples of people accepting information that supports their opinions and then wholesale rejecting any evidence that goes against it. Comments on blogs that accuse the blogger of a political bias while ignoring posts on the same blog that are highly critical of the same party. Family members who accept that a quack treatment works based on one example while ignoring the multiple times the same treatment did not make them feel better. Church friends using archaeological evidence to support their belief in the Book of Mormon but refusing to even read counter evidence.
It’s natural to cling to what makes us comfortable. Unfortunately it may not be the best thing to do. You’re not going to get accurate results if you can’t accept all of the evidence. If that’s the attitude that you have when you approach an issue just do as I did. Don’t even step on the scale. Same holds true on any other issue. Be aware of your biases and do your best to make sure they don’t influence your decisions.
More on Internal Consistency
A few years ago I wrote a post about internal consistency. Even if I disagree with the position stated I tend to take it more seriously if the logic in the argument agrees with itself. One of the examples that I brought up was a talk show host who will grasp at any position that goes against Al Gore’s position on global warming. However, sometimes he defeats his own argument. Will point to a Solar survey that says the Earth is hotter because or changes in the sun. So he admits that it is getting hotter on Earth but shifts the blame to the sun rather than to Human causation. This is a respectable position that many have taken. But to his detriment he goes on to point to colder temperatures on Earth and then suggest that it’s not getting hotter here after all. Although at first glace these claims do both go against Al Gore’s position, they also contradict each other. It’s hard to take them seriously together. It seems obvious to me that the host here was just taking every fact that supported a position other than his opponent’s and assuming that they would, by default, support his position. Or more likely he knew his argument was self contradictory but just hoped that his audience would ignore it.I had a similar internal consistency issue with a lesson that we had in church last week. All the adults and youth over 12 were called together for a special meeting to discuss internet pornography. I have some issues with the format that was used but none the less I admit it’s an issue that needs to be discussed. Most of the presentation was in the form of an audio file over a PowerPoint presentation. Both were a companion file to a book. The author of the book gives several statistics and then goes into the neuroscience of why teenagers are more prone to have negative effects from pornography. He makes the claim that there are fewer connections in teenage brain between the logical section and the emotional section. Without these connections it’s harder for teenagers to gauge risk and to respond logically to situations. Using neuroscience he very effectively showed how teenage brains can be more adversely affected by pornography than more mature brains.
Up until now his argument has been consistent and rather well thought out. However later on in the presentation he cautions adults from viewing this material too. For the record I don’t condone it either, but this is where his logic goes south and become internally inconsistent. He asked the rhetorically questions, “Why do you think you are any stronger than those teenagers? Do you think your brain is better equipped to handle those images?” To answer his question, I don’t think that. But he does. He effectively explained an hour earlier how a teenage brain is more fragile. By also explaining how the connections between the logic centers and emotional centers are more developed in an adult he made a strong case against his own point that adults should stay away from these images too. He should have just left off the rhetorical challenge and his arguments would have been much stronger. I wish he had gone with a “lead by example” analogy rather than defeat the initial point. I think that this author just knew his audience and felt that most would take any argument against pornography as valid and was counting on them not connecting the dots to see if the arguments were consistent. For the most part I’m sure that is exactly what happened. But he’d have gained more points with at least one audience member if his arguments had all been internally consistent.
Note:
As always when I criticize someone’s logic I run the risk of coming across as a supporter of what they were arguing against. Nothing in this post should be construed as condoning the viewing of pornography in any form by adults or teenagers.
Why We Make Mistakes
For years I've been fascinated with the concept of human decision making. I've enjoyed reading books that explore this concept. I'm also intrigued about the strategies that people use to justify their mistakes and the cognitive dissonance required to make your actual decisions jive with what you know is right.Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average by Joseph Hallinan is my latest read on this subject. In the opening chapter of the book Hallinan describes a commercial airliner simply flying into the ground because they got too hung up on a small light that was burned out ans ignored the fact that the plane was slowly loosing altitude. I felt that this one simple metaphor described the rest of the book. We do lose focus of the things that are truly important. And all too frequently our focus was shifted by relatively trivial details.
Hallinan skillfully points out how uncommon common sense really is. But rather than just blame the decision maker he talks about how we can put ourselves into positions that will help to make better decisions. sometimes it takes a design difference so that, for instance, clockwise is off on all the knobs. Things like always putting the hot on the left and the cold on the right, etc. Sure it sounds like a simple design issue but he gave some frightening mortality statistic from an anesthesia machine that was clockwise for off on on drug and counter-clockwise for another.
Hallinan compared the airline industry to operating room. In the past few decades accident rates in the airline industry have dramatically dropped and there has been an increase in the operating rooms. Hallinan points to the main cause of this as the changes that have been made to the authority system in on and not in the other.
In the airline industry anybody the cockpit is virtually free of authority struggles. Many decisions are not based on rank or position. A 20 year old air traffic controller tells the pilot where to land and the pilot obeys and doesn't pretend that he knows better just because she's been doing flying since the controller was a kid. In the cockpit as well the co-pilot and even attendants are valuable resources and their input is encouraged.
Conversely, this authority system seems to be trending the other direction in the operating room. Doctors all too frequently are seen as unquestionable. Even in situations where nurses have spoken up to prevent the error Hallinan sights instances of flipped x-rays and the wrong limb being removed.
A few years ago my youngest daughter had to have a tooth pulled. We went to see the specialist with the x-ray from our dentist. She'd taken a fall on the driveway and one of her teeth was a starting to go gray. The x-ray seemed to confirm that the root on the graying tooth was dying. When we went to get her tooth pulled the nurse questioned the x-rays. She thought we we looking at it backwards. The dentist did not question her and called to have another x-ray taken just to be sure. She was absolutely right. In spite of the fact that one tooth was starting to turn gray it was the tooth on the other side that had the dead root. The dentist went ahead and pulled the dying tooth and the gray tooth eventually regained its color. Had that nurse not spoken up and, more importantly, had the dentist not accepted her advice Eve would have had to go back and have the correct tooth pulled later and they'd have had a very upset father on their hands. I'm very grateful to have had a dentist who was willing to admit that he could make mistakes and ultimate prevent them.
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anybody who is aware that they can make mistakes. I also think it should be force feed to anybody who thinks that they can't.
