Cognitive Biases and Handedness

[cleanhippie]

One of the mantras of the scientific skeptic is that we need formal logic and scientific methods in order to overcome our cognitive biases. Without a structure to observation and thinking, our biases would overwhelm our conclusions.

This is true not just in the scholarly study of the universe, but in our everyday lives. The more we are aware of the common cognitive biases, the less of a strangle hold they will have on our beliefs. Just realizing the degree to which our perceptions and judgments can be radically altered by seemingly irrelevant factors is very important. In my experience this is often the one critical difference that separates those with a generally skeptical outlook from those more inclined toward uncritical belief. Believers find the subjective reports of others, and their own experiences, to be highly compelling, while skeptics are comfortable dismissing even dramatic anecdotes on the basis of understanding the power of self-deception and cognitive flaws and biases.

In short – believers generally operate under the paradigm of seeing is believing, while skeptics operate under the paradigm that often believing is seeing.

http://skepticblog.org/2011/03/14/cognitive-biases-and-handedness/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d7e25197cbeff58%2C0

-----------------------------

Interesting read.

[Jim__]

1. One should always remember fate of Buridan's ass.

From the article you cited:

...

In experiments by psychologist Daniel Casasanto, when people were asked which of two products to buy, which of two job applicants to hire, or which of two alien creatures looks more intelligent, right-handers tended to choose the product, person, or creature they saw on their right, but most left-handers chose the one on their left.

...

Exactly. That is why an important step on the journey toward critical thinking is the realization that we are not the objective rational beings we think we are. That is a mere illusion – a lie we tell ourselves to relieve cognitive dissonance. In reality we are horribly biased and easily manipulated. But we can compensate for our flaws – by understanding that we are biased and what those biases are, and by applying critical thinking, logic, and evidence to our conclusions.

Yes, but while applying critical thinking, logic, and evidence, we must remain mindful of the fate of Buridan's ass ;-) :

Imagine a hungry donkey standing equidistant from two identical piles of hay. The donkey tries to decide which pile he should eat first and finding no reason to choose one over another, starves to death.

The tests cited in the article imply there was no valid reason to choose right or left. It doesn't matter what criteria people used to choose. The important thing in this test was making a choice. The fact that we are here, implies that the decision-making machinery that we've inherited, works. Reason is a part of that machinery, but just a part.

[cleanhippie]

2. Is this the opening shot in a "free will" argument?

[darkstar3]

3. No, it's an opening salvo in the fight against the Vulcan straw man.

Note the final sentence: "Reason is a part of that machinery, but just a part." The post is designed to start the traditional argument that skeptics cannot, and often do not, ignore emotions and instinct in their decision-making processes. Either we accept that emotions and instinct are important, or we are simply Vulcans, devoid of true humanity and running on only cold logic. And it is when the skeptic accepts the premise of that statement that the believer and his defenders inject the fact that instinct leads to faith, or else faith wouldn't have been so pervasive in human history.

The problem with this argument, aside from the fact that it uses the Wisdom of the Ancients fallacy in an attempt to legitimize current religion, is that it relies entirely on the idea of evolutionary psychology, which really is nothing but a post hoc ergo propter hoc guessing game.

[Jim__]

4. No. I'm just pointing out that the article draws conclusions that are not supported by the ...

... evidence presented.

For example, I don't find any support for this paragraph in the article:

The more we are aware of the common cognitive biases, the less of a strangle hold they will have on our beliefs. Just realizing the degree to which our perceptions and judgments can be radically altered by seemingly irrelevant factors is very important. In my experience this is often the one critical difference that separates those with a generally skeptical outlook from those more inclined toward uncritical belief. Believers find the subjective reports of others, and their own experiences, to be highly compelling, while skeptics are comfortable dismissing even dramatic anecdotes on the basis of understanding the power of self-deception and cognitive flaws and biases.

The example in the article appears to ask for conclusions that have no support - "appears" because we don't have the entire scenario. When people are asked to decide with insufficient evidence, especially when a decision is required, it is hard to criticize the decision that they make. It can be interesting to know why we decide what we decide; but our inclination to decide under conditions of insufficient evidence, can well be a strength in our decision making process. To make the point the author was trying to make, he really should have chosen a better example.

[cleanhippie]

5. So, yes, you are trying for the "free will" argument, then?

[Jim__]

6. No, my argument is not concerned with "free will".

Of course, just about any argument dealing with decision making can be dragged into the "free will" arena. But what I am saying, having read the article, is that the evidence it presents does not lead to the conclusions it is trying to establish.

Here is an abstract of the paper he is citing (there is a fee to read the whole paper):

Abstract
Do people with different kinds of bodies think differently? According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people who interact with their physical environments in systematically different ways should form correspondingly different mental representations. In a test of this hypothesis, 5 experiments investigated links between handedness and the mental representation of abstract concepts with positive or negative valence (e.g., honesty, sadness, intelligence). Mappings from spatial location to emotional valence differed between right- and left-handed participants. Right-handers tended to associate rightward space with positive ideas and leftward space with negative ideas, but left-handers showed the opposite pattern, associating rightward space with negative ideas and leftward with positive ideas. These contrasting mental metaphors for valence cannot be attributed to linguistic experience, because idioms in English associate good with right but not with left. Rather, right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with the side of space on which they could act more fluently with their dominant hands. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis and provide evidence for the perceptuomotor basis of even the most abstract ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

Based on that, I don't see this paper leading to the conclusions claimed in the article.

[cleanhippie]

7. Your repeated use of "desicion" and "descion making" makes me think otherwise.

But whatever. I just wanted to know because I have no desire to debate that old, tired and busted argument.