Horizon Tonight 24Th February

[LazyGun]

On now. A potentially interesting documentary on intuition versus rational decision making, error and all the rest of it. Looks promising so far

[jeffa]

Glad to hear it. I've recorded it.

[pixie373]

I've got it on. Looks interesting...

[Old_Geezer]

Ah I shall turn over then, thanks.

[pastafreak]

Watching it now!

[pixie373]

I think 90% of decisions are intuition- but might change my mind by the end.

[Old_Geezer]

Interesting, they are presently claiming folk FAILED to see a fight and they are surprised. Surely common sense says these folk didn't FAIL they SUCCEEDED in concentrating on what they were supposed to concentrate on. it's those who saw the fight that FAILED in their task, and the surprise is that any of them recalled a fight, not that some didn't. The fight should not have been in their field of vision because their field of vision should have been little wider than the person they were chasing.

[pixie373]

I was surprised they didn't see it. A lot of them seemed to actually look.

[LazyGun]

@ OG i think that is exactly the point they were trying to make, OG; They linked it to a court case where the jury believed thought the Cop must have been lying, when experiment shows this phenomenon and how easy it is to miss what seems the most obvious things.

And the point about trying to say, think and walk was a good one, too. I more or less have to come to a standstill every time :)

[Old_Geezer]

True but I don't accept that method is the lazy one. Clearly it takes a lot out of you, more that letting your mental sub-routines check the existing data tables.

It isn't news to me that there is this 2 way decision making process. If fact when one's sub-routines start failing on one it becomes clear how small a role the conscious part actually plays. Can be very frustrating.

[LazyGun]

I must say I did enjoy this documentary, and Daniel Kahneman was impressive. I thought some of the simple illustrations about our propensity for cognitive bias and loss aversion particularly interesting.

[Old_Geezer]

I agree, but I'm unsure is it as surprising as was implied. For example take the monkeys. Is there not value in encouraging sellers to add stuff rather than remove stuff at the point of exchange ? One is friendly the other conning you, regardless of the actual gain/loss from the final deal. Building trust and encouraging extra has value, which is a rational reason for it to be selected. I confess I was surprised at the bubbly & ping-pong ball thing though. I'd hope I would be less affected than those shown.

[naomi24]

I've recorded it. Hopefully I'll get time to watch it today.

[LazyGun]

@ OG I think for a lot of people some of the principles about how the mind works might come as something of a surprise. And whilst I take you point about the experiment with the monkeys, it still does illustrate quite nicely the central point - that primates work on a strategy of loss avoidance and have done for a long time, so it is something that requires a lot of work to recognise and avoid, where appropriate.

The last comments were telling, in that for the first time and uniquely amongst primates and great apes we can actually recognise these logical fallacies and possibly redesign systems and things to take them into account.

[heathfield]

I wasn't sure whether to watch it or not. I didn't. There being nothing else I wanted to watch, I went to the pub. An intuitive or a rational decision?

[LazyGun]

LoL. Bit of both, probably :)

[naomi24]

I enjoyed it – although the conclusion that cognitive bias is prevalent in the human psyche came as no surprise. We see evidence of that in all walks of life – not least within the realms of religion and science.

[jim360]

And of course, in the general public. But at least scientists have made the effort to identify, investigate, and avoid it.

[naomi24]

I actually said ‘in all walks of life’ – but your oversight there combined with your immediate defence of science is a good example of cognitive bias. Your efforts to avoid it clearly aren’t working.

An experiment conducted with a team of experts in identifying terrorist threats, mixed with a few members of the public who knew nothing at all about the subject, was interesting. The only person to correctly identify the source of the hypothetical threat was an amateur because all the experts fell foul of cognitive bias.

[jim360]

"Cognitive bias applies to you." Where of course, I could say that preceding sentence to virtually everyone, including myself in the mirror. So I wasn't making some sort of personal attack, nor indeed was I "defending science". Still, it is a truism to say that the group of people who make the most effort to avoid cognitive bias is Scientists. That they don't always succeed is also true. But to make so much of the problem and to trumpet the benefits of amateurism over learning is just bizarre and runs at odds with the overwhelming set of evidence from recorded history.

The tone of your post was, I think, clear, and your follow-up makes it even more unambiguous. I'd be not entirely surprised if, immediately after watching this programme, a thought crossed your head along the lines of "Wow, I can't believe just how wrong everyone else is..." A programme like this really ought to undermine confidence in the ability of the individual to be trusted, rather than the collective.

[naomi24]

Oooo ... touchy. ;o)

That's some imagination you have.