B.S.

Here's avideo of Jon Stewart interviewing Harry Frankfurt about his book On Bullshit (which you can read online for free here).


What do you think? Is not caring about whether you're telling the truth worse than deliberately lying?

Open-Mindedness

Here's an entertaining 10-minute video on open-mindedness, science, and paranormal beliefs.


I like the definition of open-mindedness offered by this video: it is being open to new evidence. This brings with it a willingness to change your mind... but only if new evidence warrants such a change.

Changing your mind has gotten a bum rap lately: flip-flopping can kill a political career. But willingness to change your mind is an important intellectual virtue that is valued by scientists.

Breaking Habits

"If you want to change a habit, …don’t try and change everything at once. Instead, figure out what the cue is, figure out what the reward is and find a new behavior that is triggered by that cue and delivers that same reward. "

— Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, on Fresh Air

Less Wrong has several great posts on effective techniques for breaking bad habits and replacing them with better ones:

• The Science of Rationality
• Scientific Self-Help: The State of Our Knowledge
• Build Small Skills in the Right Order
• How to Beat Procrastination

Here's a lengthy interview with the author quoted above on his book:

Practical Advice

How can we counteract these cognitive biases we're learning about?  Examining the way we think and becoming more aware of our biases is a good start, but is not in itself a solution.

One big point is to own our fallibility. Awareness of our limits and biases should lead us to lower our degree of confidence in many of our beliefs--particularly deeply held opinions and stances on controversial issues. Simply put, we should get in the habit of admitting (and sincerely believing) that there's a real chance that we're wrong.

Here are two other big, simple points I think make for some great practical advice:

1. Get Unfamiliar! Actively seek out sources that you disagree with. We tend to surround ourselves with like-minded people and consume like-minded media. This hurts our chances of discovering that we've made a mistake. In effect, it puts up a wall of rationalization around our preexisting beliefs to protect them from any countervailing evidence.
2. Focus on What Hurts! When we do check out our opponents, it tends to be the obviously fallacious straw men rather than sophisticated sources that could legitimately challenge our beliefs. But this is bad! We should focus on the best points in the arguments against what you believe. Our opponents' good points are worth more attention than their obviously bad points. Yet we often focus on their mistakes rather than the reasons that hurt our case the most.

Status Quo Bias

Lazy, inert humans:

• If it already exists, we assume it's good.
• Our mind works like a computer that depends on cached responses to thoughtlessly complete common patterns.
  
• NYU psychologist John Jost does a lot of work on system justification theory. This is our tendency to unconsciously rationalize the status quo, especially unjust social institutions. Scarily, those of us oppressed by such institutions have a stronger tendency to justify their existence.
• Jost has a new book on this stuff. Here's a video dialogue about his research:

Jock Math

Statistics in sports is all the rage lately.  Here are some links on the topic.

• Statistical analysis can justify counterintuitive decisions, like going for it instead of punting on 4th down... though don't expect the fans to buy that fancy math learnin'.
• There are a lot of odd statistical myths about what happens on the day of the Super Bowl that deserve to be debunked.
  
• "Realistic Announcer Shouting How Kevin Durant Making His Last 4 Shots Has No Bearing On Whether He Will Make Next Shot"
• "Cornell Drains Fun Out Of Cinderella Run By Explaining How On A Long Enough Timeline The Improbable Becomes Probable"

And here are some nice audio and video on statistical reasoning:

• That radio show I love recently devoted an entire episode to probability:
  
  
• That other radio show I love ran a great 2-part series on the screening for diseases called "You Are Pre-Diseased":
  
  Listen to Part 1
  Listen to Part 2
• Here's a cool visualization of the president's promise to cut $100 million from the U.S. budget:

Rationalizing Away from the Truth

A big worry that the confirmation and disconfirmation biases raise is the difficulty of figuring out what counts as successful, open-minded reasoning, versus what amounts to after-the-fact rationalization of preexisting beliefs. Here are some links on our tendency to rationalize rather than reason:

• Recent moral psychology suggests that we often simply rationalize our snap moral judgments. (Or worse: we actually undercut our snap judgments to defend whatever we want to do.)
• The great public radio show Radio Lab devoted an entire show to the psychology of our moral decision-making:
  
  
• Humans' judge-first, rationalize-later approach stems in part from the two competing decision-making styles inside our heads.
• For more on the dual aspects of our minds, I strongly recommend reading one of the best philosophy papers of 2008: "Alief and Belief" by Tamar Gendler.
  
• Here's a video dialogue between Gendler and her colleague (psychologist Paul Bloom) on her work:

Homework #3: Advertising

Homework #3 is due at the beginning of class on Monday, December 2nd. Your assignment is to choose an ad (on TV or from a magazine or wherever) and evaluate it from a logic & reasoning perspective.

• First, very briefly explain the argument that the ad offers to sell its product.
• Then, list and explain the mistakes in reasoning that the ad commits.
• Then, list and explain the psychological ploys the ad uses (what psychological impediments does the ad try to exploit?).
• Attach (if it's from a newspaper or magazine) or briefly explain the ad.

Hearsay

-via GraphJam

Mr. Crispino heard it through the purple monkey dishwasher:

Misidentification

Here's an excellent, short video explanation of the unreliability of memory that ends with a dog licking peanut butter off a guy's face:


And here's a more serious video (that we watched in class) on the tragedy of misidentifying a suspect:

Direct Experience

Here are two of my favorite videos on the internet. First, watch this:


Next, watch this:


Finally, here's an article on this issue. Still trust your direct experience?

Deoderant Norms

If you don't buy these products, you're being unnatural:

An Expert for Every Cause

Looking for links on appealing to authority? This is your post! First, here's an interesting article on a great question: How are those of us who aren't experts supposed to figure out the truth about stuff that requires expertise?

Not all alleged experts are actual experts. Here's a method to tell which experts are phonies (this article was originally published in the Chronicle of Higher Education).

We should judge experts who are into making predictions on how accurate their predictions turn out.  Well, most experts are really bad at predicting.

It's important to check whether the person making an appeal to authority really knows who the authority is. That's why we should beware of claims that begin with "Studies show..."

And here's a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Christopher Walken completely flunks the competence test.

Let's Be Diplomatic: Straw Figure

Here's some stuff on the straw man fallacy:

• Politicians love to distort their opponents' positions. Even Obama does it.
• Politicians aren't alone: we do it, too. Often we distort arguments for claims we disagree with without even realizing it. This is because we have trouble coming up with good reasons supporting a conclusion that we think is false, so we have a tendency to make up bad reasons and attribute them to our opponents.
• Hire your own professional straw man!
• Here's the Critical Thinker's video explanation of the straw figure fallacy:
  
  
• I recommend the Critical Thinker's podcast.
  

Begging the Hot

I couldn't resist giving you some stuff on begging the question:

• Here's a psychology paper (pdf) about the success of offering question-begging reasons to use a copier.  The psychologists dubbed these nonsense reasons "placebic information."
• Warning: my explanation of that study is a bit oversimplified.  Here's an excellent explanation of what the study actually showed in the service of a larger point: even the most careful of us unintentionally distort and oversimplify the results of scientific studies.
• Here's a video for Mims's logically delicious song "This is Why I'm Hot":

That's an Ad Hominem, You Jerk

Here are some links on the ad hominem (personal attack) fallacy:

• Sure, some critics of Obama are racist, but does that mean we can dismiss their arguments? As much as we might want to, logically, no we cannot!
• Some variants on the personal attack: tu quoque (hypocrite!) and guilt by association (she hangs around bad people!).
• I should note that tu quoque isn't always fallacious reasoning.
  
• "The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the ad hominem rejoinders!"
• Remember our rallying cry: "STUPID PEOPLE SOMETIMES SAY SMART THINGS."
  

Get to studying, you dodo-heads.

Child Abduction

Psychologist Alison Gopnik gave a great TED talk recently on how children are natural abductive reasoners; playing and making pretend is often about coming up with and testing various hypotheses. Here's the talk:

Gopnik's book, The Philosophical Baby, is great.

Breaking Bad Arguments

Here's that awesome video from the presentation on the ad hominem and appeal to force fallacies by Dan M., Devon, Jesse, Marisa, and Sonya. Tread lightly.

Inductioneering

Here are two dumb things about inductive arguments. First, a video of comedian Lewis Black describing his failure to learn from experience every year around Halloween:


Next, this stick figure comic offers a pretty bad argument. Why is it bad? (Let us know in the comments!)

That Beyoncé Video WAS Great...

Why doesn't Kanye give a toast to the tools?

Maybe Kanye should just eat some cookies.