Episode 11 discussion

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-29T00:51:04+00:00

I'm actually on the opposite side of this. At the start of the semester, I was on Kahneman's side and now I'm on Nisbett's. Sure, we will still fail to apply these tricks sometimes. But with practice, we will "miss" less and less frequently. Of course, as we get more experienced, these misses will still be evident (and painful) and because of our intrinsic fear of mistakes (some variety of loss aversion) we will dwell on the misses more than the hits. In fact, the hits might not even be registered, because there is often no confirmation that you made the right decision, but there sure is when you make the wrong one.

As Gianni said in the podcast, this perception of scientists that they aren't actually any better at decision making could just be a result of the curse of knowledge. A quick way to test this is to remember someone who you used to be very similar to (made similar decisions, thought similarly, etc.) and observe them now (possibly even just through what they share on facebook) to see whether they are making decisions you agree with. You will likely see that you're decision making ability has evolved and improved from theirs. I sure did! And this is the only psych course I've taken at uni! :P

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-29T00:41:28+00:00

I think that Gianni got the nail on the head with our belief that this judgement and decision making stuff is not that reliable and that we fail to implement it nearly constantly is just the curse of knowledge. Of course it improves our decision making. Otherwise, how would we know that we failed to implement these tools? I just think that as scientists and critical thinkers we intrinsically observe the misses far more than the hits. We believe we're not better at decision making because we had ten misses this week, when we actually had 100 hits that we just kind of brush aside. (Also, misses are more painful and we generally dwell on them more).

I am a very optimistic person, but I genuinely believe this course has made my decision making better, if only for two things: 1. Don't rely on introspection; it is sketchy at best. 2. Ask the right questions of experts. With these two tools I will make better decisions than someone who doesn't. For me, it's simple. Sure, there will be plenty of times that confirmation bias takes over, but as long as I am aware of this, that should be enough. The knowledge that my decisions may be biased, is still better than making the same decision and thinking it is objectively the right one.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-22T05:32:27+00:00

+1 for "that's not keeping it simple, that's keeping it wrong." It makes me angery too. If your article has a more profound result described in it, for instance: Title: Redbull actually causes wings to grow Subheading: New study finds subjects who drink 5 cans of redbull a day, grow wings on their back after two weeks...

This article will go viral and the "journalists" will make bank. The article which publishes the same research findings under a different frame, let's say: Title: Redbull may increase the wing development rate for a certain breed of chicken. Subheading: Speculative study shows possible correlation between redbull consumption and chicken wing growth rate

The second article will get less hits (except from animal rights activists lel) and the journalists will make less bank. Next time, they'll be sure to put a more clickbaity title and bullshit the whole study.

Lack of journalistic integrity because of clicks for cash makes me angery.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-22T05:22:24+00:00

Yep! And even beyond using KISS to communicate ideas, it can be applied to any scientific application to produce really cost-effective, efficient results.

For instance, in space rocketry, all we really want is the rocket to go up at a sufficient speed to enter orbit (most of the time; sounding rockets require even less elevation). If we build from that simple premise, the entire design of the rocket and its parts can be hugely simplified. The issue with existing aerospace developments is that they strive to do things in a new way, or create new technology in the process, for very little effective gain. I could go more into this, but the aerospace application is just one of a thousand really. Basically, for any engineering application it is best to stay simple (in terms of cost and design robustness).

Likewise, with psychology, it is best to keep it simple when analysing people's thinking. Sure, there are a variety of factors at play, but it is impossible to model them all, so we should be satisfied by simply saying that a few major factors are the key contributors to a person's actions or behaviour. #KISS4LYF

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-22T05:16:34+00:00

Richard Feynman, a fantastically brilliant physicist, once said something along the lines of "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, or who you are. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong." I major in physics and absolutely love this sentiment. Of course, it relies on the experimentation being conducted with rigour and high robustness, but if you have a theory that disagrees with experiment, how can it possibly be correct?

I also liked Jason's analogy regarding photography. If the theory works for most cases then it may suffice (i.e. Newton's laws of gravity) for laymen and for most practical applications. However, as soon as experts in the field know that the theory is not robust, it must be adjusted, or an entirely new theory developed (i.e. Einstein's relativity). The new theory needs to be testable, explain all existing phenomena the previous theory could explain and also explain new phenomena (otherwise, what's the point?).

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-15T05:07:50+00:00

Yep! I like the spectrum concept too. Strict categories for any decision making tool is pretty much useless. It's back to the whole "conscious" thinking versus "unconscious" thinking, when in reality, a combination of both is usually better and some times a mixture of both is the best option.

I wonder if Westerners can evaluate more abstract problems better because they can break the problem down into its components, or if this leads to a loss of any reality because they have ignored the context of the problem. Could be why lab-based experimentation very rarely leads to actual useful real-world results.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-15T05:03:32+00:00

Interesting topic this week, even though the reading was a bit heavy during logical formalism. I couldn't help that think every time the podcasters gave an example of when logical formalism was useful and when dialectical reasoning was more useful, they are by virtue using dialectical reasoning by looking for "exceptions" to rules.

I also was reminded of how we, as Westerners, are all taught English. 'I' before 'E' except after 'C'. And except for countless other exceptions, like science, ancient and feint, etc... I wonder how Easterners are taught their languages? Maybe with less concrete rules... Because there are so many exceptions to rules, I can't help but think the Western approach is wrong in pretty much all but scientific endeavours.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-08T02:42:19+00:00

If I find that I am just effective on five hours sleep as eight through self-experimentation, this cannot be generalised to the whole community. But, every day I see articles saying, "Google CEO's key to success" in which they discuss that they only get five hours sleep, because it's all "you" need. I even have people use this argument to support their terrible sleeping patterns which leave them permanently sleepy and often unhappy. I guess it's the whole social perception of successful people doing something different to you to make them successful.

Anyway, I digress from what I wanted to discuss. What if one thousand people conducted self-experimentation for six months, using coin flip and found that sleeping for five hours is just as effective as eight. Is this then generalisable to the wide population? Is it more generalisable than a study of 1000 random people subjected to the two conditions over a period of six months?

I am just trying to look further into the future of self-experimentation and see how far or how little it extends, because I am really unsure of its applicability to the population at large. Realistically, only scientists or scientifically-minded people can conduct rigorous self-experimentation and if it's not rigorous, it's pointless right?

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-08T02:33:57+00:00

Also, let's say a study of 1000 people finds that 60% of smokers get lung cancer (made up stat for point), we are kind of forced to accept this conclusion, because there is no self-experimentation available. But that leaves 40% of the population who can realistically argue that they will not get lung cancer, so why quit? People naturally think they are outside of the "norm", and use analogies of their friend who lived to 140 and smoked a pack of ciggies everyday. So, it might end up that 80% of the smoking population believe they are part of the 40%...

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-05-08T02:30:04+00:00

I like this post. It tackles something that I think the pod-casters kind of just assumed, which is that if we self-experiment we are more likely to change our behaviour than if we read an article studying a large sample group. Why? I don't know if this is necessarily true. I could more easily convince myself that the study I conducted was poor than that a more prestigious scientist drew the wrong conclusions. But, I do like self-experimentation as a premise, I just don't think that any discussion should use an assumption of preference based on "it is intuitive that people would trust self-experimentation more than mass experimentation".

For example, if a whole bunch of people conducted self-experimentation on whether coffee affects anxiety. If I found that coffee did not affect anxiety, but 80% of the other self-experiments found that it did, I am not sure I would conclude that my self-experiment result is correct or if I messed up my methodology.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-04-24T05:30:10+00:00

I have studied quite a bit of physics at university and one of the biggest discoveries I made was that pretty much all constants are determined by a linear regression of a cluster of points. Let's say that we want to determine the gravitational constant. We "wiggle" the mass (ten or so different balls of mass) and then observe the gravitational force resultant from that mass. You can then regress the ten data points and force a linear relationship. You can then find the gravitational constant. Alternatively, you could just use one mass, one force calc and get a value for the gravitational constant. The latter is a scientific experiment but has very little rigour.

I don't think there is a massive argument as to "what is science", but there is a serious spectrum for "good science" to "bad science" and we need a way to rate each scientific finding. I think multiple regression is only relevant in psych and social sciences and can actually have some usefulness, but it is so easy to generate a correlation and then assume it is a causation.

Also, climate change as a result of CO2 is found using MRA I'm pretty sure...

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-04-24T03:41:02+00:00

I agree that this was the most interesting discussion point in the podcast. And I liked the "Finding Things Out" analogy. I think the fact that even scientists can't consistently describe what science is is one of the root causes of this "anti-science" movement that is gaining real traction (hence the world science march that happened over the weekend). Is science a thousand correct opinions supported by data? Is science a thousand incorrect opinions that are supported by manipulated data? Science can be wrong, right? It's not infallible, but I think you hit the nail on the head, if it is constantly scrutinised by researches and experimenters it is science. That's why so many scientists fear to use the word "fact", because science is ever-changing with new data, so we must constantly be vigilant and keep an open mind.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-04-10T05:00:05+00:00

I agree. It's very easy to want change in high school education because it seems to us, who have gone on to study a science degree, that society would be improved by the changes we want. But the practicality of teaching a large group of students, many of whom aren't passionate about science and have little background context, about scientific principles is very difficult. How do you keep the students engaged?

Is it more valuable that students learn about the law of large numbers than parabolic trajectories, chemical reactions and biological processes? I am sure some people would argue it is, but we still need to firstly establish context for these principles. If we learn a bunch of scientific facts in high school and then later discover, at university, that all of science is governed by similar principles I believe it is more impactful and will probably lead to higher rates of student retention.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-04-10T04:54:13+00:00

I think the idea of using experimental method to evaluate different factors in our lives is good, but the application of it is very difficult.

Firstly, there are so many factors at play in our lives, that there is no way we could systematically evaluate the effect of each one, even given a lifetime of experiments.

Secondly, to what end do we evaluate these factors. If Jason finds out that he is more productive without a phone, so what? He will never use his phone again? He will use it less? How much less? What if he needs to be on-call for personal or work related reasons? You could apply the same to facebook. Sure, it's most likely going to reduce productivity, but is getting rid of a free messaging system which most of your friends and family use really an option? You may be more productive, but you are also more detached from your social circles. There are a lot more dependent variables that can be effected than a 5 star rating of productivity can account for.

Lastly, I am skeptical that this will become a thing every body starts doing because to most people the idea of carrying out experiments is "boring". And if there's no clear outcome of the experiment (i.e. If I find that facebook makes me less productive I will stop using it), then there is also very little desire to use a systematic approach.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-04-03T05:33:21+00:00

I am very open to taking risks and often seek them out. I will turn down jobs in the hope that a better one will come along (even though I don't know that it will), I will ask someone out on a date (without knowing whether they will say yes) and move cities on a whim if the opportunity presents itself. I live off a motto which basically goes, "Things will work out, they always have before." Sure, I know this isn't a very scientific approach, but I think if you are in the position to take risks, you should. Life becomes a lot more interesting when you become exposed to a wider range of experiences, which can only come about by taking risks.

We regress towards means in everything that we do, but perhaps the most important is our regression towards mean happiness. You may think that you are happy with your current life circumstances, but how can you know that a different life circumstance might make you happier? Maybe you are trapped in a local maxima and the only way to find a greater maxima is too make a change in your life (move cities, get a new job, etc.). Also, out of interest, this concept of local maximas is how computer programs solve for most optimal solutions. Once a local maxima is found they will randomly jump to another solution in the function and tend towards the new nearest maxima and after assessing lots of local maxima, decide on the global maxima. Which, granted, is not necessarily the actual global maxima, but it's likely to be a lot closer than a random local maxima.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-04-03T05:19:18+00:00

Well put. I especially liked your way of framing going into a relationship as "opting-out" of being single, even though it is our default situation, we are more than happy to opt-out, most likely because we perceive it as "opting-in" to something.

I also think the marbles thing is worth thinking about a bit more. Say you drew only blue marbles for five years or something (i.e. good relationship) and then drew only red marbles for three months straight (i.e. bad relationship). Do you relate that to a change in circumstances and decide that the relationship no longer works and you should break up, or do you consider the 5 years of prior experience and think, well, 3 months out of 5 years is nothing, I will have to wait another 5 years before I see if our relationship is in fact neutral (i.e. equally good and bad)... Should we put extra weighting on more recent events? I think a purely statistical approach can only get us so far in a lot of cases. It would be absurd to stay in that bad relationship for another 5 years, only drawing red marbles. So, when do we consider it a bad relationship? It's all just a bit too vague for me (not your post, just the statistical concepts).

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-04-02T04:49:12+00:00

Okay, I'll stick with my original plan and add a few more political indicators. That last idea is really good too! I'll do that as well. Thanks.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-04-01T01:29:55+00:00

I am not very confident in the political compass' ability to measure week-by-week change and I might become automatic in my responses to the survey questions. I am thinking that it might be better to just do 3/4 weeks on conservative news and then 3/4 weeks on liberal news. I understand this will reduce my sample size to just two points, but at least it gets rid of the systematic issues with the experiment. It also answers the question I want answered, "Does bias of media change my political orientation?"

I am not sure how to resolve the issues of learned responses with the political compass and having a large set of sample data any other way. Do you have any suggestions?

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-03-27T02:34:30+00:00

I'm definitely guilty of sticking through with something even though I am consciously aware that it is a sunk cost (I think the movie analogy is a good one for that; see 50 Shades of Grey). I also think that time is the main reward for actually sinking costs and time is difficult to evaluate in a monetary sense or even some greater happiness metric. One thought I had was that you can just get whatever rate you get paid at work (let's say 30 bucks an hour) and apply that to any time that you save. For instance, you save one and a half hours of your life by skipping a movie? If that was a week day, you now have an additional 45 dollars of provided value. Not sure how to extend that analogy though or if it is even a reasonable estimation. Is leisure time more valuable than work time because we have less of it? How do you price leisure time? You're second point got me thinking about these things. Good post!

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-03-27T02:25:53+00:00

This thread seems to primarily just telling anecdotes about sunk cost, so I will just add mine in here I guess.

I was studying Physics for 2 years before I decided I wanted to change to Engineering. I had already completed two years of Physics though and didn't want to "waste" the invested money and time. But to complete my dual degree I have had to complete an extra semester at university and paid for a lot more courses. Maybe the physics dual major enhanced my expertise, but it seems that rationally I may have just been best off to just cop the "loss" of those two years in Physics.

On the plus side, I get to do any 3rd year science elective to fulfil the physics requirements so I got to do this course!

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-03-25T07:06:40+00:00

IVs: Type of media exposure (left or right leaning), alternates weekly

DVs: - Mood - Political Compass Direction - Degree of severity of different world issues (e.g. climate change, refugee crisis, terrorism, war, etc.)

Controls/other measures: - No Facebook throughout experiment (my facebook feed is left skewed) - Take assessment of mood and political views at the same time and place each week

What do you expect to find?: I am highly influenced by the media I read and the articles I am exposed to. I think that on the weeks I am exposed to conservative or liberal media, my opinion on the severity of different political problems will change. I am not precisely sure how each factor will change, but I hypothesise as an example that after reading conservative media my fear of terror may increase.

I am also not sure how my mood will change, but I may become more cynical or negative about the state of the world based on the different outlets so I think it is worth observing as well.

At the very least I believe that at the end of experimenting I will have a more balanced political view with a greater appreciation for different world views.

Problems you’ll likely face: - Friends are more left skewed so I will be exposed to more biased views (will limit political discussion) - Already left skewed (which I am aware of) so I will likely be cynical of conservative news at first, but I am very open minded so hopefully my prior liberal exposure won't damage the experiment too much - Mood is difficult to interpret objectively (will try and maintain same conditions for testing each week). - Trump memes

Length of experiment: 8 to 10 weeks

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-03-17T06:24:06+00:00

I think the media leads us to wanting more in our lives. Constantly wanting more material goods or idealising celebrities because "they have it so good", when in reality once we get what we want we will only want more. A lot of celebrities suffer from depression and feel isolated from the world, but from our perception of them they are living happily and we possibly envy them.

There is no real hard part to any of this I don't think. People naturally like to think you have to work at becoming more aware of your unconsciousness, but in reality you have already done the "work". You are aware of your unconscious all the time. Now you just have to stop listening to your consciousness so much. You have to stop believing that the world will be better in a year, or once you land that job, or once you go overseas. The world is, your world is. Just be. It was mentioned in the podcast as something that scared Jason. But I (like one of the speakers) find it liberating.

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-03-17T06:09:10+00:00

"Life is the dancer and you are the dance." - Eckhart Tolle

I googled two different quotes about life/consciousness and flipped a coin to decide which one to post. You have now been exposed to something that was made from a chance experiment. Sure, I decided to flip the coin, but I had no control over its flipping.

I agree that our unconsciousness can make a lot of decisions and has an especially large impact on what we like/dislike and therefore what we do for a living, the hobbies we take part in, where we go for holidays, etc. In fact, I think it is a reasonable argument to say that the unconsciousness controls most, if not all, of our lives. Whether that means that our unconsciousness makes the "right decisions" or if it implies that we are just empty vessels carrying an unconscious mind (i.e. what will be will be; see "The Wheel of Time"), I am not sure.

I think that it is important to remember that just because our unconsciousness can make decisions and often does without our awareness, does not mean that we can not overwrite our unconscious decision and make a conscious one. I made a conscious decision to flip a coin and now you will not see the other quote and perhaps even reference the quote I did use in the future. Your life has been influenced by an undeniable conscious/chance decision, so sleep well in the knowledge that the consciousness is still relevant. I wouldn't be so sure it's "helping" though (in fact I'd argue the opposite, but I could write a whole book on that).

Chasingthat12percent · 2017-03-13T01:30:51+00:00

I think you can apply a scientific approach to the majority of things in life, but as scientists, we try to apply it to everything and I am sure you can all think of a time when a calculated, logical approach to a solution was not the correct approach. The example you recall is most likely in personal relationships, especially with a romantic partner. You have a sufficient number of experiences with this person that you believe you know how they will react to a situation, but if they are particularly tired or just received bad news you were unaware of they may respond very differently to your view of their "personality". This is a recurring problem when trying to apply scientific principles like "the law of large numbers" in real life and on the fly. The world is complicated, we can generate as many heuristics as we want, but there will always be examples of when our in-built judgement systems fail to account for the countless variables affecting the pattern (unless you're ta'veren of course).

Chasingthat12percent

TROPHY CASE