Sure, these are simply heuristics..."rules of thumb" approximations, there are brazillions of them. I doubt there are many people here who aren't fairly familiar with the abstract concept.
What I mean by the "protected" part is that even when talking to someone who is familiar with the abstract concept, who will readily acknowledge the existence of heuristics and inherent fallibility, even within themselves (while discussing the topic in the abstract that is), but when the topic is something else (a concrete topic like politics for example), and heuristics clearly assert themselves in the conversation, people will get "agitated" if the topic of heuristics is brought up.
Hmm, so I'd say the vast majority of people are not familiar with cognitive biases or logical fallacies at all. Just look at advertising and politics, especially anything to do with medicine.
I learned long ago that pointing out falacies is not a winning approach to changing someone's mind so I agree with what you mean by agitated. It's also really interesting your point about people acknowledging the fault in general but can't apply it to themselves.
My point was it's probably such a protected/strong part of thought because long ago those rules were generally really useful for survival. Overriding them now is possible but takes a lot of work.
> Hmm, so I'd say the vast majority of people are not familiar with cognitive biases or logical fallacies at all.
But would you say that applies to the userbase of HN?
> My point was it's probably such a protected/strong part of thought because long ago those rules were generally really useful for survival. Overriding them now is possible but takes a lot of work.
Agreed, but if no one is even willing to acknowledge the existence of the phenomenon, what should one do?
Yes, I'd say most people on HN are aware of this stuff. I guess that's why I comment here more than other places.
> Agreed, but if no one is even willing to acknowledge the existence of the phenomenon, what should one do?
It's just a slow process of education I guess to take a scientific approach to knowledge seeking. Discussions should be about seeking the truth, agreeing with the other person when you agree, questioning your own assumption etc.
I wasn't taught logical fallacies in school for example - I'd be for teaching critical thinking in school at an early age to help with the above.
Most people see views opposed to their viewpoint as an attack and cornering someone with logic to show they're wrong does not work because they're not genuinely seeking the truth anyway.
> Yes, I'd say most people on HN are aware of this stuff.
In the abstract (in principle), sure. But how consistently do people exercise this awareness during real-time behavior?
> It's just a slow process of education
Ideally. But often, but it often seems like many individuals and communities very much prefer taking the shortcut of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". Or in other words, those other people suffer from that, but not us. No siree Bob, we are fully conscious and logical, at all times.
You and I seem largely in agreement, but I wonder if we agree on how well we here at HN, as a community, execute these principles. In my experiences, most people are "not very fond" of even discussing the topic.
> You and I seem largely in agreement, but I wonder if we agree on how well we here at HN, as a community, execute these principles. In my experiences, most people are "not very fond" of even discussing the topic.
My feelings are people here will tolerate a few anecdotes (as long as you're not pushing it as absolute truth) but generally if you post appeals to nature, appeals to popularity etc. it'll be challenged and downvoted pretty quick.
Certain topics seem worse than others though e.g. eating meat, x10 programmers, job interview processes and programming language comparison topics are full of anecdotes and fallacies with bold statements.
What I mean by the "protected" part is that even when talking to someone who is familiar with the abstract concept, who will readily acknowledge the existence of heuristics and inherent fallibility, even within themselves (while discussing the topic in the abstract that is), but when the topic is something else (a concrete topic like politics for example), and heuristics clearly assert themselves in the conversation, people will get "agitated" if the topic of heuristics is brought up.