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Ch. 8: The Enemy Within ("Good Thinking" - by Guy P. Harrison)

lease use this thread to discuss the above chapter.

In this chapter, Harrison talks about the three most prevalent forms of bias. Confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and something called anchor bias, which I'd never heard of. Basically humans tend to rely a lot on the first piece of information available when first forming opinions or making judgments. It doesn't matter if better information comes along later. We're sort of anchored to that first bit.

I was reading Steven Novella's article recently about a new study that shows that some people are better at bullshit detecting than others. The article is definitely worth a read, but the main reason for bringing it up has to do with something Novella says when he first heard about the study.

"I try to be especially careful when a study seems to support what I already believe . . ."

This cracked me up because only a skeptic would think like this. Novella here is intuitively guarding against confirmation bias. I love it.

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... ecting-bs/

unhand me spirit of jazz, i have a book to read and discuss!!

Jazz, you say? What are you listening to?

oh ATM it's all rhodes

Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans and (no rhodes) Art Tatum also some Bird and also a lot of guys no one has heard of that nevertheless are great great players.

i've been trying to learn the keyboard, after a lifetime of playing guitar, it's wonderful to be on an instrument where i have so little familiarity so i cant fall back on existing knowledge so much, have to hear the harmony and reach for it, and it is there.

Michael Hedges would compose his pieces in a different tuning each time to accomplish the same break from pre learnt patterns, a tricky way to force yourself to listen and reach.

Hedges is pure inspiration, a force of nature. have you heard this ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4AysS-WN0A

straight out of the holy of holies

He talks about the tuning thing here and it's wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETmeXyaZLYQ

geo wrote:Confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and anchor bias

We have a fine petri dish of these fallacies cultivating right now in the thread on Gretta Vosper - Atheist Christian.

In this thread, those who assume Jesus Christ was an historical individual systematically confirm their anchored motivated fallacy, by ignoring the abundant evidence that refutes their view and misreading the shreds that support them.

Flann accuses me of fallacious methods for arguing that Jesus is a myth. My assumptions that are at work in this debate are that modern science has an accurate method to understand reality, and that claims which contradict scientific knowledge are false. I am very happy to admit I am consciously and deliberately motivated by effort to confirm these anchoring principles.

By contrast, the anchor that is pulling the true believers to the bottom is that somehow the traditional magical supernatural interventionist God is real.

Praise the Lord He made Confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and anchor bias just so people could more easily continue to believe in His precious Son, one of the many dying/rising god-men of antiquity.

youkrst wrote:oh ATM it's all rhodes

Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans and (no rhodes) Art Tatum also some Bird and also a lot of guys no one has heard of that nevertheless are great great players.

i've been trying to learn the keyboard, after a lifetime of playing guitar, it's wonderful to be on an instrument where i have so little familiarity so i cant fall back on existing knowledge so much, have to hear the harmony and reach for it, and it is there.

Michael Hedges would compose his pieces in a different tuning each time to accomplish the same break from pre learnt patterns, a tricky way to force yourself to listen and reach.

Hedges is pure inspiration, a force of nature. have you heard this ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4AysS-WN0A

straight out of the holy of holies

He talks about the tuning thing here and it's wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETmeXyaZLYQ

Wow it's good to hear from someone who's heard of Michael Hedges. I'm spinning his album, Aerial Boundaries right now in honor of you bringing him up. Thanks for that!

I didn't know all that about his different tunings. My wife and I saw him in Ashland, Ore. about six months or a year before his death. That song, Aerial Boundaries is the one that pops into my head on a fairly regular basis.

But my, that man could play the guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIN13aDbCc

Other than that, I have quite a few jazz albums in my collection. Lately I'm trying to play the drum part of Time Out by Dave Brubeck. It's in 5/4 time signature, which kind of messes with my brain. We should start a jazz thread.

Robert Tulip wrote:

geo wrote:Confirmation bias, motivated reasoning and anchor bias

We have a fine petri dish of these fallacies cultivating right now in the thread on Gretta Vosper - Atheist Christian.

In this thread, those who assume Jesus Christ was an historical individual systematically confirm their anchored motivated fallacy, by ignoring the abundant evidence that refutes their view and misreading the shreds that support them.

Flann accuses me of fallacious methods for arguing that Jesus is a myth. My assumptions that are at work in this debate are that modern science has an accurate method to understand reality, and that claims which contradict scientific knowledge are false. I am very happy to admit I am consciously and deliberately motivated by effort to confirm these anchoring principles.

By contrast, the anchor that is pulling the true believers to the bottom is that somehow the traditional magical supernatural interventionist God is real.

I never thought about it, but most of us grew up with the assumption that Jesus was a real person and even if we've deconstructed all of the mythical stuff—the son of God, miracle maker, etc.—I am still inclined to believe that Jesus was a real person and that all the myths were subsequently grafted on to him. This could be the anchor bias at work, I don't know. I suspect that we just don't have enough data to make a strong argument either way. All the mythical motifs seem obvious, but as to Jesus being a living breathing person, there's not much to go on. I simply don't care enough about the issue to get too riled up about it.

What instrument does Michael Hedges play? The sounds he generates cannot be from a guitar!