[OT] State of the internet

[J. Landman Gay]

On 10/3/12 12:04 PM, Timothy Miller wrote:

> Maybe the presumption that regression lines go on to infinity
> represents a universal human cognitive bias. Humans are not rational
> creatures, though we like to think we are.

I'm sure it's a human trait. We are very good at pattern recognition, 
and a straight line is just another pattern.

Bob's comments about having the facts was partly right-on and partly 
not. I was reading an article yesterday that said we only "hear" facts 
that we agree with, and which reinforce our already formed views. That's 
why it is ineffective to present pure facts to counter emotionally-based 
opinions like religion or politics. You have to alter the bias first 
before you can use facts to reinforce your argument.

>
> I read an amusing article in Behavior and Brain Sciences. The gist:
> People are so bad at reasoning that many scientists wonder why they
> evolved to do it at all. If reasoning is usually wrong, then it would
> not likely have any reproductive value. One theory is that people
> don't reason to be right. They reason to win arguments for the sake
> of increasing their social status. That would explain 99% of
> political and religious conversations, wouldn't it?

The same article I read says that humans are mentally lazy. We need to 
choose what we consider because if we didn't, we'd expend all our energy 
evaluating things. So instead we find what works and presume from there. 
The problem with this is that sometimes what works most of the time 
doesn't always work universally.

I don't have a link to the article unfortunately because it came in 
through the RSS feeds I scan daily and it has now evaporated into the 
ether. But it was on Ars Technica yesterday.

> Conversely this is why talking heads on TV and experts commenting on
> the future state of the internet get it right about as often as a
> monkey with a dart board.

But given enough time they can reproduce Shakespeare. :)

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com