[FRIAM] All hail confirmation bias!

Mon Jul 29 00:00:01 EDT 2019

Eric, 

Can you direct me to any particular passages or chapters in the book?   I am unlikely to read the whole thing, but I want to know your thought. 

I rummaged around in the Books.google site for a bit and found this: 

If so, I don’t think I was saying anything this profound.  I was just trying to get in on the ground floor of the “skepticaller-than-thou” battle I saw developing.  

There are either, or there are not, consistencies in our experiences, in my experiences, in your experiences, and in those we represent to one another.  If there are not, then we have nothing to talk about, and all talk is meaningless.  If there are,  If somebody cares to call these, the world, then all power to them.  To announce that something is “the world” or “the real” or “true” or “exists outside experience” is only to announce that someday the speaker believes people will come to agree on it, the way we have come to agree on so many things in the last 300 years of science.  If we share that belief, that’s one heluva heuristic, and it is the heuristic that makes science possible, but it is, after all, only a heuristic.  I deplore a skepticism that drinks only 9/10ths of the potent, and then puts the glass down, burps, and walks away with a smug look on its face.

Nick  

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2019 5:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] All hail confirmation bias!

I think Ortega y Gasset had things to say about that in Man and Crisis.

I haven’t read enough to know yet whether I think his take is important.  But it would be hard to find someone who picked up the question in terms more identical to those that Nick uses below to frame it.

Eric

> On Jul 28, 2019, at 3:23 PM, Nick Thompson < <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 

> While we're getting rid of concepts, let's just get rid of this foolish, unsubstantiated concept, "the world."  What sort of heuristic is THAT? 

> 

> N

> 

> Nicholas S. Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University 

>  <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

> 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Friam [ <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A 

> Smith

> Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 11:41 AM

> To:  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> friam at redfish.com

> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] All hail confirmation bias!

> 

> I KNEW that confirmation bias was a problem and NOW this confirms it!

> 

> I TOLEYA!

> 

> On 4/24/19 5:25 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

>> Our World Isn't Organized into Levels 

>>  <https://philpapers.org/rec/POTOWI?ref=mail> https://philpapers.org/rec/POTOWI?ref=mail

>> 

>>> In my view, our adherence to the levels concept in the face of the 

>>> systematic problems plaguing it amounts to a failure to recognize 

>>> structure we’re imposing on the world, to instead mistake this as 

>>> structure we are reading off the world. Attachment to the concept of 

>>> levels of organization has, I think, contributed to underestimation 

>>> of the complexity and variability of our world, including the 

>>> significance of causal interaction across scales. This has also 

>>> inhibited our ability to see limitations to our heuristic and to 

>>> imagine other contrasting heuristics, heuristics that may bear more 

>>> in common with what our world turns out to actually be like. Let’s 

>>> at least entertain the possibility that the invocation of levels can mislead scientific and philosophical investigations more than it informs them. I suggest that the onus is on advocates of levels of organization to demonstrate the well-foundedness and usefulness of this concept.

> 

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