....but look how long they last! Those are a couple of Kings and a Queen ago.
pet peeves...
- Thread starter rpludwig
- Start date
jssailem
SBO Weather and Forecasting Forum Jim & John
- Oct 22, 2014
- 21,663
I just wanted to share for @Gene Neill
Not to excited I suspect... They were plentiful in 1960's and suspect can be found in the drawers of many British homes gathering dust. Now if you found a "Quarter Farthing" 1853 proof it might fetch 1000 pounds or about $1300.
I dunno, I've never felt a numismatist yet.
My pet peeve are parents, peers and a culture that encourage non-thinking. I actually know people who think it is a bad idea to think too much and work to avoid a reputation as intelligent. I have met people who I honestly believe put effort into avoiding critical thinking.
It is more important to fit in than to be independent in thought.
-Will (Dragonfly)
It is more important to fit in than to be independent in thought.
-Will (Dragonfly)
re: serrated edges on a coin: I recently got sucked into a FB did you know article.... The ridges were originally to allow detection of shaving the coins material away. Apparently to mint additional coins of your own, or raw material value alone. Now a matter of tradition.
To be a little more specific, there are well known cognitive errors that humans tend to make. These are errors of logic and perception. Sometimes times they are referred to as cognitive biases. Some of my "favorites":
The confirmation bias: "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest" popularly known as the bubble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
The fundamental attribution error: An example: Good things happen to me because I work hard for them and earn them, bad things happen to me because of bad luck or what other people do to me. When good things happen to you, you got lucky. When bad things happen to you, its your own fault. Some variation of this error underlies the various isms, racism, sexism, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
The conjunction fallacy: The belief it is more probable for 2 unrelated low probability events to occur than for either of them to occur individually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy
There are many more and some variations on a theme. For a listing of the check out this Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
jssailem
SBO Weather and Forecasting Forum Jim & John
- Oct 22, 2014
- 21,663
As I read through the list of “biases” I became overwhelmed by the similarity yet parsing differences. So much so the it became difficult to remember/differentiate the labeling of each bias. I know from economics that the use is to help reduce the incidence of errors due to decisions. Yet the process of error reduction by eliminating one bias seems to open up the occurrence of another bias.
It leads me to wonder about the utility of labeling this multitude of elements that influence thinking both conscientiously and unconscientiously.
It leads me to wonder about the utility of labeling this multitude of elements that influence thinking both conscientiously and unconscientiously.
"Simon and Garfunkel"
I thought I was the one who came up with that. Especially now with the Medicare enrollment period upon us again. Yea I'm old.I now get revenge by putting my phone on mute and answer YES. They robotically called me, now I delay their phone lines and live operators.
This reminded me of when we were kids with a lot of time and little money. One summer we discovered that we could grind the edges off of pennies and they would pass for dimes in the local Pepsi machines. Being true entrepreneurs we drank the Pepsi, stole the returnable bottles, turned them in at the local store and made more fake dimes. The local Pepsi factory caught on soon and removed all of the nearby machines. We responded by visiting the local Pepsi bottling plant and found there, out front, the last remaining Pepsi machine in our area. We cleaned it out and they hid that one also. We searched around the plant and found that there were no more machines available, but the bottling plant workers told us we could have all the Pepsi we wanted just walk in and take it. Took all the adventure out of it. Never had another Pepsi after that. Sorry for hijacking the thread...
Don't I know it.
I'll give you another cognative bias that, as parents, my wife and I struggled over with our children. When our children were very young, we began to teach them things about the world, as any parent would. They were little sponges for the wisdom we dispensed, as most children are. Then they had to leave our wise company for part of the day to learn more "wisdom" at school. Cool
. Just as any child would do, they brought their newly acquired knowledge home to share with their beloved parents. "Did you know blood is blue inside your body, but when it hits the oxygen it turns red?"No, my son. That is a falsehood and a common misconception. Blood is red. The paleness and relative tone of your skin makes your veins look blue under your skin, but the blood inside them is always red." Explained his wise mother, who was a cardiac nurse.
"Nah ah! You're wrong. Blood only turns red when the oxygen touches it." demands our son.
"Son, blood carries oxygen inside your body. It is lighter red when it has lots of oxygen and darker red when it is low on oxygen, like when it is returning to the heart and lungs to pickup more, but it never has no oxygen. Even if it did have no oxygen, it still wouldn't be blue."
"You're wrong, Mommy. My teacher told us blood is blue and that's right."
The bias I'm talking about, and there were many examples to wrestle with, is the I learned it first bias. What we learn first is what we believe to be right. It takes a lot of convincing and a very trusted authority to correct an erronious I learned it first bias. So, try to be the first to teach you children accurate truths. It will make it harder for the We are the party of... and our beliefs are truths bias to lead them astray.
-Will (Dragonfly)
Ah yes, the dreaded "teacher is right" BS. In third grade, I had a teacher tell me "Navajo" was pronounced Nav-a-joe, not Nav-a-hoe. I disagreed, and cited "Gila monster" lizard. "Pronounced gee-la" she said. I disagreed, and cited La Jolla. "That's just like it's written, La Jolla, not La Hoya".
At this point I was stunned, and I walked to the back of the room and got the dictionary, showing her the correct pronunciations. Without batting an eyelash, she told me the dictionary was wrong!
At this point I was stunned, and I walked to the back of the room and got the dictionary, showing her the correct pronunciations. Without batting an eyelash, she told me the dictionary was wrong!
Ah, John, this is the stuff of dissertations and academic careers.
The academic career game is find something that has been done and then refine it, redefine it, and rename it. Sometimes in the process something new will be found. Mostly though, we just deepen our understanding.
There are 2 realms from which we are not free where knowing about cognitive biases and heuristics is valuable: politics and advertising. Both of these endeavors rely on "gut feelings" that sense of an idea just feeling right. When we get that feeling, it is time to critically examine the feeling and the thoughts that lead to that feeling. Frequently a close examination of the statement(s) that lead to that feeling will reveal any of a number of cognitive biases or cognitive errors. And when we allow these cognitive biases to drive our personal decisions we will seldom end up somewhere good.
That would be an example of the Recency and Primacy effect. We tend to hear the first idea and if it sits right, the confirmation bias kicks in and all we hear is supporting evidence. Sometimes. The other effect is the Recency effect we respond to the last message we hear and ignore earlier conflicting information. We just went through a brutal 2 weeks of that.
It is not just the "teacher is right" it is the effect of an authority figure. Anyone remember the TV Show, Father Knows Best? Because humans are biased towards believing authority figures, it is critically important that we have leaders that we can trust and are honest. Let's see, Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the sinking of the Lusitiana, come quickly to mind.
Don't even get me going on this one. This is extremely popular right now among boat owners who want to convert to LiFePO4 batteries but, read only what they want to hear. They then feel victimized, by evil manufacturers, when they have a useless 3-10k pile of rubble staring at them...
This subject is fresh on my mind because I have a very expensive LiFePO4 battery on the test bench right now that is a pile-o-scrap. It is only a pile-o-scrap because the owner read only what he wanted to hear, not necessarliy because the battery sucked. What sucked was the owners inability to read and comprehend everything "the whole story".
It is never pleasant to explain to someone expecting 2000+ cycles from a battery bank that their $4800.00 investment is scrap after little more than 200 cycles... You can lead the horse to water.........
The internet is interesting in that many folks will bounce from source to source grabbing the info they want to hear and ignoring the info they don't want to hear. It has allowed folks to find "confirmation" among peers for doing stoopid things... It is what they don't want to hear, the part they simply ignore, that bites them in the arse every time.
Coming from a science background I go at everything in the complete opposite manner. I read what I don't want to hear first then must prove to myself that the good stuff can actually be supported or actually work. I don't know how we got to this point but, we did...