People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
scientificamerican.com
People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
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Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#2The article opens with a couple of examples of people allegedly not doing research:
1. Most people make two trips or fewer to a dealership before buying a car
2. when picking a doctor, many individuals use recommendations from friends and family rather than consulting other health care professionals or “formal sources” such as employers, articles or Web sites
And, of course, the last person I would look to for objective advice on buying a car is a car salesman! Surely people have a good idea what they are going to buy, what they are prepared to spend and how they are expecting to finance it etc before going to a dealership for the car?
Ditto too the doctor; if you are searching for a doctor, do you go and cold call other doctors for an opinion? Or read the blurb on a website provided by or sponsored by the employer? Its much more straightforward to ask people you know which doctors they recommend.
Is the subtext of the starting examples meant to be saying that people should defer to car salesman and should ask doctors rather than friends and family to recommend other doctors?
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#3The article opens with a couple of examples of people allegedly not doing research: 1. Most people make two trips or fewer to a dealership before buying a car 2. when picking a doctor, many individuals use recommendations from friends and family rather than consulting other health care professionals or “formal sources” such as employers, articles or Web sites And, of course, the last person I would look to for object…
People may spend 3-4x as much time trying out and choosing a car as buying an expensive TV, even though the car costs ~20X more and more research, haggling, etc. on the car could be worth 3 TVs, but more on the TV could only be like at most .2 TVs.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#4The article opens with a couple of examples of people allegedly not doing research: 1. Most people make two trips or fewer to a dealership before buying a car 2. when picking a doctor, many individuals use recommendations from friends and family rather than consulting other health care professionals or “formal sources” such as employers, articles or Web sites And, of course, the last person I would look to for object…
I agree. As a person that has bought many new cars I try to spend as little time at the dealer as possible. I would assume most savvy buyers do as well. Getting a hard sell or bad information from an aggressive associate is not high on my list of things to do.
Same goes for doctors. I need a recommendation for somebody in my area that I can work with. If a close friend likes a doctor there is probably a decent chance I will like them as well. I can also google them and things like that before deciding to go. It also isn’t a lifetime commitment. If I don’t like them I can change doctors very easily.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#5The article opens with a couple of examples of people allegedly not doing research: 1. Most people make two trips or fewer to a dealership before buying a car 2. when picking a doctor, many individuals use recommendations from friends and family rather than consulting other health care professionals or “formal sources” such as employers, articles or Web sites And, of course, the last person I would look to for object…
Perhaps the author jumped to a conclusion that number of dealership visits correlates with informedness.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#6The article opens with a couple of examples of people allegedly not doing research: 1. Most people make two trips or fewer to a dealership before buying a car 2. when picking a doctor, many individuals use recommendations from friends and family rather than consulting other health care professionals or “formal sources” such as employers, articles or Web sites And, of course, the last person I would look to for object…
Yeah the car example did not resonate with me either.
(a) I hate car shopping, in particular any interactions with the salespeople
(b) I have the internet
(c) I don't believe there is some special deal I can unlock, I think that is a mistaken belief that many dealers like people to hold so they can make them feel like their getting them a special deal, when in reality the "negotiations" are just a bit of theatre
(d) I value my time and it's not worth a few $100 to drive all over looking for deals
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#7Conspiracy theories aren't 100% irrational. It's irrational to assume that they are all 100% wrong and don't contain any correct or at least useful information. People do make plans together and influential people do tend to hang out together... It's not illogical to assume that they hatch plans to maintain the social order in a way that works for them and that some of these plans will be at the expense of the general population. Of course saying this isn't mathematically rigorous but each person who reads this should know axiomatically from first hand observation that rich people do hang out together and that rich people are generally good at implementating their visions/plans (how else they got rich?).
This kind of logic is acceptable because decisions about one's life can never be made on the basis of mathematically rigorous information because you very rarely come across such kind of information in your day to day life. To suggest that the mainstream consensus is always accurate is to deny past history and present reality. No matter your religion, you can always point to incredibly large groups of people who believe some facts that you perceive to be incorrect.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#8The article opens with a couple of examples of people allegedly not doing research: 1. Most people make two trips or fewer to a dealership before buying a car 2. when picking a doctor, many individuals use recommendations from friends and family rather than consulting other health care professionals or “formal sources” such as employers, articles or Web sites And, of course, the last person I would look to for object…
People may spend 3-4x as much time trying out and choosing a car as buying an expensive TV, even though the car costs ~20X more and more research, haggling, etc. on the car could be worth 3 TVs, but more on the TV could only be like at most .2 TVs.
People don't value money linearly. You wouldn't pay an additional $10 for a cup of filter coffee, but most people wouldn't think twice about paying an additional $10 for a car. But it's the same amount of money, so surely that's irrational in that situation.
In other situations it makes complete sense. If you have $1M, losing $10 isn't nearly as big a deal as when those $10 were all you had.
If you try to apply game theory to economics you apply a utility function to money to model this, and a logarithmic function maps quite well to how humans think about money.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
People may spend 3-4x as much time trying out and choosing a car as buying an expensive TV, even though the car costs ~20X more and more research, haggling, etc. on the car could be worth 3 TVs, but more on the TV could only be like at most .2 TVs.
People don't value money linearly. You wouldn't pay an additional $10 for a cup of filter coffee, but most people wouldn't think twice about paying an additional $10 for a car. But it's the same amount of money, so surely that's irrational in that situation. In other situations it makes complete sense. If you have $1M, losing $10 isn't nearly as big a deal as when those $10 were all you had. If you try to apply game…
> But it's the same amount of money, so surely that's irrational in that situation.
Not necessarily, since many people buy coffee way more often than they buy a car.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#10Conspiracy theories aren't 100% irrational. It's irrational to assume that they are all 100% wrong and don't contain any correct or at least useful information. People do make plans together and influential people do tend to hang out together... It's not illogical to assume that they hatch plans to maintain the social order in a way that works for them and that some of these plans will be at the expense of the genera…
People conspire all the time, so there's bound to be conspiracy theories that are true. I think it's telling that the author uses the moon landing as an example, which to me seems to be among the least likely (but somewhat popular) theories. All credible evidence points to the moon landing actually happening, making it a good candidate for this study. Simply labeling that "endorse conspiracy theories" is a bit thoughtless though.