Lots of people hum and haw and get things totally wrong. The question is not how fast you jump but how well prepared the ground of your thought was for the situation.
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
#32The 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, this is an evolutionary adaptation. Even long ago the world had too many stimulus and we develop patters of how to handle different types of situations. This is talked about extensively in the book, "Thinking, fast and slow". In today's world, the world is infinitely complex. No one has time (or the desire, frankly) to do appropriate research on a single issue let alone all the issues that need considered. I'd bet that almost no one did 20+ hours of research reading about mRNA vaccines and FDA clinical trial data before decided to take or not take the vaccine. Everyone picked someone to trust whether that was the FDA or social media or news media and then got on with their life. And generally, once we find a "trusted" source, we tend to trust them for everything regardless of lack of evidence or contradiction. Humans have a deep survival instinct of having packs and trusting in the pack to protect them. Everyone just wants to get on with their busy life and not have to worry about all of this, whatever it is.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#33Conspiracy 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…
> Conspiracy theories aren't 100% irrational.
The term is often used to refer to implausible "theories" that make very strong claims, but have zero supporting evidence and make zero testable predictions.
Of course, it's true that people conspire all the time.
Implausible "theories" that make strong claims are exciting and entertaining. They're fun to play with. They become a problem when they go viral, among groups of people with limited critical thinking skills.
The internet has been responsible for this, by democratising information. Anyone who failed at school can still look up shifty research papers online, misunderstand them, and not not know how to evaluate the evidence.
This is a social pandemic, and I have no idea what the cure is. But I'm certain the cure isn't more censorship.
> you can always point to incredibly large groups of people who believe some facts that you perceive to be incorrect.
Hardly any propositions about the world are "mathematically rigorous" - there's nearly always a big chunk of judgement needed to decide the truth of a proposition. That doesn't mean that all judgements have equal value; some beliefs are "wronger" than others. There seem to be large groups of people with opinions that are screamingly, obviously, completely wrong, and as close to 100% irrational as makes no difference.
Some "conspiracy theories" lack adequate supporting evidence, but are at least arguable. For example, it's a fact that in the past, groups of people have been given vaccines that were deliberately contaminated by the manufacturer. It's therefore not unreasonable to ask for evidence that this hasn't happened in the case of e.g. COVID vaccines.
I prefer to reserve the term "conspiracy theory" for that class of opinions that is obviously completely batshit.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#34It's a "Jump to Conclusions Mat". You see, it is a mat that you put on the floor, and it has different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#35people underestimate the cost of dwelling on problems. There is great value to coming to conclusions quickly.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#36"Jumpers," as described mostly just lacked a fear of consequences of being wrong and were presented with an incentive to guess. Not to be conspiratorial, but one can't help but notice a recent preoccupation in mainstream outlets with pathologizing conspiracy theorists, dissenters, and now, "jumpers." Referencing Khaneman and Tversky's "system 1 and system 2" from their bestseller Thinking Fast and Slow without credit…
> Not to be conspiratorial, but one can't help but notice a recent preoccupation in mainstream outlets with pathologizing conspiracy theorists, dissenters, and now, "jumpers."
No conspiracies needed. QAnon type conspiracies are more visible than ever (as they get blown up on social media) and personally I've seemed to notice a pretty big uptick in 'uncle so and so went off the deep end so we had to cut off communication' type stories.
This increase in attention feeds news stories about conspiracy adherents (and anybody that can be lumped in with them, even if it's not warranted).
> maybe on closer inspection and thoughtful consideration it resembles propaganda to ignore your instincts, trust the narrative, and provides blunt tools for being suspicious of others who don't
This is almost all "news" nowadays. Antifa is running the left, QAnon is running the right, somebody is out to get you and ruin the American way of life and we're going to tell you who the bad people are if you just tune in for our next segment.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#37Conspiracy 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 though…
The "fake" moon landings is an interesting example; although the number of direct eye-witnesses is tiny, there are thousands of scientists and engineers at NASA that will queue-up to testify they really happened, and nobody who actually knows anything will deny it.
But the affirmers are all people in white lab-coats, and many people automatically distrust anyone in a white lab-coat. No "ordinary people" went to the moon and witnessed it themselves. I believe you could pick out the lunar lander from Earth, using a BIG telescope, as a small dot. But no amateur stargazer could do that. So all the affirmative testimony comes from a group of people who were all working for the same team.
So if you don't trust that team, there's no reliable evidence against the CT. (There's no evidence for it either; but if you don't trust the people who know, then to doubt seems rational)
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#38"Jumpers," as described mostly just lacked a fear of consequences of being wrong and were presented with an incentive to guess. Not to be conspiratorial, but one can't help but notice a recent preoccupation in mainstream outlets with pathologizing conspiracy theorists, dissenters, and now, "jumpers." Referencing Khaneman and Tversky's "system 1 and system 2" from their bestseller Thinking Fast and Slow without credit…
I've always felt like the belief in a large group of "conspiracy theorists" is probably one of the biggest "conspiracy theories".
A friend of a relative is an apparent flat earther - my relative is always saying things like "oh you wouldn't believe what this guy thinks, he says the world is actually shaped like a UN map, what a goof". In this situation, which of the two is actually the more gullible? From the situations I hear described, it's pretty clear the guy just likes to tease, and enjoys the "intellectual exercise" - for some value of intellectual - of tearing down commonly held truths by providing alternatives, even if they are silly. I've seen the same thing with moon landing and 9/11. People like to use these as strawmen about look at all the nuts out there, we need to control what people can read, but this is just an excuse for shutting down opinions they don't like.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#39Conspiracy theories are a manifestation of skepticism. One insight recently in the political theater is to determine what your audience is skeptical of. Everyone is skeptical of something, and these biases, when pinpointed, can be illuminating. On any topic you can split skepticism into groups. Are you more skeptical of government? The pharmaceutical industry? Corporations? Which?
> Conspiracy theories are a manifestation of skepticism.
They're a manifestation of biased skepticism. Conspiracy theorists tend to be skeptical of everything except their own favorite conspiracy theories.
Re: People who jump to conclusions show other kinds of thinking errors
#40Conspiracy 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…
I think the problem is that people don’t follow through their thinking or double check their facts, leading to flights of fancy.
This is why Occam’s razor is such a useful tool. Suppose your conspiracy is correct. Now how many things do you have to explain to make this conspiracy work? If it’s too many, maybe your ideas are wrong and you need a simpler answer.