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Need for cognition

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Re: Need for cognition

#31

Post by reidjs »

topherPedersen wrote: post #3

Some people don't have this. A lot of people aren't very curious at all. Last night in Austin I saw a full self driving car from Cruise drive by with no driver while I was at a crosswalk. No one noticed or cared that a car just drove by with no one in it! It was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, and the people around me did not notice or care.

I’m not that impressed by self driving cars because while the tech is cool it’s not really solving anything in my personal life. A car is basically self driving when I pay someone else to drive me where I go - end result is the same, I get where I need to go without having to drive the car.

Re: Need for cognition

#32

Post by masswerk »

lelandfe wrote: post #25
civilized wrote: post #4

I clicked on "elaboration" and I feel myself about to go down the wiki rabbit hole... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaboration_likelihood_model

These are some of the worst graphics I've seen on Wikipedia, hah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elaboration_Likelihood_Mo... Looking like a high school Powerpoint presentation.

But I found this one neat (even with that awful, as in non-existent, letter spacing):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaboration_likelihood_model#/...

There was a time, when infographics used to be artistic…

Re: Need for cognition

#33

Post by auxi »

aradox66 wrote: post #30
vmoore wrote: post #21

Some people are just natural philosophers. I was always one, and an un-analyzed life gets drab very quickly, for me at least. I like to entertain various ideas without taking them too seriously. I like Stoicism which I find very useful, and eastern philosophies like Buddhism. Too easy to become over-zealous about both of those philosophies. A test of your own personal philosophy is when you encounter adversity. Do yo…

That's funny, I understand Buddhism to be about the pain caused by conceptualizing life and the importance of dropping an analytical frame.

I interpreted it as the pain being caused by experiencing one's own perceptions and the importance is put on conceptualizing life (the experiencing) and dropping the self :)

Re: Need for cognition

#34

Post by macrolocal »

aradox66 wrote: post #30
vmoore wrote: post #21

Some people are just natural philosophers. I was always one, and an un-analyzed life gets drab very quickly, for me at least. I like to entertain various ideas without taking them too seriously. I like Stoicism which I find very useful, and eastern philosophies like Buddhism. Too easy to become over-zealous about both of those philosophies. A test of your own personal philosophy is when you encounter adversity. Do yo…

That's funny, I understand Buddhism to be about the pain caused by conceptualizing life and the importance of dropping an analytical frame.

That sounds like Bergson more than Buddhism.

Re: Need for cognition

#35

Post by pixl97 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #24
abeppu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we need better role models for embracing uncertainty. If you're a low NFC person, there are a bunch of high status people that take public dogmatic stances, and demonstrate that you have high confidence in a worldview of sweeping generalizations without having to think too hard if only you adopt the Dogma. But I can't really think of role models where someone says "X, Y, Z are all complex and the thing th…

The Dogma usually includes statements like "people who don't care about X are part of the problem" and considerable social effort is spent on recruiting more "soldiers" and influencing group norms. The unaligned are considered "fodder" by the ideologically committed. Not everyone needs to be recruited. Most people can be kept in line by ensuring everyone knows what the "safe" view is within a specific group and occas…

This is generally but not always true.

Lets make an imaginary situation where you live on an island and are running out of trees. There are mostly two sides here. The people that are burning though trees at a faster rate than they grow are the problem. Not caring about the problem, especially in the case you are the ones burning those trees is going to ensure 'Tree 0 day' comes.

Everyone will get affected if you reach that point.

Re: Need for cognition

#36

Post by optimalsolver »

>Need for cognition has been variously defined as "a need to structure relevant situations in meaningful, integrated ways" and "a need to understand and make reasonable the experiential world"

-

So basically your average conspiracy theorist.

Re: Need for cognition

#37

Post by [deleted] »

jawns wrote: post #5

I haven't looked at the research yet, but this feels like it may have some correlation with a psychological trait called dogmatism, which is a defined as exhibiting great certainty about the correctness of one's views and an unwillingness to consider new evidence, or an unwillingness to adjust one's views in light of new evidence. Obviously, they're not the same. NFC pertains more to the desire to go through the proc…

[deleted]

Re: Need for cognition

#38

Post by crazygringo »

jawns wrote: post #5

I haven't looked at the research yet, but this feels like it may have some correlation with a psychological trait called dogmatism, which is a defined as exhibiting great certainty about the correctness of one's views and an unwillingness to consider new evidence, or an unwillingness to adjust one's views in light of new evidence. Obviously, they're not the same. NFC pertains more to the desire to go through the proc…

The article discusses this explicitly, if what you're calling dogmatism is the inverse of the "openness to ideas" or "openness to experience", one of the Big 5 traits:

> NFC has been found to be strongly associated with a number of independently developed constructs, specifically epistemic curiosity, typical intellectual engagement, and openness to ideas.

I haven't come across the term "dogmatism" in the psychological literature. But the way you're presenting it seems extremely judgmental ("defects", "laziness", "immaturity"). You might be more interested in the more objective formulation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience

Re: Need for cognition

#39

Post by xyzzy123 »

pixl97 wrote: post #35
xyzzy123 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dogma usually includes statements like "people who don't care about X are part of the problem" and considerable social effort is spent on recruiting more "soldiers" and influencing group norms. The unaligned are considered "fodder" by the ideologically committed. Not everyone needs to be recruited. Most people can be kept in line by ensuring everyone knows what the "safe" view is within a specific group and occas…

This is generally but not always true. Lets make an imaginary situation where you live on an island and are running out of trees. There are mostly two sides here. The people that are burning though trees at a faster rate than they grow are the problem. Not caring about the problem, especially in the case you are the ones burning those trees is going to ensure 'Tree 0 day' comes. Everyone will get affected if you reac…

I think we might be talking slightly past each other.

It's absolutely true that for many values of X, being "unaligned" or "uncertain" on X does some harm.

What I'm saying is that human social dynamics mean that there's usually a range of acceptable beliefs for issues X, Y & Z and it's wise to understand when it's acceptable to express uncertainty and when it's not.

Uncertainty is a stance, a position, which can easily be outside the range of socially acceptable beliefs.

For example, I have zero opinion on "body positivity". But I know that many groups will hold the opinion "it does no good if only we believe in body positivity, ALL of society needs to change". Expressing uncertainty or indifference in these situations will be construed as social defection by True Believers and punished.

Re: Need for cognition

#40

Post by uoaei »

optimalsolver wrote: post #36

>Need for cognition has been variously defined as "a need to structure relevant situations in meaningful, integrated ways" and "a need to understand and make reasonable the experiential world" - So basically your average conspiracy theorist.

Conspiracy theorists demote things like "parsimony" in favor of "holism" and "explanatory power". There's a reason the text says "reasonable" and not merely "comprehensible".
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