And of course, as I kind of alluded to in my initial caveat, and which you've backed up in your penultimate paragraph, even your perception of what is fact and empirical evidence is still guided by sub-conscious bias and instinct.

And this would lead us onto the question of free will but I think there's enough to chew on for the time being...

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Been a good read this

I’m not sure I really understand what you’re saying, renoog. The link you posted suggested that bias is evenly distributed across the political spectrum....which is what you’d expect, given that we can’t help ourselves being biased.(It’s what I’d expect, anyway).

But then you argue (I think) that open-minded people are more likely to believe themselves to be unbiased. But wouldn’t that, in itself, be a bias? And if they’ve read the psychological data about in-built, evolutionary bias, surely they would also know that they do not have the ability to overcome it?

And somebody who is not aware of the psychological data would not be aware of natural bias, so wouldn’t they be more likely to believe themselves to be unbiased?

I guess it’s empirical fact that, in the end, overcomes bias, but in the political sphere in particular, what is fact?
It’s very hard to “prove” anything.

Supporters of Mrs Thatcher, for example, argue that she transformed the British economy for the better...Jacob Rees-Mogg calls it an “economic miracle”. But I’ve been unable to find any facts that support that view.....the UK’s economic growth rates have been lower in the period since she came to power than they were in the 30 years before she came to power, and as far as I can tell, the UK didn’t climb any higher in the international comparison tables.

But does that mean I am biased against that view?....I don’t know, I just couldn’t find any data that supported it, yet its supporters argue that it is “obvious”. Empirical data is hard to come by, in the social sciences, and if you ask 100 economists , you will get 100 different views.

One of the narratives during the Brexit referendum was that we are tired of experts, because they’re all biased anyway, and they never manage to predict anything accurately (not consensually, anyway).

I suspect they are all biased, but I’m not sure that it’s wise to dispense with them, either...I noticed during the general election that the same people who had been dissing experts were now asking us to believe in them again, in support of their views. But the genie is out of the bottle.....once you’ve argued that they’re all biased, nobody believes you any more when you invoke them to support you.

It is no good Michael Gove arguing that Jeremy Corbyn's policies have been questioned by the IFS when he spent the Brexit campaign telling us that the IFS couldn't be trusted. A lot of people have taken him at his word, and have decided they don't care what researchers say any more.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do believe there is such a thing as experts: if the passengers in my plane announced that they didn’t believe in experts any more, and wanted to take over the controls from the pilot, I wouldn’t be in favour of it.

comment by Admin1 (U1)
posted 9 hours, 13 minutes ago
Been a good read this
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks.....my idea of course😉


Kidding😁

Renoog

Read your posts and UK largely concur.

Last time I had an IQ test was to discover if my asthma as a child was attention seeking or brought on to Mitch off school and church....it was above average, but not sure now.😟
As you state, academic education programmes the student in a certain way, and although I achieved a 2-1 in politics, I am useless at maths and sciences, and do badly in tests!
To make up for my limitations I attempt to think for myself, and buck the trend or fashionable views, hence my rows on here.
Tribal thinking does seep through, and while at Queens in Belfast, the top NI students, unionist and republican, expressed extremist and bigotted views, often worse than ghetto areas with little educational attainment.

The song Common People by blur came to mind after reading your post.
Better educated, clever folk often want to see how the others live, and often dress down, lose the posh accent and latch on to left leaning progressive causes, whereas, working class people with less qualifications and more to prove, try to dress up, get a good car and put themselves and family first, before society or refugees or migrants,,who are competition for jobs and homes, etc.
To simplify, kids in poor areas wear trendy trainers, and posh kids wear scruffy one's !!!!!!

Poorer voters with less exams passed may vote Tory to progress socially, and middle class educated voters see the need and rewards of empathy.

Common People by blur
---------
Sacrilege.

You should listen to cocaine socialist by Pulp.

Poorer voters with less exams passed may vote Tory to progress socially, and middle class educated voters see the need and rewards of empathy.
==========================================================
So traditional Tory constituencies are in poor areas, and traditional Labour constituencies are in rich areas, right?

I think "empathy" is an assumption, btw.
You're imputing a motive to their views that I'm not sure how you know they possess (unless you've seen data that illustrates it).

comment by Wessie Road (The Stalinist Scousification of society) (U10652)
posted 8 hours, 3 minutes ago
I’m not sure I really understand what you’re saying, renoog. The link you posted suggested that bias is evenly distributed across the political spectrum....which is what you’d expect, given that we can’t help ourselves being biased.(It’s what I’d expect, anyway).

But then you argue (I think) that open-minded people are more likely to believe themselves to be unbiased. But wouldn’t that, in itself, be a bias? And if they’ve read the psychological data about in-built, evolutionary bias, surely they would also know that they do not have the ability to overcome it?

And somebody who is not aware of the psychological data would not be aware of natural bias, so wouldn’t they be more likely to believe themselves to be unbiased?

I guess it’s empirical fact that, in the end, overcomes bias, but in the political sphere in particular, what is fact?
It’s very hard to “prove” anything.

Supporters of Mrs Thatcher, for example, argue that she transformed the British economy for the better...Jacob Rees-Mogg calls it an “economic miracle”. But I’ve been unable to find any facts that support that view.....the UK’s economic growth rates have been lower in the period since she came to power than they were in the 30 years before she came to power, and as far as I can tell, the UK didn’t climb any higher in the international comparison tables.

But does that mean I am biased against that view?....I don’t know, I just couldn’t find any data that supported it, yet its supporters argue that it is “obvious”. Empirical data is hard to come by, in the social sciences, and if you ask 100 economists , you will get 100 different views.

One of the narratives during the Brexit referendum was that we are tired of experts, because they’re all biased anyway, and they never manage to predict anything accurately (not consensually, anyway).

I suspect they are all biased, but I’m not sure that it’s wise to dispense with them, either...I noticed during the general election that the same people who had been dissing experts were now asking us to believe in them again, in support of their views. But the genie is out of the bottle.....once you’ve argued that they’re all biased, nobody believes you any more when you invoke them to support you.

It is no good Michael Gove arguing that Jeremy Corbyn's policies have been questioned by the IFS when he spent the Brexit campaign telling us that the IFS couldn't be trusted. A lot of people have taken him at his word, and have decided they don't care what researchers say any more.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do believe there is such a thing as experts: if the passengers in my plane announced that they didn’t believe in experts any more, and wanted to take over the controls from the pilot, I wouldn’t be in favour of it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Gove and to a lesser extent, Rees Mogg, could wipe the floor with Corbyn on the IQ front, as neutral commentators would confirm....this does not mean they are nicer or even correct in choosing conservatism over socialism, BTW.
My dad and I were Thatcher's one in ten, but in Ulster it was one in five on the dole, but Maggie was part created by socialist seventies chaos in the country.
Less educated voters saw Maggie as a patriot after the Falklands and pira hunger strike, so even with miners and workers suffering under Tory rule, the union flag waving attracted less well now educated voters, along with the business and model classes.

Corbyn is seen as unpatriotic, and loses working class support, but nowadays patriotism is fading, so educated voters do not worry about Corbyn's past, preferring to mock the likes of May, Mogg and Trump to be in tune with popular progressive thought.May, Mogg and Trump are patently mockackable!!!!

Being conservative or republican in the US academic circles is now viewed as virtually criminal, even though the strongest, most stable and liberal nations are largely based on the capitalist model, with tweaks here and there in Scandinavia.and Europe generally.
These societies are not perfect, and none are, but it is strange how empirical evidence on the most successful economies is now frowned upon by big brains.

For the record, I would pinch the best bits from capitalism, socialism, liberalism and patriotism/ protectionism for the greater good, and ditch ideological dogma👍

comment by Wessie Road (The Stalinist Scousification of society) (U10652)
posted 1 hour, 4 minutes ago
Poorer voters with less exams passed may vote Tory to progress socially, and middle class educated voters see the need and rewards of empathy.
==========================================================
So traditional Tory constituencies are in poor areas, and traditional Labour constituencies are in rich areas, right?

I think "empathy" is an assumption, btw.
You're imputing a motive to their views that I'm not sure how you know they possess (unless you've seen data that illustrates it).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The word, May is important here.......offering reasons why some working class voters go Tory, and why some middle class voters opt for jezza....see Essex man and north London luvvie, for example.

OF course, poorer areas are usually labour, and now fairly pro- Brexit....while better off areas are Tory and often Remain!

We are told thick voters go brexit, so are all these thick folk Labour, and not Tory?😉

Michael Gove and to a lesser extent, Rees Mogg, could wipe the floor with Corbyn on the IQ front, as neutral commentators would confirm
==========================================================
You can call off the neutral commentators, I'm happy to take your word for it.

I'm not sure what your point is, though. I've been arguing that bias is instinctive to all of us, regardless of IQ, political affiliation, etc., and the point I made about Gove was that he asked us not to believe in experts for the Brexit referendum, but then changed his mind before this year's election.

The question of whether we should believe in experts is relevant to whether we should believe in instinct (inherently biased) or empirical data (potentially provided by biased experts), so I'm not sure how Michael Gove's IQ superiority over Jeremy Corbyn relates to any of that.

==========================================================
but Maggie was part created by socialist seventies chaos in the country.
==========================================================
Yes, the popular narrative is that mass unemployment, derelict cities, rioting and civil disorder in the early 80's were a big improvement on the 'socialist seventies chaos', but it doesn't sound that much better, and again, the empirical data suggests otherwise, but it's a stubborn narrative, and that's my point.
Is the narrative wrong, or is the data wrong?

The UK's economic growth rate in 1979, the year of the 'winter of discontent' and the depths of the 'socialist seventies chaos', was 3.7%, which has only been bettered in about half a dozen of the nearly 40 years since, and it dived into recession the year after Thatcher was elected, not recovering until 1983.
Theresa May would drink Boris's p1ss for a growth rate of 3.7% now.

==========================================================
Being conservative or republican in the US academic circles is now viewed as virtually criminal, even though the strongest, most stable and liberal nations are largely based on the capitalist model
==========================================================
There are lots of conservative academics in the US, and to date, they haven't been locked up.
The nearest we got to that was McCarthyism in the 50's, when people suspected of left wing views were deprived of their livelihoods.

The 'capitalist model' is not the unique preserve of Republicanism. The entire spectrum is to the right of the UK's, and the Democrats are hardly socialists, they absolutely believe in capitalism, just a different flavour of it.

==========================================================
OF course, poorer areas are usually labour, and now fairly pro- Brexit..
==========================================================
No, that's another narrative.
Poorer areas are nearly all Labour, yes, but something approaching 70% of Labour voters voted Remain, and something approaching 70% of Conservative voters voted Brexit. You've mentioned before that you're very keen not to believe this, but I don't know why.

==========================================================
We are told thick voters go brexit, so are all these thick folk Labour, and not Tory?
==========================================================
Well no, because most Labour voters voted Remain. And we are told thick voters go Brexit by whom? What I've read is that a majority of graduates voted Remain, but that only translates into 'thick voters go Brexit' if you believe that non-graduates are thick.
Which I, personally, don't.

==========================================================
strange how empirical evidence on the most successful economies is now frowned upon by big brains.
==========================================================
Which 'big brains', exactly, frown upon successful economies?

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"Wasn't the seagull in watership down a good guy?"

Yes, yes he was. Irritating tw@ though.

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comment by Dave NotSo #savetheasses (U11711)
posted 23 minutes ago
comment by Admin1 (U1)
posted 16 hours, 47 minutes ago
Common People by blur
---------
Sacrilege.

You should listen to cocaine socialist by Pulp.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr Admin 1.

And if Common People is to be brought up, surely the Shatner spoken word version has to get a mention.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Indeed. But let's be clear it was not and never has been a song by blur.

Wessie,

This paper summarises the process that I'm talking about:
http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-14753-001

"The so-called bias blind spot arises when people report that thinking biases are more prevalent in others than in themselves. Bias turns out to be relatively easy to recognize in the behaviors of others, but often difficult to detect in one's own judgments. Most previous research on the bias blind spot has focused on bias in the social domain. In 2 studies, we found replicable bias blind spots with respect to many of the classic cognitive biases studied in the heuristics and biases literature (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Further, we found that none of these bias blind spots were attenuated by measures of cognitive sophistication such as cognitive ability or thinking dispositions related to bias. If anything, a larger bias blind spot was associated with higher cognitive ability. Additional analyses indicated that being free of the bias blind spot does not help a person avoid the actual classic cognitive biases."

What you're saying about people who've read the data and understanding their own biases, yet still being subject to them despite their awareness of them etc. is very true. I'm not arguing against it. What I'm saying is that in a lot of higher education establishments, people DON'T go through this process. They go to learn very specific subjects, often by rote. The people I came across at university who were the most self-aware of their own fallibility tended to be those involved in research, doctorates, data-driven subjects.

Comment deleted by Site Moderator

What I'm saying is that in a lot of higher education establishments, people DON'T go through this process. They go to learn very specific subjects, often by rote
=========================================================
That may be true, I wouldn’t know, but your evidence for it seems anecdotal (and therefore subject to bias?)

And if “being free of the bias blind spot does not help a person avoid the actual classic cognitive biases", then it effectively makes no difference. We all end up being as biased as each other, we just have varying degrees of self-awareness about it.

That document does say “if anything...” (an expression which implies it’s marginal).....”a larger bias blind spot was associated with higher cognitive ability”, but your own experience is that “the most self-aware of their own fallibility tended to be those involved in research, doctorates, data-driven subjects”...which would tend to be people with higher cognitive ability, wouldn’t it?...

So your own experience seems to be slightly at odds with the observations in the document. If people who get by on rote-learning do not necessarily have higher cognitive ability, are they therefore no more likely to have a larger bias blind spot?

What I’d like to know is how we can navigate all this.
We’ve reached this “post-truth” point where flagrant falsehoods are given equivalence with balanced hypotheses, on the grounds that balanced hypotheses are biased anyway, and therefore not all that balanced, so an opinion based on research is given the same weight as the opinion of some loud-mouthed scrote who’s just echoing what he chooses to believe, in the teeth of empirical evidence to the contrary.

I’m a staunch democrat, and everybody’s opinion needs to be weighed in the balance (something that in my opinion doesn’t happen in a first-past-the-post system, but that’s another story).

And I also believe in the “wisdom of crowds”, but arguing that “expert” opinion can be dispensed with entirely, as Gove did, and as many others like Bannon and Trump are doing, is destructive and politically-expedient, which is why I drew the analogy with the passengers taking over the plane (and in any case Gove changed his mind when it was no longer expedient).

Modern society is complex...there has to be some room for empiricism and expertise, surely? Otherwise we’re going to crash the plane (and some commentators, the latest being Michael Bloomberg, argue that the Brexit decision already represents a plane heading towards a mountain).

There is presumably a balance to be had between empiricism on the one hand (often, in its complexity, suspected of being ‘elite’ ), and fictional narratives on the other.

I’m constantly surprised by how easily politically-motivated fictional narratives are swallowed and become ‘common knowledge’, but the ‘elite’ (supposing there is any agreement about who the ‘elite’ are)...are no less guilty of propagating fake narratives for the sake of expediency.
The British tabloids were doing it long before Breitbart.

But I don’t know how we achieve the balance, and I don’t think we’re achieving it right now. The foxes are inside the chicken coop, and endorsing their own opinions in a cloud of feathers.

That may be true, I wouldn’t know, but your evidence for it seems anecdotal (and therefore subject to bias?)

And if “being free of the bias blind spot does not help a person avoid the actual classic cognitive biases", then it effectively makes no difference. We all end up being as biased as each other, we just have varying degrees of self-awareness about it.

That document does say “if anything...” (an expression which implies it’s marginal).....”a larger bias blind spot was associated with higher cognitive ability”, but your own experience is that “the most self-aware of their own fallibility tended to be those involved in research, doctorates, data-driven subjects”...which would tend to be people with higher cognitive ability, wouldn’t it?...

So your own experience seems to be slightly at odds with the observations in the document. If people who get by on rote-learning do not necessarily have higher cognitive ability, are they therefore no more likely to have a larger bias blind spot?
-----------------------
Maybe. Here's an article about a book which did a study on the matter (in US colleges) and found "45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college."
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20110118/news/110119429/

I agree with your 2nd paragraph. This is what I've been arguing all along. I don't see how this contradicts the original point which was that higher education environments foster a culture that reflects higher IQ personalities and hence the unique personality traits that are associated with higher IQ personalities. I can't remember how the 'cognitive bias blind spot' got introduced into the discussion but it's getting mixed-up with my point about trait blind-spots. We ALL have biases, whether high IQ/low IQ, conservative/liberal. These biases help consolidate our separate worldviews, which are in large part down to our biological traits. Liberals display more open-ness, conservatives more fear for e.g. Just because we're all biased, doesn't mean we're all biased in favour of the same thing. These biases actually help entrench and amplify our differences. A liberal in some cases is quite literally incapable of understanding the reasoning of a conservative, and vice versa. This is not just due to intelligence differences, but actual brain wiring differences. Hence, unless we live in a society which comprises 100% liberals, or 100% conservatives, then we need to be able to devise solutions that work for everyone, regardless of mindset. And to do that requires input from both sides. Otherwise you end up devising policies that work on the assumption that everyone shares your mindset and will react the same way.

So the over-arching point is that higher education, while associated with higher IQs and hence better decision-making (on paper), still needs low IQ input to inform that decision-making.

^To add to the last paragraph, you may argue 'Why do we need low IQ input when we can just look at data to inform our decision-making?'. The answer to that would be that the way we choose to prioritise data would still be affected by our own bias. So unless we can build a bias-free supercomputer to replace human data analysis and decision-making, then we need conservative and liberal voices in the same room.

To add to the last paragraph, you may argue 'Why do we need low IQ input when we can just look at data to inform our decision-making?'.
=========================================================
That wasn't going to be my question.

I would say that all input is valuable to the decision-making process, because it averages out into ‘crowd wisdom’ and takes into account a wider range of factors, but I don’t get the narrower point about IQ.
Isn't that the point about democracy?

Getting a wide variety of input would be valuable across all variables, so why an emphasis on IQ?

Well it was a point about higher education and the fact that, due to its exclusive nature, it excludes lower IQ voices, and hence those more likely to hold conservative views. (sorry if this offends anyone, I am just going by the papers I've read - I could be wrong here)