[ExI] evolution and crazy thinking

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 11:10 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com
> wrote:

> *>Pondering for the nth time about why humans got so far with all the
> crazy, illogical cognitive gadgets that inhabit our forebrains.  I have
> repeatedly mentioned to this group the cognitive errors or biases listed in
> Wikipedia. Not being any kind of expert on evolution, I want someone(s) to
> explain just how evolution can explain these unfortunate thinking errors.*


Even if you had perfect knowledge of the problem at hand (and in the real
world that Evolution works in you never do) there is no general algorithm
that would always enable you to always make the best choice all the time.
And time is an issue too, a mediocre solution you have right now about what
to do about that leopard that is about to jump onto you is far superior
from a Evolutionary point of view than a perfect solution found an hour
from now, that's the only disadvantage to the Scientific Method and the
reason it is not instinctual.  So Evolution gave us some rules of thumb
that are fast and work pretty well most of the time, but like all rules of
thumb they sometimes can go badly wrong.

>From the list at:

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

       >* Anthropomorphism and Anthropocentric thinking*
Anthropomorphism can be a valuable tool, animals sometimes do act in ways
that are not entirely dissimilar to the ways humans act, and even
physicists say to themselves things like “the electron wants to go straight
but the magnetic field forces it to move in a circle”.

*> The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one's
true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone.*

Not unnecessarily turning members of your own species into enemies seems
like part of a good survival strategy to me.

*> The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts*



We have no choice , we just don't have enough brainpower to deeply analyze
all the sensory data received so we must prioritize it according to its
estimated importance, usually that estimate is mostly right but sometimes
we miss something important but thats the way it goes, we can't do
everything.


> *> When given a choice between several options, the tendency to favor the
> default one.*


If you estimate there is a 50% chance that doing nothing will make things
worse and a 50% chance that doing something will make things worse then it
would be logical to do nothing and hope for the best, at least that way you
save energy.


*>The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past
> events, when in reality they are unchanged.*



That is certainly an error but probably wasn't a big handicap to our
prehistoric ancestors and so the gene for that mode of thinking did not die
out.

*> The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do*


The argument from authority is not always a bad one, I can't independently
test everything, I've got to trust that some people are specialists and
know more about some aspect of reality than I do.

*> The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm*


It's a good thing that there is a resistance to changing a paradigm.
Paradigms got to be paradigms because over the years they have done a very
good job, they should not be rejected unless there is overwhelming evidence
for doing so.


*> When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about
> problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people*



That one completely stumps me, I am utterly unable to explain the appeal
Donald Trump has for so many otherwise intelligently seeming people nor,
considering the current situation, the continuing popularity of third
political parties.

John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20180714/19a2aada/attachment.html>