[ExI] cog bias again

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2020 8:11 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] cog bias again

 

>…I don't see anything new in the link Spike sent about cognitive biases.  Whether their application to evolutionary issues is valid I am not qualified to say.  But 'first impressions are lasting' is very old hat.  bill w

 

BillW, this take on cog bias is interesting because of two things that are really occupying my mind these days: the LIGO results rocking the cosmology world and the covid data.

 

Regarding the covid data, we have plenty of indications that we still really don’t completely understand the mechanisms for the spread of this virus or even how to test for it with high accuracy.  From what I understood, that Sturgis even should have been a health catastrophe, which is why I didn’t go and advised friends to stay back, live to ride another day.  But the Sturgis event wasn’t a super-spreader.  They had close-packed crowds, they had chants and singing (about how great Harley Davidsons are (sheesh (they really do stuff like that (is there any other product like that?)))) they had indoor activities, they have eeeeeverything I should woulda thought would cause a wave like we saw in April… but it didn’t.  The epidemiologists don’t understand it either, and reacted with a roaring silence, filled by economists with some hokey algorithm based on… tweets.  I see evidence the epidemiologists are unwilling to just take a stand and say we don’t understand everything about why outdoor covid spreading is apparently rare.

 

The other thing: the LIGO results just don’t make sense to me.  So now… I am digging out old notions I rejected a long time ago, such as… could the dark matter in the universe somehow be black holes formed in big bang, where most of them were collected into galaxies but a lot of them were formed right up front somehow, and oh I am a confused and bewildered geezer right now trying to make sense of that.  I have some bigtime cognitive dissonance going on in my head.  I don’t see the astronomy community galloping to my rescue on this.

 

Perhaps in both cases, cognitive bias is preventing the experts from finding alternatives, and we need some alternatives.

 

spike   

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