[ExI] cog bias again

[William Flynn Wallace]

Bill (as a Rogerian therapist). "Spike, what I hear you saying is that you
are experiencing cognitive dissonance resulting from the uncertainties
those two subjects bring about in your head."

It is quite true that one's prior convictions can taint your theories of
new data that don't fit the old theories.  Many examples in history show
that many people hung onto old theories and rejected new ones - germ
theory, for one.

I am not sure where to go with this from here.    bill w

On Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 10:57 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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