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<p class="gmail-p1">On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 11:10 AM, William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com">foozler83@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</p>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>>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.</i></blockquote><div> </div>
<font size="4">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. <br><br>From the list at:</font>
<p class="gmail-p1"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases</a></p>
<p class="gmail-p1"> ><i> Anthropomorphism and Anthropocentric thinking</i></p>
<font size="4">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”.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">
<i>> The tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one's true opinion, so as to avoid offending anyone.</i></div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">
<font size="4">Not unnecessarily turning members of your own species into enemies seems like part of a good survival strategy to me.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>> The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts</i></blockquote><br><br><font size="4">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. </font><br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>> When given a choice between several options, the tendency to favor the default one.<br></i></blockquote><br><font size="4">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.<br></font><br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>>The tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged.</i></blockquote><br><br><font size="4">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.</font><br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>> The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do</i></blockquote><br><font size="4">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.</font><br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>> The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm</i></blockquote><br><font size="4">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.<br></font><br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><i>> When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people</i></blockquote><br><br><font size="4">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.<br><br>John K Clark</font></div></div></div>