How to Dispel Your Illusions by Freeman Dyson Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 499 pp., $30.00 In 1955, when Daniel Kahneman was twenty-one years old, he was a lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces. He was given the job of setting up a new interview system for the entire army. Kahneman had a bachelor’s degree in psychology and had read a book, Clinical vs. A famous example confirming Meehl’s conclusion is the “Apgar score,” invented by the anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar in 1953 to guide the treatment of newborn babies. Having read the Meehl book, Kahneman knew how to improve the Israeli army interviewing system. Reflecting fifty years later on his experience in the Israeli army, Kahneman remarks in Thinking, Fast and Slow that it was not unusual in those days for young people to be given big responsibilities. Cognitive illusions are the main theme of his book. An episode from my own past is curiously similar to Kahneman’s experience in the Israeli army.
People don’t know when they’re lying to themselves | Not Exactly Rocket Science “I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.” – Charlie Sheen “We put our fingers in the eyes of those who doubt that Libya is ruled by anyone other than its people.” – Muammar Gaddafi You don’t have to look far for instances of people lying to themselves. Using experiments where people could cheat on a test, Chance has found that cheaters not only deceive themselves, but are largely oblivious to their own lies. Chance asked 76 students to take a maths test, half of whom could see an answer key at the bottom of their sheets. And they were wrong – when Chance asked her recruits to actually take the hypothetical second test, neither group outperformed the other. Chance also found that the students weren’t aware that they were deceiving themselves. Some people are more prone to this than others. This final result could not be more important.
Self-Consciousness Philosophical work on self-consciousness has mostly focused on the identification and articulation of specific epistemic and semantic peculiarities of self-consciousness, peculiarities which distinguish it from consciousness of things other than oneself. After drawing certain fundamental distinctions, and considering the conditions for the very possibility of self-consciousness, this article discusses the nature of those epistemic and semantic peculiarities. The relevant epistemic peculiarities are mainly those associated with the alleged infallibility and self-intimation of self-consciousness. It has sometimes been thought that our consciousness of ourselves may be, under certain conditions, infallible, in the sense that it cannot go wrong: when we believe that some fact about us obtains, it does. The relevant semantic peculiarities have emerged in recent work in philosophy of language and mind. Table of Contents 1. Throughout our waking life, we are conscious of a variety of things.
Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory - Green, Donald; Shapiro, Ian Donald Green and Ian Shapiro This is the first comprehensive critical evaluation of the use of rational choice theory in political science. Writing in an accessible and nontechnical style, Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro assess rational choice theory where it is reputed to be most successful: the study of collective action, the behavior of political parties and politicians, and such phenomena as voting cycles and Prisoner's Dilemmas. In their hard-hitting critique, Green and Shapiro demonstrate that the much heralded achievements of rational choice theory are in fact deeply suspect and that fundamental rethinking is needed if rational choice theorists are to contribute to the understanding of politics. Donald P.
List of thought processes Nature of thought[edit] Thought (or thinking) can be described as all of the following: An activity taking place in a: brain – organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals (only a few invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, adult sea squirts and starfish do not have a brain). It is the physical structure associated with the mind. mind – abstract entity with the cognitive faculties of consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory. Having a mind is a characteristic of humans, but which also may apply to other life forms.[1][2] Activities taking place in a mind are called mental processes or cognitive functions.computer (see automated reasoning, below) – general purpose device that can be programmed to carry out a set of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. Types of thoughts[edit] Content of thoughts[edit] Types of thought (thinking)[edit] Listed below are types of thought, also known as thinking processes. Lists
The end is always nigh in the human mind - opinion - 07 June 2011 Why are we so attracted to prophecies of doom, from religious raptures to environmental collapse? It's part of our psychology IN 1919, William Butler Yeats wrote The Second Coming, an allegory of the atmosphere in Europe after the carnage of the first world war. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity. The poem draws heavily on the mythic narrative of the apocalypse - or at least the first half of it, destruction. The latest incarnation of the destruction-redemption myth is brought to you by numerological number-cruncher and evangelical Christian radio host Harold Camping. Like Camping's rapture, many of these prognostications have failed to unfold. Why, then, do we find the basic narrative so appealing? Apocalyptic visions also help us make sense of an often seemingly senseless world.
Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition There are now many good books available on why we make errors in judgment and decision making. This book represents Michael Mauboussin's contribution to this genre, and I think he has done a good job in pulling together a lot of information from a diverse range of credible sources. The information he presents has broad application, though he has a slight emphasis on business and investing applications (his own area of specialization). The book is also a fairly easy and quick read. Perhaps the best way to describe the content of the book is to summarize the key points, roughly in the order they appear in the book: (1) "Think twice" to avoid errors in judgment and decision making, especially in situations where stakes are high. (2) Learn from the experiences of others in similar situations (making use of statistics when possible), rather than relying only on your own perspective, and don't be excessively optimistic about expecting to beat the odds.
MBTI Basics - The 16 MBTI Types Quiet, serious, earn success by thoroughness and dependability. Practical, matter-of-fact, realistic, and responsible. Decide logically what should be done and work toward it steadily, regardless of distractions. Take pleasure in making everything orderly and organized - their work, their home, their life. Value traditions and loyalty. Quiet, friendly, responsible, and conscientious. Seek meaning and connection in ideas, relationships, and material possessions. Have original minds and great drive for implementing their ideas and achieving their goals. Tolerant and flexible, quiet observers until a problem appears, then act quickly to find workable solutions. Quiet, friendly, sensitive, and kind. Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Seek to develop logical explanations for everything that interests them. Flexible and tolerant, they take a pragmatic approach focused on immediate results. Outgoing, friendly, and accepting.
You Won’t Stay the Same, Study Finds By Mac William Bishop, Channon Hodge, Pedro Rafael Rosado and Erica Berenstein Self-Perception, Past and Future: The Times’s John Tierney discusses new research showing that people tend to “underestimate how much they will change in the future.” They called this phenomenon the “end of history illusion,” in which people tend to “underestimate how much they will change in the future.” According to their research, which involved more than 19,000 people ages 18 to 68, the illusion persists from teenage years into retirement. “Middle-aged people — like me — often look back on our teenage selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin,” said one of the authors, Daniel T. Other psychologists said they were intrigued by the findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, and were impressed with the amount of supporting evidence. But when asked to predict what their personalities and tastes would be like in 10 years, people of all ages consistently played down the potential changes ahead.
The Willpower Trick | Wired Science January is the month of broken resolutions. The gyms are packed for a week, Jenny Craig is full of new recruits and houses are cleaned for the first time in ages. We pledge to finally become the person we want to be: svelte, neat and punctual. Alas, it doesn’t take long before the stairmasters are once again sitting empty and those same dirty T-shirts are piling up at the back of the closet. The reason our resolutions end in such dismal fashion returns us to the single most important fact about human willpower — it’s incredibly feeble. Here’s where the results get weird. This helps explain why, after a long day at the office, we’re more likely to indulge in a pint of Häagen-Dazs. The problem is only compounded by studies showing that the very act of dieting can make it even harder to resist temptation. Is there a way out of this willpower trap? Christian Jarrett, at the excellent BPS Research Digest, summarizes the results: The same lesson applies to adults.
Ben Franklin effect The Ben Franklin effect is a psychological finding: A person who has done someone a favor is more likely to do that person another favor than they would be if they had received a favor from that person. Similarly, one who harms another is more willing to harm them again than the victim is to retaliate.[1] Recognition of effect by Franklin[edit] In the words of Benjamin Franklin, who famously observed the effect and for whom it is named, "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged. In his autobiography, Franklin explains how he dealt with the animosity of a rival legislator when he served in the Pennsylvania legislature in the 18th century: Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. Effect as an example of cognitive dissonance[edit] Notes[edit]
Psychology of self The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one's identity or the subject of experience. The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology derived from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known.[1] Current views of the self in psychology position the self as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity.[2] It may be the case that we can now usefully attempt to ground experience of self in a neural process with cognitive consequences, which will give us insight into the elements of which the complex multiply situated selves of modern identity are composed. Kohut's formulation[edit] Heinz Kohut[4] initially proposed a bipolar self compromising two systems of narcissistic perfection: 1) a system of ambitions and, 2) a system of ideals. Winnicott's selves[edit] D. Berne's transactional analysis[edit] Memory and the self[edit]
The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin, Stanovich PrefaceAcknowledgmentsChapter 1. Staring into the Darwinian AbyssWhy Jerry Falwell Is RightThe Replicators and the VehiclesWhat Kind of Robot Is a Person?Whose Goals Are Served by Our Behavior?All Vehicles Overboard!Your Genes Care More about You than You Should Care about Them! Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. NotesReferencesAuthor IndexSubject Index