Comments on: A must-read for anyone who wants to be less stupid

By: Steve Nordquist

Steve Nordquist — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 00:48:00 +0000

Well, that went butter-side-down; guess I’ll have to stick with reading everything and telling all the stories with all the excess awesome available for attribution.

By: heng

heng — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 09:25:00 +0000

Also this http://xkcd.com/1132/

By: drokhole

drokhole — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 07:45:00 +0000

But is ‘people love a good narrative’ just a good narrative? It makes sense.

By: drokhole

drokhole — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 07:43:00 +0000

I like to eat juicy burgers. I also like to make a coherent narrative out of the cow’s life that the ground beef came from. We were on a small boat (after our much larger boat cap-sized), but there was grass on-board (which was good because, you know, grass-fed), and we had to learn to live with each other while dealing with the dangers of our conflicting natures and the indifferent/endless sea-at-large. Moral of the story is, God. And burgers. Therefore, God-burgers.

By: dustbuster7000

dustbuster7000 — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 07:04:00 +0000

Yeah, they do. But that’s kind of the point. We love a narrative so much, we think that because it makes for a good story, that it is true. Marketeers and political leaders use that instinct to persuade us. But “making sense of the world” is just another way of saying “make us feel less confused and afraid about why things happen that we can’t explain.” But comfort does not ensure truth. Assuming believe in the idea of objective truth :)

By: Jeremy Pickett

Jeremy Pickett — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 04:31:00 +0000

Every presentation, talk, lecture, or paper I have worked on professionally for the last *grumble-kids/lawn/etc.* years has always been prefaced by management at hand saying, “Use your data to tell a story, build a narrative”. With an undertone of, “Tell a *good, juicy* story…”.

Anyone else in this boat?

By: eris_kallisti

eris_kallisti — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 02:05:00 +0000

I wanted to be less stupid, but that article/blog entry was so poorly written, I gave up after the last Gaul was buried. Maybe I just don’t understand how Etsy works, or know any “ostensibly atheist” assholes from Brooklyn.

By: drokhole

drokhole — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 01:43:00 +0000

The fact that we really, really, really like to turn chance events into a coherent narrative is a coherent narrative that I really, really, really like.

By: Dr P Fenderson

Dr P Fenderson — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 00:39:00 +0000

Well, it doesn’t seem like it is meant to be read in any particular order. I guess I’d start at the bottom and work my way up, since that’s the order in which they were posted. Since each one covers a particular bias in full, I’d only skip ahead when one page mentions a bias on that list, and you have no information on it to begin with. Not sure I’d sit and read them all in one sitting.
The book by Mr. McRaney mixes a number of the topics on the site, as well as some original content, in a very solid order. If you head to Amazon, they have a scan of the Table of Contents which might help. :)

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 00:35:00 +0000

Can you recommend a starting point? Your link is to a page full of links, as is the Less Wrong one below. Humans struggle to make choices when presented with more than 7-8 options without additional guidance, and I’m pretty busy and distracted most days

By: sockdoll

sockdoll — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 00:17:00 +0000

People love a good narrative. It helps make sense of the world.

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 23:12:00 +0000

Some people feel that a thousand-year-old tradition is a good foundation for constructing new narrative. Others feel that a firm grounding in statistical theory is a good foundation for constructing new narrative. Is there actual evidence to support either claim – besides the narrative itself?

By: semiotix

semiotix — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:56:00 +0000

I’d like to think that I want to become less stupid, but to be perfectly honest, there’s no evidence to support that assertion.

By: tristan eldritch

tristan eldritch — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:00:00 +0000

Once you start thinking that everybody suffers from confirmation bias, you’ll instantly start seeing evidence of confirmation bias all around you.

By: hardwarejunkie9

hardwarejunkie9 — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:55:00 +0000

While the subject is indeed interesting, the material is written with an assumption of statistical knowledge in the audience which would suggest an understanding of the topic already.

I’ve got a pretty strong statistical background and I still had to stare at parts of it to pick up his line of thought.

By: Jorpho

Jorpho — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:44:00 +0000

http://www.xkcd.com/904/
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sports.png

By: Tynam

Tynam — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:38:00 +0000

For a deep discussion of many cognitive biases and techniques for avoiding them in your own thinking, I'd also strongly recommend Less Wrong.

By: Tynam

Tynam — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:35:00 +0000

Thanks; a deeply useful link I didn’t know about.

By: Dr P Fenderson

Dr P Fenderson — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:24:00 +0000

Also highly recommend You Are Not So Smart for an easily digestible discussion of many cognitive biases.