Modern Skepticism - Bias And The Informed Consensus

Slide 1: Modern Skepticism bias & the informed consensus Reed Esau 21-Mar-2008

Slide 2: Modern Skepticism Respect for reliable evidence Avoiding the traps of faulty reasoning

Slide 3: Traps?

Slide 4: Cognitive Bias

Slide 5: Our brains aren’t wired for objectivity They are wired for adaption & survival

Slide 6: Cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behavior Mental shortcuts that can enable faster* decisions or reduce distraction *but not necessarily the best

Slide 7: An Experiment Four empty wine bottles Same wine goes into all bottles; re-cork Visible stickers ranging $5-90 A taste test with friends!

Slide 8: Expected Results? More ‘expensive’ wine reported to taste better Not terribly surprising Lot of noise in this test

Slide 9: Can we remove the noise? Can we measure what people actually experience, rather than what they say they experience?

Slide 10: Functional MRI

Slide 11: The basic idea Taste A Hear B See C Touch D

Slide 12: This has been done Caltech & Stanford Teams Expectations & effectiveness of medication Why are generics less effective than name-brand drugs?

Slide 13: What would we expect? The brain reacts to the wine in consistent manner, no matter its price - or - Subjects consistently experienced more pleasure with the ‘expensive’ wine It’s the latter!

Slide 14: What’s going on? Expectations shape our experience of the world -- what we taste, see and hear The cortex is ‘cooking the books’ by adjusting its inputs to sensory data

Slide 15: Interesting Implications We experience the world not as it is but rather how we expect it to be. Evidence that our brains aren’t wired for objectivity

Slide 16: But what does this have to do with skepticism?

Slide 17: A big part of being a skeptic is compensating for our biases Our expectations are yet another of these biases To deny or ignore them is to risk deluding yourself

Slide 18: Forer Effect Tendency to consider vague descriptions of personality to be accurate.

Slide 19: Confirmation Bias When interpreting new information... • Emphasizing that which confirms one’s preconceptions • Ignoring that which contradicts

Slide 20: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” Charles Darwin

Slide 21: Dunning-Kruger Effect

Slide 22: those who have little knowledge tend to think that they know more than they do

Slide 23: others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less

Slide 24: It gets worse! Incompetent individuals... tend to overestimate their own level of skill fail to recognize genuine skill in others fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy

Slide 25: Bias blind spot The tendency not to compensate for one’s own biases

Slide 26: World of Pain

Slide 27: How to avoid these biases? Study and talk about them Review you own beliefs Understand methods to avoid bias Build upon expertise of others

Slide 28: Building upon expertise? Understand the value and limitations of The Informed Consensus

Slide 29: Informed Consensus Body of expert opinion Theory Test Review Repeat

Slide 30: What is an ‘expert’? “An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.” Werner Karl Heisenberg

Slide 31: Examples of Informed Consensus

Slide 32: Bulletproof IC Relativity Common Descent

Slide 33: Strong IC • Man landed on the moon • Man contributing to climate change • Natural selection • Smoking increases risk of heart disease • Age of earth is 4.54By

Slide 34: Other ICs • Red wine is healthy • Government reports • Accident investigations • ET’s haven’t visited Earth • Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven consecutive times

Slide 35: ‘Failures’ of Informed Consensus

Slide 36: Pre-Copernican Astronomy

Slide 37: Copernican Heliocentrism

Slide 38: Plate tectonics

Slide 39: Disputes of the IC • Apollo moon landings were a hoax • Vaccines cause autism • Solar variation accounts for climate change • Most cancers are viral-based • WTC7 was a controlled demolition

Slide 40: How to evaluate?

Slide 42: Crafting cohesive alternative theories

Slide 43: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points

Slide 44: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points Considering Totality of evidence

Slide 45: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points Considering Totality of Cherry-picking & evidence anomaly-hunting

Slide 46: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points Considering Totality of Cherry-picking & evidence anomaly-hunting Engaging critics

Slide 47: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points Considering Totality of Cherry-picking & evidence anomaly-hunting Engaging critics Preaching to converted

Slide 48: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points Considering Totality of Cherry-picking & evidence anomaly-hunting Engaging critics Preaching to converted Adapting to course of debate

Slide 49: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points Considering Totality of Cherry-picking & evidence anomaly-hunting Engaging critics Preaching to converted Adapting to course of Repeating discredited debate claims

Slide 50: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points Considering Totality of Cherry-picking & evidence anomaly-hunting Engaging critics Preaching to converted Adapting to course of Repeating discredited debate claims legit minority opinion “maverick”

Slide 51: Crafting cohesive Nitpicking - scoring alternative theories rhetorical points Considering Totality of Cherry-picking & evidence anomaly-hunting Engaging critics Preaching to converted Adapting to course of Repeating discredited debate claims legit minority opinion “crank” “maverick”

Slide 52: Justify ‘crank’ position Your science ain’t perfect; consensus has failed in the past Looser standards for evidence There’s a conspiracy!

Slide 53: As a skeptic, when talking about weird things Don’t use a paternalistic or mocking tone Steer towards empirical and testable claims Explore mundane explanations Ask questions and listen carefully Bring science into the discussion

Slide 54: Finally Modern Skepticism isn’t a set of beliefs It’s about avoiding faulty reasoning It’s about recognizing and compensating for bias It’s about respecting good evidence

Slide 55: Thank You!