Robyn Dawes Quotes

Thus, logic and mathematics are important in determining “what is,” though not necessarily implying what is. “What is” must be consistent with logic, namely, with “what could be.”
Why? I don’t know. To me one of the great mysteries of life is that by simply thinking logically we can determine a lot about the universe—or at least conclude what can’t be, which together with empirical observation leads us to some pretty good ideas about what is.

True scientific demonstration involves convincing an observer who is outside the process, particularly one not deeply and emotionally enmeshed in it.

The situation is very simple. Familiarity leads to availability and often to accuracy as well; hence availability is used as a cue to accuracy.
The problem is that mere assertion and repetition also leads to availability, whether or not this assertion and repetition involve reality, as familiarity generally does. Thus, the “big lie” of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was based on the idea that if something is repeated often enough, people will believe it—in large part simply because they have heard it before…
Goebbels apparently believed that providing a credible source, for him the German national government, was a critical component in having the repeated statements believed. Subsequent research has shown that the credibility of a source is not a necessary condition to develop beliefs…
Worse yet, mere repetition—which creates an availability bias due to familiarity, can also make people confident of their own decision making in the absence of any feedback that they have made good decisions.

If we reject the idea of the “intrinsic rationality of whatever we do” (at least if we are not some sort of superb expert or monstrous political leader), then we must value scrutiny, which brings me to my final point: the necessity and value of a free society. When we scrutinize arguments, we often do so in a collective way….
If disagreement can lead to the presentation of one’s remains in a body bag to one’s spouse, this type of scrutiny is horribly constrained. Such constraint in turn implies that irrational conclusions will go unchallenged, and again because irrationality implies impossibility, that lack of challenge in turn implies belief in false conclusions. Such belief harms both societies and individuals.

The realpolitik view of the individual human—that we are slaves to our desires and attitudes and that knowledge and rationality are necessarily secondary to these other factors—is simply wrong. We have the competence to be knowledgeable and rational, especially when we interact freely with each other. We can indeed change our minds. We can “bend over backward to be defense attorneys against our own pet ideas.” We can reconsider. We can be rational.

Unfortunately, there are many irrational conclusions and beliefs in our culture from which to choose. Those analyzed at some length—and as precisely as possible—are those with which I am most familiar. With public opinion polls indicating that more people in the United States believe in extrasensory perception than in evolution, it is not surprising that examples abound.

Thus, even if we accept that the people are deviously neurotic rather than outright irrational, we still must specify exactly how they believe that the rest of us can be fooled by them. Throughout the book, I will assert that they are urging us (and themselves) to “associate, but not compare.” This book is written in partial hope that the readers will end up making appropriate comparisons, rather than simple associations—which generally lead to a deficient specification of the categories necessary to reach a rational conclusion.

People treat reason as if it were the most minor and harmful aspect of a whole human being. It is as if a soldier standing guard were to say to himself: “What good would my rifle be I were now to be attacked by a dozen enemies? I shall therefore lay it aside and smoke opium cigarettes until I doze off.”

Two biases of memory, however, tend to enhance the illusory nature of our retrospective “understanding” of our own and others’ lives. The first is that we tend to overestimate specific events relative to general categories of events. The second is that we tend to recall specific events and to interpret them in ways that make sense out of a current situation—“sense” in terms of our cultural and individual beliefs about stability and change in the life course. Thus, memories, which appear to be beyond our control as if we are observing our previous life on a video screen, are like anecdotes in that they are often (inadvertently) “chosen for a purpose.” The result is that they will tend to reinforce whatever prior beliefs we have, just as anecdotes tend to reinforce the points they are meant to illustrate.

The Milgram studies led to a great deal of criticism from other academic and professional psychologists. Ironically, the major focus of this criticism was that the studies would “destroy faith in psychologists as authorities,” to which Milgram’s response was “Fine!”

Unfortunately, good stories are so compelling to us when we take the role of psychologist or social analyst that we do not realize that at best they constitute just a starting point for analysis.

Finally, the irrationality resulting from incomplete specification can be affected by emotions in a very simple way. If the conclusion is consistent with our desires or needs, the specification may not be examined in detail—in particular, not examined for its incompleteness. How often, when we conclude what we wish to conclude, do we then decide to subject our conclusion to detailed scrutiny? On the other hand, when the conclusion is one that contradicts our wishes and needs, then clearly there is a motive to examine our logic. Then we reconsider or even restructure the possibilities, question whether we have examined them all, and so on.

Again, irrationality can hurt, and here we have evidence that a particular form of it is widespread. The people accused around hurt, and the clients—be they children or grown adults—are hurt. Irrationality is not simply an amusing diversion provided by tarot cards or Ouija boards.

Again, what cannot be is not, and what is can be regarded as an instance of what can be. Individuals who make pseudodiagnoses on the basis of “typical” characteristics—by attending only to the numerator of the likelihood ratio rather than to both numerator and denominator—will similarly be doomed to failure by making diagnoses that are not empirically supported. Because such a diagnostic procedure is based on irrationality, it cannot in general succeed. And similarly, people who argue that both the evidence and its negation support the same conclusion are arguing irrationally, and hence the conclusions will be empirically flawed. The principle is the same.

Prediction is not the same thing as understanding, but in the absence of prediction, we can certainly doubt understanding.