The Basics
If you havnt already read my previous post, “When Reasoning Fails, Myths Become Beliefs”, it provides somewhat of an introduction for this post. Where the previous post left you speculating upon the differences between belief and myth, this post will get down to business. I’ll discuss 3 errors our brains commit while engaging in the function of reasoning. These errors are by no means little errors that can be simply overshadowed. They are going to reveal such gaping holes in our ineffective reasoning that the grand canyon is gonna get a little jealous!
The Three Fault Within our Vaults of Reason
1) The Tendency to Seek Confirmatory Information
2) The Misplaced Importance Upon the ‘Seen’ rather than the ‘unseen’
3) The Tendency to Infer Causation based Solely Upon Results (my favorite)
While a multitude of erroneous beliefs, miscalculated assumptions, inferences, and stuff of that sort exist in abundance, I have selected only three errors to deal with, I am not trying to transcribe a novel. I have found these three to be not only the most relevant mind traps to my myth, but they represent a process of thought that opens the door for myth to become belief.
—-
“When trying to asses whether a belief is valid, people tend to seek out information that
would potentially confirm the belief, over information that might disconfirm it.” (Gilovich p.33)
——
I. The Confirmation Bias or Tendency to Seek Confirmatory Evidence
The Confirmation Bias deserves it’s own chapter, but I do not want to boggle you down staring at your screen. I’ll keep it concise as possible. This reasoning error essentially claims that as we search to support a belief, we seek only to confirm our notions and thus seek information that will confirm the help belief as valid. In other words, one seeks evidence that ehcos ”yes’ in accordance to their premonitions.
A Little Thought Experiment
To establish a point, I am going to tell you that ‘the lie detector does not exist. There is no such device capable of accurately and reliably detecting dishonesty, the notion is a myth’. Now, say you believe a lie detector really does exist. Your mind will begin to race to prove your point. Memories of Tv shows, movies, even real live court cases may come to mind as you begin to create a line of defense. Holding several examples in mind, you can confidently sit back and confirm that I am mistaken and that your belief in a ‘lie detector’ remains intact.
Your logic appears solid, you do have proof, right! How can that be flipped around. Here’s how. Reasoning Error #1, The Confirmation Bias, the greatest of the reasoning errors to ever exist. The Confirmation Bias plays off of your innate desire to seek out only confirming examples in reality to be able to justify your belief as true. However, as you search and discover more and more confirmations, you become even further convinced in your correctness, and less aware of how far you’ve fallin into the first trap.
This is the fate of those who has fallen to the Confirmation Bias, he or she has developed a strong belief sustained upon solid support (actually, imaginary support). Little does he or she know however, they have based their belief off only half of the greater picture, they have failed to search for disconfirmational evidence. If you have not realized already, a single evident of disconfirming evidence will unfailingly toppple an infinite number of confirming evidence. To illustrate the power of disconfirmation, I will tell you a story intended to shed light upon the deceptive nature of conformational evidence, and it will be about swans.
——
‘The Case of the Black Swan’ or How the Discovery of One Disconfirming Account Can Disprove Centuries of ‘Confirmations’
Long ago, before the discovery of australia, centuries off visual encounters with swans confirmed the existence of only white swans. Scientists and men of the highest intellect knew this to be true and proclaimed only the existence of white swans. Since thousands and thousands of visual accounts saw only white swans, naturally everyone believed in only white swans, they even believed such confirmatory accounts to be ample support. Naive to reasoning errors, as many are, Australia was soon discovered and with it, a black swan was discovered. So now, one single account of a black swand disproved a universal and ‘scientifically’ supported belief.
So what happened here? The reason for this little anecdote was not only to humorously play upon professionals succumbing to flawed logic but to bring your attention to a extremely important fact of reason. One may find confirmation in the past and similarities that appear to a uphold a belief, but nonetheless to gauge confirmational evidence as ‘scientific’ and thus reliable reasoning to support a belief, will typically lead to ridicule and mistaken myths as truths.
See, the problem with using evidence of confirmation is that one may be able to list an infinite number of instances in which the polygraph has succeeded in application, which it has at time. However, such singular cited examples prove nothing other than that the polygraph has been right in those instances. To truly determine fact from myth, the crucial reasoning rests up trying to disprove the polygraphs accuracy. In other words, ‘yes’s’ towards a belief may encourage one to
believe however seeking discomforting or ‘no’s’ while conducting research will truly determine the veracity of, in this case, of the polygraph’s ability to accurately detect dishonesty.
Conclusion – Confirmation Bias
In conclusion, the confirmation bias causes one to only acknowledge memories, instances, and evidence in which their pre-conceived belief lies in agreement with their ‘evidence’. However, the downside is totally disregard towards the instances of failure. Just because one can find 1,000 instances where a polygraph examine has succeeded, two or three (there’s way more) failures are enough to discount the statement ‘ the polygraph is an accurate mean of detecting dishonesty’ in spite of the 1,000 successful instances. Essentially, confirmatory evidence is weak and easy to disprove. People use it daily unaware of it’s inability to stand up against reliable, falsifyable evaluations.
II. Misplaced Values: Overvaluing the Seen Over Unseen
Building off of reasoning error #1, the confirmation bias, this reasoning error highlights our inability to account for lack of data or what is not seen and instead calculating our decisions and beliefs based exclusively upon what we do know or are aware of. The second reasoning error essentially claims that in the process of determining a best decision or forming a belief, we blatantly disregard what we do not know or aware of as irrelevant in our decision making process.
How Did You Decide Which College to Attend?
I choose this question because many widely believe it to be one of the most monumental decisions in one’s life. But how does one arrive at such a huge decision? If your like me and everyone else, you most likely assessed the advantages and disadvantages, and determined what out weighed the other, and selected appropriately.
When you weighed out these positives and these negatives in your decision driven mind, you of course weighed out the positives which you were aware of or knew about and similarly weighed out the negatives of which you were only aware of. You, like everyone else most likely weighed out only those factors of which you were aware about. So why aren’t decisions always perfect? Hint: it’s what we do not expect that determines the greatest influence upon us.
The above is an instance of a typical reasoning process to form a belief or make a decision. We decide by calculating only what we see, predict, or expect. But we never seem to account for whats not there or unseen. What we do not see, does not go into our reasoning engine and thus our decision has not taken into account what is not present. This is how we can falsely belief only white swans exists.
To believe in something because we have only see accounts to support the belief does not make the belief true, it only raises the likely hood to be able to predict its occurrence once again. The reason we belief truth from previous occurrences is the result of reasoning error #2. We place all decision value and subsequently the creation of a belief upon what we know, see, and expect and completely fail to account for the fact that what we are not even aware of may actually hold far greater influence upon our decision. That is why we may make poor decisions and believe myths.
In the case of the polygraph, popular media reveals only the truthfulness of the device and it only comes to our attention when it has solved a crime with accuracy. So when we decide whether to believe it to be true or false, we decide using only data of which we are aware. To fail to consider evidence may have been overlooked or remains unseen, is a reasoning error that leads us to still believe in a lie detector.
III. Appealing to the Social Consensus
To Prove My Point
Say one bitterly chilly day you’re arguing with a friend, you’re trying to convince him that ‘if you don’t stay warm when you go out in the cold, you’re going to come down with a cold’ and to prove your point, you confidently blurt out something like ‘everyone just knows that…’ or ‘it’s just common sense…duh’. Surely, you’ve said this before, we all have. We naturally appeal to the social consensus of others to ‘prove’ our points, and we’ve probably felt pretty satisfied thinking we’ve been correct to do so.
While appealing to the masses may appear to conclusively support that argument; almost all people unanimously believe what you believe to be true, so it must be true (you think). Rarely do people question the meta-facts, or whether or not this ‘fact’ is actually true regardless of a social consensus. People typically accept what popular culture has led them to believe while simultaneously inhibiting a natural drive to discover the truth through first hand evidence and falsifiable methods.
Reasoning Error three essentially attempts to prove a ‘fact’ or belief by appealing to the fact almost everyone believes it. This level of reasoning is very basic and even in spite of most people knowing the masses may not always be correct, it’s still used in everywhere.
This reasoning error directly correlates with the proneness to believe in a lie detector. The polygraph is so widely accepted and used among tv shows, movies, and popular media, it would almost be weird to question it effectiveness simply because it’s so ingrained in our culture. It’s deep and continued references generate a acception of its veracity, and eventually we just trust the belief of others to verify our own.
Am I Lying - The Unheard Truth Behind Lie Detectors 