Rationality
CategoryDunning-Kruger Discussion
A post by Blair Fix at Economics from the Top Down about whether the Dunning-Kruger effect (the inverse relationship between one’s skills in a particular domain and one’s tendency to overestimate them) is a mere statistical artifact, that I put in the Heap of Links last week, generated some discussion and prompted an email from a philosopher with a possibly helpful ..
Having a Say in What You Believe and Finding “New Ways of Being”
One way philosophy professors try to interest new students in philosophy is by appealling to the idea that philosophy can help them be more independent thinkers, to take control over or responsibility for their own thoughts, to have more of a say in what they believe. (more…)
Cognitive Bias Codex (updated)
Philosophers have long been interested in how we make sense of the world and how thinking goes wrong. Since some of the most interesting work on these topics in recent decades has been done in social psychology on cognitive biases (even acknowledging this), philosophers should at least be acquainted with some of that research—as some already are. (more…)
Is this video a test of your rationality or your humanity or what?
Boston Dynamics builds robots. Here’s a video of “Spot,” their robotic dog. Watch until at least the 10-second mark.
Is it wrong to kick the dog? What can we learn from our reactions to this video?
An article here reports on the reactions of others.
Philosophers and Cognitive Bias
Should the order in which a person considers thought experiments affect one’s responses to them? Rationally, it seems no. Yet the “order effect” is well-confirmed. What about philosophers? We are supposed to have a kind of expertise in handling thought experiments and are known (?) for thinking clearly and rationally; certainly the content of our judgments are not s..