I’m fascinated by all this stuff. I took a sociology class 30 years ago, and groupthink was discussed quite a bit. These other ideas are less familiar to me, but i recognize the phenomena from your explanations.
I’m glad you like this kind of material, Karl. Look out for more, soon. We’ve got a newsletter coming up all about social processes in jury decision-making. You might enjoy it!
Yes, I’m intrigued by the criminal psychology stuff, but if possible, I’m even more interested in the various ways humans arrive at opinions/epistemological perception based on emotion, finding justification for the avoidance of critical thinking. Even scientists do this, under the right circumstances. My whole sense of why science exists is that it’s a system of assessing data and learning about the world that is designed to avoid these human tendencies.
That's really interesting to hear, Karl! I wish you were in my undergraduate class. I teach a course that I call 'Is Psychology a science?' We start precisely like that - looking at cognitive heuristics and how science works as a corrective to our intuitive (mis)understandings of the world. For sure, even sophisticated scientists are prone to errors of thinking, particularly if they are outside their area of speciality or have been told to hurry.
It’s not clear to me why the study of this stuff isn’t seen as important enough to be part of the high school curriculum. The idea that algebra/trig/calculus is more valuable seems difficult to justify.
Me neither. I can count on one hand the number of times I've needed calculus to get me through the working day. None. I suppose it trains the brain or something like that?
I should say, I don’t argue that there’s no value in working hard to learn something you’re virtually guaranteed to never use. I don’t doubt that a case could be made that it’s good for your brain in some way. But I think it would be better by far to teach children critical thinking, sociology, psychology, etc. But I imagine our society would collapse if public education prioritized those things. It’s almost as if we’re taught to embrace groupthink, rather than to be wary of it, for example.
I’m fascinated by all this stuff. I took a sociology class 30 years ago, and groupthink was discussed quite a bit. These other ideas are less familiar to me, but i recognize the phenomena from your explanations.
I’m glad you like this kind of material, Karl. Look out for more, soon. We’ve got a newsletter coming up all about social processes in jury decision-making. You might enjoy it!
Yes, I’m intrigued by the criminal psychology stuff, but if possible, I’m even more interested in the various ways humans arrive at opinions/epistemological perception based on emotion, finding justification for the avoidance of critical thinking. Even scientists do this, under the right circumstances. My whole sense of why science exists is that it’s a system of assessing data and learning about the world that is designed to avoid these human tendencies.
That's really interesting to hear, Karl! I wish you were in my undergraduate class. I teach a course that I call 'Is Psychology a science?' We start precisely like that - looking at cognitive heuristics and how science works as a corrective to our intuitive (mis)understandings of the world. For sure, even sophisticated scientists are prone to errors of thinking, particularly if they are outside their area of speciality or have been told to hurry.
It’s not clear to me why the study of this stuff isn’t seen as important enough to be part of the high school curriculum. The idea that algebra/trig/calculus is more valuable seems difficult to justify.
Me neither. I can count on one hand the number of times I've needed calculus to get me through the working day. None. I suppose it trains the brain or something like that?
I should say, I don’t argue that there’s no value in working hard to learn something you’re virtually guaranteed to never use. I don’t doubt that a case could be made that it’s good for your brain in some way. But I think it would be better by far to teach children critical thinking, sociology, psychology, etc. But I imagine our society would collapse if public education prioritized those things. It’s almost as if we’re taught to embrace groupthink, rather than to be wary of it, for example.