Roll the dice, what are the odds you get seven? You have a secret way that rarely fails you in this endeavor. Blow on the dice, say the number you wish it to land upon three times, and throw them. Congratulations, we have a winner. Was that luck, or just finding an order in a random event? We so easily see correlations, or cause and effect links, where there are none to be found. You are blowing on the dice did nothing to improve your odds of winning, but you were so ready to make a random act seem totally predictable. In that, you have erred.
We tend to overestimate our own judgmental accuracy. When asked the question, “Which is longer, the Panama or Suez canal?” (pg. 86), people were sixty percent of the time correct, and felt seventy five percent sure they were correct. This is an example of what some psychologists call cognitive conceit. This overconfident phenomenon is present in a variety of fields of study. A doctor has a patient with a spot on their arm that has puss coming out of it. The patient suspects it is a staph infection, but the doctor insists that it is a spider bite. The doctor insists so much that the patent begins to believe it themselves. After a few weeks, it turns out that the doctor was wrong and the spot was a sign of a staph infection. The doctor has just exhibited the overconfidence phenomenon. Perhaps the doctor was eager to verify his beliefs of a spider bite, and fell prey to confirmation bias.
In chapter fourteen, we discussed how vividness of a concept would lead to greater memory of it. Let us say that John is looking for a new gaming console and is thinking about purchasing a PlayStation. He consults Game Informer for reviews on the console, and finds that the PlayStation is ranked higher than average by consumers. In comes Josh, who tells Reese about how bad of an experience he had with a PlayStation saying that it crashed more than it played. Which will John remember more, the reviews in the magazine, or his friends story? The vividness painted by Josh’s story will be front and foremost in John’s mind. So what does this mean? John should have noticed what was happening and admitted his error. For psychologists, they should recognize their vulnerability to error, and make restrain their unchecked speculations.
We should not take our word as absolute truth, but rather compare them to God’s created world. This comparison beckons us to a type of humility because of overconfidence in our own judgments. Having doubts is not a bad thing, but rather reveals a humble mind that asks questions.
Human error is a common thing. The example of the doctor and the staph infection was actually a personal story I used in place of the story used in the book. That doctor’s overconfidence in his diagnosis almost cost me my right arm and my life if the infection had moved into my bloodstream. We can be so certain of a thing and be so wrong. I am no exception to this rule. Once, I stood with a few friends and argued that Dasani water had small amounts of salt in the water to keep you thirst and get you to buy more water. I was so convinced of this, yet after looking into the ingredients and some research, I found I was wrong (yes, I know, it was a silly idea to begin with, and one I suspect was told to me by another friend with such confidence that I believed it). It is not a bad thing to temper your beliefs with the recognition that you may be wrong, yet if you temper everything you belief with doubt, how can you be sure of anything? I believe the chapter sums this up by tying assumptions up with temperament. Known facts that have been compared to God’s creation and proven true, then there is no reason for doubt, but a hypothesis is not fact. Hypothesis are subject to doubt and scrutiny, and we should recognize our presumptions surrounding it and judge it accordingly.
We tend to overestimate our own judgmental accuracy. When asked the question, “Which is longer, the Panama or Suez canal?” (pg. 86), people were sixty percent of the time correct, and felt seventy five percent sure they were correct. This is an example of what some psychologists call cognitive conceit. This overconfident phenomenon is present in a variety of fields of study. A doctor has a patient with a spot on their arm that has puss coming out of it. The patient suspects it is a staph infection, but the doctor insists that it is a spider bite. The doctor insists so much that the patent begins to believe it themselves. After a few weeks, it turns out that the doctor was wrong and the spot was a sign of a staph infection. The doctor has just exhibited the overconfidence phenomenon. Perhaps the doctor was eager to verify his beliefs of a spider bite, and fell prey to confirmation bias.
In chapter fourteen, we discussed how vividness of a concept would lead to greater memory of it. Let us say that John is looking for a new gaming console and is thinking about purchasing a PlayStation. He consults Game Informer for reviews on the console, and finds that the PlayStation is ranked higher than average by consumers. In comes Josh, who tells Reese about how bad of an experience he had with a PlayStation saying that it crashed more than it played. Which will John remember more, the reviews in the magazine, or his friends story? The vividness painted by Josh’s story will be front and foremost in John’s mind. So what does this mean? John should have noticed what was happening and admitted his error. For psychologists, they should recognize their vulnerability to error, and make restrain their unchecked speculations.
We should not take our word as absolute truth, but rather compare them to God’s created world. This comparison beckons us to a type of humility because of overconfidence in our own judgments. Having doubts is not a bad thing, but rather reveals a humble mind that asks questions.
Human error is a common thing. The example of the doctor and the staph infection was actually a personal story I used in place of the story used in the book. That doctor’s overconfidence in his diagnosis almost cost me my right arm and my life if the infection had moved into my bloodstream. We can be so certain of a thing and be so wrong. I am no exception to this rule. Once, I stood with a few friends and argued that Dasani water had small amounts of salt in the water to keep you thirst and get you to buy more water. I was so convinced of this, yet after looking into the ingredients and some research, I found I was wrong (yes, I know, it was a silly idea to begin with, and one I suspect was told to me by another friend with such confidence that I believed it). It is not a bad thing to temper your beliefs with the recognition that you may be wrong, yet if you temper everything you belief with doubt, how can you be sure of anything? I believe the chapter sums this up by tying assumptions up with temperament. Known facts that have been compared to God’s creation and proven true, then there is no reason for doubt, but a hypothesis is not fact. Hypothesis are subject to doubt and scrutiny, and we should recognize our presumptions surrounding it and judge it accordingly.
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