Cognitive biases: How our brain make himself guilty of our believes - Dangers and abuses - 3/3
The stakes of this third and last article will be bigger than us. In fact treating biases’ consequences requires to talk about notions like freedom or truth.If cognitive biases were helpful for our survival thousands years ago, nowadays in our modern societies full of images they appear like dangerous shortcuts which threat these concepts.
I would like begin by the cognitive distortions which come only from us, when the only responsible is our brain and we can’t blame anyone else; they are the most frustrating. We already see the sunk cost effect in the first post but let me ad few things about how dangerous it can be. The fundamental problem that it causes is to make us staying in a same perspective, even if things turn bad. In term of ideas, we prefer stay in error than admit we were wrong. It explains why there are many people who still refute scientific established facts and can for example endanger their health. It’s also responsible of money games addictions which break entire lives. The second dangerous bias I wanted to introduce you was highlight during antiquity by the poet Esope. It’s the normalcy bias, a bias which make us ignore what we experience in daily life. The poem explains that after several false alert of a deceitful shepherd, villagers stop believe him and miss the real wolf attack. In real world it explains why we realize how much happiness or comfort we had one’s we lose it. We literally pass next to the essential. The last effect you should know about is the social pressure. To avoid critics or ridicule we generally copy our neighbors. In a situation analysis we watch the reaction of others to help us deciding what we should do: if all is calm, we consider that’s fine, and if everybody panic, we decide that’s a crisis situation, even if we have no correct information. So our brain can conclude bad things from the information it pick in its environment.
In addition, we meet everyday persons who have interests to manipulate us to spread their ideas. And they often are full of biases. First mass media and lobbyists. It’s known that to control its population, authoritarian governments use television. Indeed by a process called gatekeeping they are the only one actor between the facts and what is tell to the population. Journalistic biases are sorts of selection biases which encourage sensationalism. They diffuse a filtered information that can make people think the world is more dangerous than it is for real. By its impact on the society and public opinion, it’s a powerful and very dangerous tool.
Each person who’ve got interest is susceptible to influence you by his words. And we observed everyday that a single subject can be presented in many different ways. In politic for example, those who rules always consider they are acting well and opposition critics them about same facts. Our deep ideas change the way we speak even if we don’t realize it. Because we are talking about politic, let me introduce you the Overton window. This concept represents all the ideas that our society consider acceptable. Of course it’s constantly changing and radical thinking persons try to make their ideas enter in. They can use polemic. With repetition and time the normalcy bias expand the Overton window. The most chocking is that we are passive spectators, we can’t do anything against it. And despite us, a day comes where we start debating about these ideas that we never thought couples years before.
Pseudo-scientist and swindlers are principally based on biases. Because, in a certain way, we want to believe that they can work, we are influenced by confirmation bias. Think a while about horoscope. They pretend know what gonna happen in life of millions very different persons. If their trick continue it’s because those who believe in, focus on elements which confirm what was “predict” the morning and forget the rest. All pseudo-scientists sell illusions. In opposite Science have a crucial need of rigor to build knowledge. In all experiments scientists take care of biases and use methods to reduce them. For example clinical test requires blinded experiment to overcome the placebo effect.
So we meet biases always and everywhere. If they are natural responses of our brain to face reality they also can be misleading. The best we can do to reduce their impact on us is to be aware and adopt a skeptical attitude. As Valentin will explain you, at society level biases and believes are threat against truth. I hope you enjoyed the series and you learn useful things.
Sources:
Xavier.
I would like begin by the cognitive distortions which come only from us, when the only responsible is our brain and we can’t blame anyone else; they are the most frustrating. We already see the sunk cost effect in the first post but let me ad few things about how dangerous it can be. The fundamental problem that it causes is to make us staying in a same perspective, even if things turn bad. In term of ideas, we prefer stay in error than admit we were wrong. It explains why there are many people who still refute scientific established facts and can for example endanger their health. It’s also responsible of money games addictions which break entire lives. The second dangerous bias I wanted to introduce you was highlight during antiquity by the poet Esope. It’s the normalcy bias, a bias which make us ignore what we experience in daily life. The poem explains that after several false alert of a deceitful shepherd, villagers stop believe him and miss the real wolf attack. In real world it explains why we realize how much happiness or comfort we had one’s we lose it. We literally pass next to the essential. The last effect you should know about is the social pressure. To avoid critics or ridicule we generally copy our neighbors. In a situation analysis we watch the reaction of others to help us deciding what we should do: if all is calm, we consider that’s fine, and if everybody panic, we decide that’s a crisis situation, even if we have no correct information. So our brain can conclude bad things from the information it pick in its environment.
In addition, we meet everyday persons who have interests to manipulate us to spread their ideas. And they often are full of biases. First mass media and lobbyists. It’s known that to control its population, authoritarian governments use television. Indeed by a process called gatekeeping they are the only one actor between the facts and what is tell to the population. Journalistic biases are sorts of selection biases which encourage sensationalism. They diffuse a filtered information that can make people think the world is more dangerous than it is for real. By its impact on the society and public opinion, it’s a powerful and very dangerous tool.
Each person who’ve got interest is susceptible to influence you by his words. And we observed everyday that a single subject can be presented in many different ways. In politic for example, those who rules always consider they are acting well and opposition critics them about same facts. Our deep ideas change the way we speak even if we don’t realize it. Because we are talking about politic, let me introduce you the Overton window. This concept represents all the ideas that our society consider acceptable. Of course it’s constantly changing and radical thinking persons try to make their ideas enter in. They can use polemic. With repetition and time the normalcy bias expand the Overton window. The most chocking is that we are passive spectators, we can’t do anything against it. And despite us, a day comes where we start debating about these ideas that we never thought couples years before.
Pseudo-scientist and swindlers are principally based on biases. Because, in a certain way, we want to believe that they can work, we are influenced by confirmation bias. Think a while about horoscope. They pretend know what gonna happen in life of millions very different persons. If their trick continue it’s because those who believe in, focus on elements which confirm what was “predict” the morning and forget the rest. All pseudo-scientists sell illusions. In opposite Science have a crucial need of rigor to build knowledge. In all experiments scientists take care of biases and use methods to reduce them. For example clinical test requires blinded experiment to overcome the placebo effect.
So we meet biases always and everywhere. If they are natural responses of our brain to face reality they also can be misleading. The best we can do to reduce their impact on us is to be aware and adopt a skeptical attitude. As Valentin will explain you, at society level biases and believes are threat against truth. I hope you enjoyed the series and you learn useful things.
Sources:
1-
Wikipedia
contributors. (2020, April 2). Sunk cost. In Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 20:39, April 13, 2020, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunk_cost&oldid=948642524
2-
Fables
d’Ésope (trad. Chambry, 1927)/Le Berger mauvais plaisant
(bilingue). (2018, mai 15). Wikisource.
Page consultée le 20:16, mai 15, 2018 from
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Fables_d%E2%80%99%C3%89sope_(trad._Chambry,_1927)/Le_Berger_mauvais_plaisant_(bilingue)#
3-
Fenêtre d'Overton.
(2020, avril 12). Wikipédia,
l'encyclopédie libre.
Page consultée le 03:18, avril 12, 2020 à partir de
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fen%C3%AAtre_d%27Overton&oldid=169450002.
4-
vidéo biais de
normailte Marketing mania consulté le 13 avril 2020 from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyEKAMDyECo
5-
Wikipedia
contributors. (2020, March 25). Normalcy bias. In Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 20:52, April 13, 2020, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Normalcy_bias&oldid=947253677
6-
Menace theoriste, blog
sceptique sur la zététique par Thomas C. Durand from
https://menace-theoriste.fr/biais-cognitifs-et-sophismes/
Xavier.
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