3 ms·

It's a little weird to say "before you even bother presenting evidence, I'm here to tell you that evidence doesn't matter because several people on this website

by baddox 7y ago

It's a little weird to say "before you even bother presenting evidence, I'm here to tell you that evidence doesn't matter because several people on this website have strong feelings." I don't know who's right, but I know that I am more likely to be convinced by arguments that use reason and evidence.

cgriswald 7y ago
I've been offered valid reasoning based on incomplete evidence as proof that something I've directly (and measurably!) experienced just doesn't happen at all (so, obviously, I'm just stupid or lying). The fact of the matter is that evidence is often lacking (lots of things are hard to measure and/or study); but incentives are aligned to find a conclusion anyway. So, I'm more likely to be convinced first by my own direct experience. And, sometimes, even though the name or explanation doesn't fit, the model is close enough: it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, and treating it like a duck yields the results I want; so it doesn't matter if my experience isn't perfectly aligned with evidence that shows ducks don't exist.
- bosswipe 7y ago
  There's a difference between something you personally experience and a general trait of all humans.
- baddox 7y ago
  As I understand it, "decision fatigue" is a particular explanation for the observation in people's own lives and the observation of other people that decision-making seems to get worse after long stretches of decision-making. If I've observed, for instance, that I make more bad decisions at work later in the day, no one is necessarily saying that I am fooling myself (although to be honest I would prefer to see rigorous studies even of that claim, since judging the value of one's own thoughts and decisions is pretty well-known to suffer from many biases). In this case I'm willing to accept that decision-making does tend to get worse after long stretches, but I'm more concerned with how to verify this particular explanation for why decision-making gets worse, and for that I think it's vitally important to do controlled experiments. One's own experience almost certainly has no explanatory power for why decision-making is getting worse. It's certainly a reasonable guess that my decision-making is getting worse because I've had to make many decisions today. But there are also other reasonable guesses. Maybe it's my diet, and I had more energy immediately after breakfast and lunch but less energy later in the afternoon. Maybe sunlight has an effect. Maybe simply knowing that I get to go home from work soon makes me less invested in decisions at the end of the day. A less reasonable guess would be something like "when the afternoon train starts running my decision-making gets worse." It still naively fits my observations, but we can probably agree that a controlled test would likely show this explanation to be incorrect (but who knows, maybe the train is loud and distracts me, or makes me think about my upcoming commute home!). These are all things that can probably be controlled for, and it wouldn't be too shocking to me if the number of decisions made in a day is not in fact a significant explanation for why the later decisions are poorer. I haven't even seen the study that was preemptively dismissed, but I'd like to.
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  No, it does not mean you are stupid or lying. It means you have the same crappy way of knowing things as we all do. It is conventional wisdom among parents that giving kids sugar makes them hyper. They have pretty categorically disproved this idea with studies in which children are dropped off and then returned to parents having been randomly given a sugary treat before hand and half given a non sugary treat. In follow up calls the parents did no better than chance in correlating their child's excitement level to whether they received the sugary treat or not. It doesn't mean anyone is dumb or lying. It just means personal experience isn't good for knowing certain kinds of things are true or not.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Exactly. And I think the effect can be even worse when examining our own behavior and state of mind. There are plenty of extremely well-known cognitive biases that tend to effect our own self-examination. It doesn't mean self-examination is bad, but it does mean that more methodical methods of reasoning (like scientific experiments) are important. The "sugar rush" case has another potential parallel here. It may in fact be the case that parents, when frustrated by their children's hyperactivity, give their children less sugar and in fact observe lower energy levels. Parents may even mistake this for "personal evidence" that "sugar causes hyperactivity" is a good explanation for their observations. But of course, they very well may have just lowered their child's calorie intake, and perhaps sugar itself has no unique effect on hyperactivity. Another thing to note regarding the sugar misconception is that studies have in fact shown that parents will report their children are more hyperactive if they have been told that their children recently consumed sugar. To me, that's the real nail in the coffin, and it's also not good news for the mode of thinking that goes like "I've observed this feeling in my own life therefore no evidence could possibly show otherwise."

by baddox 7y ago

cgriswald 7y ago

I've been offered valid reasoning based on incomplete evidence as proof that something I've directly (and measurably!) experienced just doesn't happen at all (so, obviously, I'm just stupid or lying). The fact of the matter is that evidence is often lacking (lots of things are hard to measure and/or study); but incentives are aligned to find a conclusion anyway. So, I'm more likely to be convinced first by my own direct experience. And, sometimes, even though the name or explanation doesn't fit, the model is close enough: it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, and treating it like a duck yields the results I want; so it doesn't matter if my experience isn't perfectly aligned with evidence that shows ducks don't exist.

bosswipe 7y ago
There's a difference between something you personally experience and a general trait of all humans.
baddox 7y ago
As I understand it, "decision fatigue" is a particular explanation for the observation in people's own lives and the observation of other people that decision-making seems to get worse after long stretches of decision-making. If I've observed, for instance, that I make more bad decisions at work later in the day, no one is necessarily saying that I am fooling myself (although to be honest I would prefer to see rigorous studies even of that claim, since judging the value of one's own thoughts and decisions is pretty well-known to suffer from many biases). In this case I'm willing to accept that decision-making does tend to get worse after long stretches, but I'm more concerned with how to verify this particular explanation for why decision-making gets worse, and for that I think it's vitally important to do controlled experiments. One's own experience almost certainly has no explanatory power for why decision-making is getting worse. It's certainly a reasonable guess that my decision-making is getting worse because I've had to make many decisions today. But there are also other reasonable guesses. Maybe it's my diet, and I had more energy immediately after breakfast and lunch but less energy later in the afternoon. Maybe sunlight has an effect. Maybe simply knowing that I get to go home from work soon makes me less invested in decisions at the end of the day. A less reasonable guess would be something like "when the afternoon train starts running my decision-making gets worse." It still naively fits my observations, but we can probably agree that a controlled test would likely show this explanation to be incorrect (but who knows, maybe the train is loud and distracts me, or makes me think about my upcoming commute home!). These are all things that can probably be controlled for, and it wouldn't be too shocking to me if the number of decisions made in a day is not in fact a significant explanation for why the later decisions are poorer. I haven't even seen the study that was preemptively dismissed, but I'd like to.
DubiousPusher 7y ago
No, it does not mean you are stupid or lying. It means you have the same crappy way of knowing things as we all do. It is conventional wisdom among parents that giving kids sugar makes them hyper. They have pretty categorically disproved this idea with studies in which children are dropped off and then returned to parents having been randomly given a sugary treat before hand and half given a non sugary treat. In follow up calls the parents did no better than chance in correlating their child's excitement level to whether they received the sugary treat or not. It doesn't mean anyone is dumb or lying. It just means personal experience isn't good for knowing certain kinds of things are true or not.
- baddox 7y ago
  Exactly. And I think the effect can be even worse when examining our own behavior and state of mind. There are plenty of extremely well-known cognitive biases that tend to effect our own self-examination. It doesn't mean self-examination is bad, but it does mean that more methodical methods of reasoning (like scientific experiments) are important. The "sugar rush" case has another potential parallel here. It may in fact be the case that parents, when frustrated by their children's hyperactivity, give their children less sugar and in fact observe lower energy levels. Parents may even mistake this for "personal evidence" that "sugar causes hyperactivity" is a good explanation for their observations. But of course, they very well may have just lowered their child's calorie intake, and perhaps sugar itself has no unique effect on hyperactivity. Another thing to note regarding the sugar misconception is that studies have in fact shown that parents will report their children are more hyperactive if they have been told that their children recently consumed sugar. To me, that's the real nail in the coffin, and it's also not good news for the mode of thinking that goes like "I've observed this feeling in my own life therefore no evidence could possibly show otherwise."