7 ms·

The Modern-Day Mind-Killer

86 points by StokoeKeagan 6y ago

pantaloony 6y ago
Starts off promising but spends a lot of space going nowhere. Lots of inline links that go to other articles on the same blog. Reads like a self-help or pop-business book and content marketing had a baby and it was raised by a TED talk.
- dutch3000 6y ago
  dead on. - ultimately a let down
  - drno123 6y ago
    And the Copernicus mention is too shallow for a company that claims to innovate learning and speaks about thinking dor yourself. After researching history of astronomy I found out that we are all served the narrative of bad church against science, but turns out that, in time of Copernicus and Galileo claiming that Earth revolves around the Sun without proving why parallax of the stars cannot be observed was bad science.
rytill 6y ago
The buffet line analogy doesn’t really work. Since you can’t go backwards or look too far ahead, you take the items at the beginning that are above your satisfaction threshold, not knowing whether there will be items further along that satisfy you.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  Yep, any other conclusion from the mentioned study would be suspect unless the asymmetric cost of going backwards was somehow controlled for. Otherwise this is 100% explainable as a hoarding instinct because there is uncertainty about what else is available. Depending on a given person’s risk aversion, it’s entirely rational to take this view of the opportunity cost of passing on early choices you can’t revisit later.
- krallja 6y ago
  With a buffet (and when browsing the Internet), you can absolutely go backwards. Just get back in line. Yet we act as if there is a shortage of $resource.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Just get back in line. Which might take a long time, and by the time you're back at $item, it may be out.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I wonder how long the lines were in the study, or if this was controlled for at all.
  - theamk 6y ago
    Going back has an extra cost -- time to stand in a line again. So unless one enjoys standing in lines, there is absolutely an extra cost.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    That takes effort, which is its own cost. I -could- go back and forth 30 times and end up with a satisfaction-maximizing plate. But I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to stack some lettuce because I know it's a good base for whatever I get next (though cheap for the restaurant). I'm going to pick a quantity that leaves room for unexpected yummies ahead out of sight, but also is sufficient that if I find few things I like ahead I'll still be happy with my salad. I don't even manage to maximize the outcome at buffets that I've been at before with mostly static contents.
- munichpavel 6y ago
  I like the buffet analogy. It is a good example of "choice architecture" a la Cass and Sunstein from "Nudge". Nudge is one of a number of works arguing that we factor in more than economically rational criteria--such as marginal cost of going backwards in the buffet line--when making decisions. While Cass and Sunstein argue for government action in framing healthier choices, this post puts the onus on us to a.) recognize that information consumption involves choices, and b.) be more active thinkers consumers of information.
  - _jal 6y ago
    The funny thing about governmental "nudges". The vast majority of them - and there are a lot of them - are already used a lot, to meet unwritten administrative goals. A small example is the DMV person failing to tell you about an option you have that costs them more work. A big one is the Rick Scott administration's design of the unemployment system in Florida: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-unemployment-benefits-desantis-trump-rick-scott.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-unemployment... I applaud the idea of deliberately thinking about this stuff; one reason why governmental programs go off the rails is that programs are implemented in bad faith (or just "lazy faith"). So insofar as you actually want competent government, bringing attention to this stuff is positive. I'm a bit less optimistic about improving individual behavior that way, but then I'm a pessimist about that topic in general.
- Zigurd 6y ago
  The buffet line is a simplified test, meant to isolate an effect. Compare going to the grocery store with making a grocery delivery shopping list. You will find that end caps, promotions, coupons, shelf position, etc. all have an effect on you. You will also find a lot of literature saying these things don't work. What they mean is "they don't work in the way they were sold to the people buying the end cap." But they sure do have an effect.
- nottorp 6y ago
  Not to mention that there are people who just want to eat something and will pick the first item that's above said threshold because they just don't care.
  - watwut 6y ago
    That is me. I fill the plate with stuff that I want to eat and stop filling it when it is enough. I do look in advance whether there is something awesome worth longer wait, typically it is just more of the same.
catalogia 6y ago
If anything, I think the current state of the internet shows that fear is still the mind-killer.
miobrien 6y ago
I really like the quote cited in the comments: “Be a seeker, not a believer.”
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
So obviously this can tie into current social media and the spread of mal-information such as antivax, COVID mask protests, and memes that people let alter their impression of people. The traditional way to mitigate misinformation's harm was education and a respect for the educated. I think three things have happened that have prevented this from working: - We decided decades ago that people needed college degrees to enter much of the workforce. This has reduced education to an employment gateway in the minds of the majority of non-independently wealthy society. It may not have done so if people actually needed the degrees for their jobs and alternate career-starting things like apprenticeships were more available/known. - Education for all is seen as a method of making society for equal and therefore the solution of a number of social ills. It really is, but has to be done properly otherwise it doesn't work. Children who do not keep up tend to be socially promoted. Children who are outcasts for various reasons, including parental problems at home, drop out or degrade the experience for others in the school. This either causes or is because many of the non-independently wealthy masses see public school as a public babysitter, and they more or less have to see things this way if they are living paycheck to paycheck, because they can't afford to have someone stay home for their children. - The Internet has accelerated and likely caused fragmentation and in some cases destruction of mass media, and has made mass media have to sell out and become sensationalized to survive. Thus there is less and less of a common media between people, and therefore less of an opportunity to provide any substrate of a common culture. Social media bubbles exacerbate this.
- Fellshard 6y ago
  We're also seeing an increasing number of cases where high-profile experts are making high-profile claims that then fold in full public view; or experts that make contradictory claims, under which case: from the perspective of a non-expert, who's right? Education is essential, and yet is not a panacea for thinking well. So when experts can't seem to give people a straight answer, they'll simply turn to their peer group and hope for the best. And right now, as you noted, peer groups primarily consist of highly self-selected social media groups.
  - watwut 6y ago
markbnj 6y ago
I didn't find a link to the buffet study, but isn't it possible that the operator of the buffet leveraged past experience and placed the most popular items first in the lineup?
- raphlinus 6y ago
  Almost certainly this one, which explored the question of whether it would be an effective strategy to encourage healthier food choices: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077055 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Also, interesting fact: this is a Wansink paper. Wansink is a bullshit artist of the highest order. So I think there's quite a meta-lesson here. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/19/17879102/brian-wansink-cornell-food-brand-lab-retractions-jama https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/19/17879102/br...
wintorez 6y ago
The world is full of people who can think for themselves, but I’m afraid most of them has became jaded and tired of educating others.
red_admiral 6y ago
Since this is freshman-level "think, don't believe", here's an equally valid counterargument at roughly the same level. In Heinrich's book "The Secret of our Success" on cumulative cultural evolution, he gives an example of pre-Columbus American cultures whose diet was based on bitter manioc (a.k.a. cassava). Like the name suggests, in its raw form it's too bitter to eat, but these cultures evolved a set of traditions around the correct way to prepare it, and any deviation was taboo. The traditions involved pounding, scraping, straining and boiling the manioc over several days, most of the steps could only be performed by women (at least in the studied Tukanoa culture) and the women seem to have spend half their waking lives processing manioc. So let's say you decide all the traditions are obviously bogus, do an experiment and find that just boling the thing for a couple of hours removes the bitter taste just as well. The problem is the bitterness comes from cyanide, and boiling removes the taste but not the cyanide itself - something which the traditional process is really good at (Heinrich has studies and graphs to support this claim). Ten years later, you and the small pre-modern rationalist community you've founded are all in an advanced state of degeneration from cyanide poisoning. The general principle here is called Chesterton's Fence (see the obvious wiki page for details), which is that if you come across a fence in a field and think it's stupid, make sure you really understand why it's there before you tear it down. There are more examples like this in the book, such as a taboo in Polynesia on pregnant women consuming porpoises. It turns out that they do in fact contain chemical compounds that increase the risk of birth defects. To quote a review in the now-deleted Slate Star Codex blog by Scott Alexander Ocasio-Cortez: "For basically all of history, using reason would get you killed." My own view is that "don't take anything on faith ever" is as bad a life plan as "always follow traditions without question", and it's easy to think of lots of freshman philosophy level arguments why (your 5-year old is too young to properly understand electricity, would you want them to question your house rule against poking things in power sockets). _P.S. it's become a kind of in-joke among SSC followers to invent a surname when they mention him now._
- atarian 6y ago
  Never heard about Chesterton's Fence, thanks for sharing that. Definitely applicable to legacy code.
- 6y ago
tomgp 6y ago
The reason why people cut a cross in the base of Brussels sprouts is so they tough part cooks faster so the more delicate leaves don’t go soggy the evil spirits thing is just a nice story
- dsr_ 6y ago
  2 useful notes: - A less bitter variety of Brussels sprouts became widespread about a decade ago - Any water-based method of cooking Brussels sprouts is convenient but terrible compared to pan-frying with some onion and salt
  - asguy 6y ago
    Do you pan fry them entirely to done? I usually par-cook by steaming them a bit, and then finish in the pan. Or roast them.
- m-i-l 6y ago
  > The reason why people cut a cross in the base of Brussels sprouts is so they tough part cooks faster so the more delicate leaves don’t go soggy the evil spirits thing is just a nice story That was my assumption too. But having researched further (or more specifically entered "why do you put a cross on sprouts" into an internet search engine) I get information like "Contrary to popular opinion, Brussels sprouts do not benefit from having a cross cut into the bottom of them. Instead of helping them to cook evenly, the cross can make the sprouts waterlogged"[0]. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/brussels_sprouts https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/brussels_sprouts
KirinDave 6y ago
Is the thesis of this article: "it's important not to consume media or accept popular opinions that trigger cognitive dissonance BECAUSE our preferences are often determined by arbitrary aspects of our environment, bolstered by post-hoc rationalization?" If so, that seems like the exact opposite of a good idea, because the dissonance is probably there because of the exact same arbitrary forces. It also seems to imply that majority opinions are things to reject, rather than interrogate. It applies a sort of inherent "don't be a sheep" mentality, but if it's very cold outside then covering yourself in wool and keeping your calorie ingestion up might actually be the most reasonable way to stay warm. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I think this realization leads to the need to challenge everything about your environment, accept the idea that different points of view exist, and carefully evaluate if ideas are good and truthful independently of their popularity. Implicitly siding with the minority opinion every time leaves you just as open to manipulation as trusting the majority every time, and we see both approaches used in many nation's politics.
- jancsika 6y ago
  > Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I think this realization leads to the need to challenge everything about your environment, If you understand systems-- why and how they work-- you don't need to necessarily challenge everything. In fact, if you don't sufficiently understand a system then "challenging everything" can signal a lack of awareness and tacitly limit your options. For example, the local mechanic can look at the queue of other customers and decide it isn't worth the time to attempt to convince Socrates that fixing the steering fluid leak is urgent. In fact it's "turtles all the way down," because even when Socrates told me of that encounter, I could see just how deep down the rabbit hole I'd have to go to have any effect on their course of action. So I did my due diligence with the weaker position of, "I've never gotten a suspicious estimate from that mechanic." Same with at least two other people Socrates talked to. Then one morning Socrates was late to work because the same car wouldn't run. Socrates had to skip lunch and pay extra for a tow out to that same mechanic. It was odd how Socrates suddenly seemed so reluctant to delve into the exact nature of the problem with the car at that point.
  - KirinDave 6y ago
0PingWithJesus 6y ago
Articles like this always remind me of Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief". I feel like no one ever sums up the the importance of thorough and independent thought as well as Clifford did 150 years ago. http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf
crims0n 6y ago
The article seems to be making a case for protecting your mind from the constant bombardment of "junk food" media readily available in our current culture. I respect the idea, but I find it impractical. I do however find it effective to control the flow of that media, and in particular control the order in which I consume it. If I roll out of bed and open reddit or facebook first thing in the morning, I feel like I am priming my mind for failure. Lately I have been trying to read more enriching material in the morning, and slowly move into less useful material as the day goes on. For example, I usually wake up and have my first coffee while reading HN and WSJ. Mid morning break I may read a chapter of whatever non-fiction book I am currently working on. Lunch may be Ars, TC, or hackaday. And finally in the evening I will start moving towards reddit, facebook, etc. Maybe there are more disciplined people out there that can completely avoid non-enriching material, but for some reason I can't shake it. I can however move it to the least productive part of my day, and I generally feel better for it.
- omreaderhn 6y ago
  I built something to help with this actually: https://omreader.co https://omreader.co You can read blogs (RSS feeds) and email newsletters on your Kindle. It allows you to wake up and read long form content without needing your phone. I personally find that whenever I have my phone on me I almost always end up getting distracted so my solution is to just not have my phone anywhere near me when I wake up in the morning (or throughout the parts of the day where I'm trying to be productive). I just launched it a few weeks ago. Any feedback would be great.
- _0ffh 6y ago
  > I respect the idea, but I find it impractical I think it depends. I've ditched my telly when I was about twenty. I neither use Facebook nor Twitter nor any other social media, unless you want to count HN as such. But I do consume selected entertainment products, and I don't think such material is really "non-enriching". It's part of recreation, and as such I think it counts as a kind of enrichment in it's own right.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Strangely, this is the exact opposite of my normal tendency. For some reason I always want to ponder complex things right before bed, and have zero desire to do so when I wake up.
jonathanwallace 6y ago
Taking the author's advice, does anyone have a link to the study the author cites about the buffet line?
- StokoeKeagan 6y ago
  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077055 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
vz8 6y ago
The buffet analogy is interesting, but flawed in the sense that: 1. your selections don't radically change what the buffet offers in real time like, say, Google search. and 2. Unless you take pains to anonymize, your buffet options are already skewed to support your biases, say to starches. My wife and I will research the same topic at the same time on our respective workstations and get radically different results. The internet echo chamber feeds back two very different experiences, side by side (Never mind what happens when I fire up a non-US VPN) One of us adds a single negative keyword to their search phrase and the results are dishearteningly dystopic. Coworkers who rely on Facebook for their daily dose of tribal information have an extremely different set of 'facts' for any topic I care to mention. What I find most disturbing about this is that few people can/will take the time to compare notes across tribal or socioeconomic divides in a meaningful way -- we're all consuming a different buffet and its becoming more difficult by the minute to be sure of the chefs and suppliers.
ipython 6y ago
Ugh. I hate these pseudo intellectual puff pieces. What ends up happening is that this is used by all sides to reinforce their own existing thinking patterns, not to challenge existing ones. There are no actual actionable takeaways from reading this. As the article says, we have an abundance of information. This, coupled with bad actors who intentionally inject misleading, false, and emotionally charged information into our incoming data stream, means our lizard brains are overloaded and basically do the easiest thing possible: revert to emotion and agree with information that confirms our already held biases. The only thing that has been helpful to me is two fold: one, to revisit technological triumphs of previous eras. I’m listening to 13 minutes to the moon with my kids. It brings me to tears the focus, determination, and pure dedication to science required to pull off such engineering feats. Second, I push myself to read books. Mostly books about espionage because I find them both entertaining and I like to think it helps me make sense of the noise today. Currently I’m reading Ben Macintyres books - highly recommended.
Smithalicious 6y ago
The buffet example is bad. You can't really go back in a buffet, so it's a gamble where the certain outcome those first things (which you can see). Furthermore it doesn't factor in the cost of having to walk more to get the later items. My only take away from it is that people don't really have as strong a preference for buffet food as they might think. I'd also wager that avoiding "bad" food is much more important than finding particularly "good" food.
- headmelted 6y ago
  I laughed at the analysis of the buffet because of this. I don’t want sausages and eggs, but if I get to the end of the line and find out Janine has made off with the last of the Cheerios and pastries again my whole day will be ruined and I’m not taking that chance.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Not to mention that the way the article presents that "study" doesn't make it sound like they controlled for the very real possibility of "everything in the buffet is appealing to around 75% of buffet eaters, so any reordering will result in 75% grabbing the first thing they see". Plus, the point of a buffet (for me at least, being the fatass I am) is to try a little bit of everything, so unless it's something I already know I don't like, I'm probably gonna grab it.
  - red_admiral 6y ago
    In a breakfast buffet, I always go for savoury over sweet, so I'm immune to someone putting the muffins first. I'm probably "vulnerable" to croissants versus sliced bread first though. A friend of mine is a vegetarian; I don't imagine putting the ham first in the buffet line would affect her much either.
- markoman 6y ago
  I have a hard time accepting that had they placed cabbage or broccoli (or other unpopular items) at the head of the offerings, it would still be taken so often.
ebiester 6y ago
To add to others’ disagreements, I think there are two related traps in independent thought First, there is a giant pyramid of knowledge that experts have absorbed that the independent thinker hasn’t evaluated. Second, we underestimate the pyramid of knowledge required for independent thought. This doesn’t mean that a non-recognized expert cannot cultivate this knowledge independently, but rather that it is exceedingly difficult to have both and independent and valuable opinion of a wide variety of topics. Now, while this does not account for the possibility of blind spots in fields or bias in experts, it does mean that to have truly independent yet accurate thoughts, you must account for that expertise in the thinking, which is a large task. Do I think it makes more sense to directly read experts rather than secondary and tertiary sources when creating opinions? Yes! However, that isn’t independent thought. Perhaps my counter-proposal is independent thought in areas of expertise, educated opinions based on expertise on topics about which you care, and maintain humility in areas outside that sphere.
ngai_aku 6y ago
This idea definitely takes on new meaning depending on which lense you’re looking through. My first feeling was in agreement with the article because I was considering the religious background in which I was brought up. My worldview changed — for the better I would argue — after I really made a conscious effort to examine my own beliefs. It took courage for me to step outside of the group and pursue independent thought. The more I read this article, the more uncomfortable I began feeling with the tone it had, which I could see being used by the conspiracy/anti-science types of the world. This idea that we all believe crazy ideas as a result of overconfident experts is the same fallacy addressed by Isaac Asimov in his essay “The Relativity of Wrong” [1]. The whole thing is worth a read, but I’ll include the most relevant passage below. > In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after. What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete. [1] https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.html https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht...

86 points by StokoeKeagan 6y ago

Starts off promising but spends a lot of space going nowhere. Lots of inline links that go to other articles on the same blog. Reads like a self-help or pop-business book and content marketing had a baby and it was raised by a TED talk.

dutch3000 6y ago
dead on. - ultimately a let down
- drno123 6y ago
  And the Copernicus mention is too shallow for a company that claims to innovate learning and speaks about thinking dor yourself. After researching history of astronomy I found out that we are all served the narrative of bad church against science, but turns out that, in time of Copernicus and Galileo claiming that Earth revolves around the Sun without proving why parallax of the stars cannot be observed was bad science.

rytill 6y ago

The buffet line analogy doesn’t really work. Since you can’t go backwards or look too far ahead, you take the items at the beginning that are above your satisfaction threshold, not knowing whether there will be items further along that satisfy you.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
Yep, any other conclusion from the mentioned study would be suspect unless the asymmetric cost of going backwards was somehow controlled for. Otherwise this is 100% explainable as a hoarding instinct because there is uncertainty about what else is available. Depending on a given person’s risk aversion, it’s entirely rational to take this view of the opportunity cost of passing on early choices you can’t revisit later.
krallja 6y ago
With a buffet (and when browsing the Internet), you can absolutely go backwards. Just get back in line. Yet we act as if there is a shortage of $resource.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Just get back in line. Which might take a long time, and by the time you're back at $item, it may be out.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    I wonder how long the lines were in the study, or if this was controlled for at all.
- theamk 6y ago
  Going back has an extra cost -- time to stand in a line again. So unless one enjoys standing in lines, there is absolutely an extra cost.
- mlyle 6y ago
  That takes effort, which is its own cost. I -could- go back and forth 30 times and end up with a satisfaction-maximizing plate. But I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to stack some lettuce because I know it's a good base for whatever I get next (though cheap for the restaurant). I'm going to pick a quantity that leaves room for unexpected yummies ahead out of sight, but also is sufficient that if I find few things I like ahead I'll still be happy with my salad. I don't even manage to maximize the outcome at buffets that I've been at before with mostly static contents.
munichpavel 6y ago
I like the buffet analogy. It is a good example of "choice architecture" a la Cass and Sunstein from "Nudge". Nudge is one of a number of works arguing that we factor in more than economically rational criteria--such as marginal cost of going backwards in the buffet line--when making decisions. While Cass and Sunstein argue for government action in framing healthier choices, this post puts the onus on us to a.) recognize that information consumption involves choices, and b.) be more active thinkers consumers of information.
- _jal 6y ago
  The funny thing about governmental "nudges". The vast majority of them - and there are a lot of them - are already used a lot, to meet unwritten administrative goals. A small example is the DMV person failing to tell you about an option you have that costs them more work. A big one is the Rick Scott administration's design of the unemployment system in Florida: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-unemployment-benefits-desantis-trump-rick-scott.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-unemployment... I applaud the idea of deliberately thinking about this stuff; one reason why governmental programs go off the rails is that programs are implemented in bad faith (or just "lazy faith"). So insofar as you actually want competent government, bringing attention to this stuff is positive. I'm a bit less optimistic about improving individual behavior that way, but then I'm a pessimist about that topic in general.
Zigurd 6y ago
The buffet line is a simplified test, meant to isolate an effect. Compare going to the grocery store with making a grocery delivery shopping list. You will find that end caps, promotions, coupons, shelf position, etc. all have an effect on you. You will also find a lot of literature saying these things don't work. What they mean is "they don't work in the way they were sold to the people buying the end cap." But they sure do have an effect.
nottorp 6y ago
Not to mention that there are people who just want to eat something and will pick the first item that's above said threshold because they just don't care.
- watwut 6y ago
  That is me. I fill the plate with stuff that I want to eat and stop filling it when it is enough. I do look in advance whether there is something awesome worth longer wait, typically it is just more of the same.

catalogia 6y ago

If anything, I think the current state of the internet shows that fear is still the mind-killer.

miobrien 6y ago

I really like the quote cited in the comments: “Be a seeker, not a believer.”

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

So obviously this can tie into current social media and the spread of mal-information such as antivax, COVID mask protests, and memes that people let alter their impression of people. The traditional way to mitigate misinformation's harm was education and a respect for the educated. I think three things have happened that have prevented this from working: - We decided decades ago that people needed college degrees to enter much of the workforce. This has reduced education to an employment gateway in the minds of the majority of non-independently wealthy society. It may not have done so if people actually needed the degrees for their jobs and alternate career-starting things like apprenticeships were more available/known. - Education for all is seen as a method of making society for equal and therefore the solution of a number of social ills. It really is, but has to be done properly otherwise it doesn't work. Children who do not keep up tend to be socially promoted. Children who are outcasts for various reasons, including parental problems at home, drop out or degrade the experience for others in the school. This either causes or is because many of the non-independently wealthy masses see public school as a public babysitter, and they more or less have to see things this way if they are living paycheck to paycheck, because they can't afford to have someone stay home for their children. - The Internet has accelerated and likely caused fragmentation and in some cases destruction of mass media, and has made mass media have to sell out and become sensationalized to survive. Thus there is less and less of a common media between people, and therefore less of an opportunity to provide any substrate of a common culture. Social media bubbles exacerbate this.

Fellshard 6y ago
We're also seeing an increasing number of cases where high-profile experts are making high-profile claims that then fold in full public view; or experts that make contradictory claims, under which case: from the perspective of a non-expert, who's right? Education is essential, and yet is not a panacea for thinking well. So when experts can't seem to give people a straight answer, they'll simply turn to their peer group and hope for the best. And right now, as you noted, peer groups primarily consist of highly self-selected social media groups.
- watwut 6y ago

markbnj 6y ago

I didn't find a link to the buffet study, but isn't it possible that the operator of the buffet leveraged past experience and placed the most popular items first in the lineup?

raphlinus 6y ago
Almost certainly this one, which explored the question of whether it would be an effective strategy to encourage healthier food choices: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077055 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Also, interesting fact: this is a Wansink paper. Wansink is a bullshit artist of the highest order. So I think there's quite a meta-lesson here. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/19/17879102/brian-wansink-cornell-food-brand-lab-retractions-jama https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/19/17879102/br...

wintorez 6y ago

The world is full of people who can think for themselves, but I’m afraid most of them has became jaded and tired of educating others.

red_admiral 6y ago

Since this is freshman-level "think, don't believe", here's an equally valid counterargument at roughly the same level. In Heinrich's book "The Secret of our Success" on cumulative cultural evolution, he gives an example of pre-Columbus American cultures whose diet was based on bitter manioc (a.k.a. cassava). Like the name suggests, in its raw form it's too bitter to eat, but these cultures evolved a set of traditions around the correct way to prepare it, and any deviation was taboo. The traditions involved pounding, scraping, straining and boiling the manioc over several days, most of the steps could only be performed by women (at least in the studied Tukanoa culture) and the women seem to have spend half their waking lives processing manioc. So let's say you decide all the traditions are obviously bogus, do an experiment and find that just boling the thing for a couple of hours removes the bitter taste just as well. The problem is the bitterness comes from cyanide, and boiling removes the taste but not the cyanide itself - something which the traditional process is really good at (Heinrich has studies and graphs to support this claim). Ten years later, you and the small pre-modern rationalist community you've founded are all in an advanced state of degeneration from cyanide poisoning. The general principle here is called Chesterton's Fence (see the obvious wiki page for details), which is that if you come across a fence in a field and think it's stupid, make sure you really understand why it's there before you tear it down. There are more examples like this in the book, such as a taboo in Polynesia on pregnant women consuming porpoises. It turns out that they do in fact contain chemical compounds that increase the risk of birth defects. To quote a review in the now-deleted Slate Star Codex blog by Scott Alexander Ocasio-Cortez: "For basically all of history, using reason would get you killed." My own view is that "don't take anything on faith ever" is as bad a life plan as "always follow traditions without question", and it's easy to think of lots of freshman philosophy level arguments why (your 5-year old is too young to properly understand electricity, would you want them to question your house rule against poking things in power sockets). _P.S. it's become a kind of in-joke among SSC followers to invent a surname when they mention him now._

atarian 6y ago
Never heard about Chesterton's Fence, thanks for sharing that. Definitely applicable to legacy code.
6y ago

tomgp 6y ago

The reason why people cut a cross in the base of Brussels sprouts is so they tough part cooks faster so the more delicate leaves don’t go soggy the evil spirits thing is just a nice story

dsr_ 6y ago
2 useful notes: - A less bitter variety of Brussels sprouts became widespread about a decade ago - Any water-based method of cooking Brussels sprouts is convenient but terrible compared to pan-frying with some onion and salt
- asguy 6y ago
  Do you pan fry them entirely to done? I usually par-cook by steaming them a bit, and then finish in the pan. Or roast them.
m-i-l 6y ago
> The reason why people cut a cross in the base of Brussels sprouts is so they tough part cooks faster so the more delicate leaves don’t go soggy the evil spirits thing is just a nice story That was my assumption too. But having researched further (or more specifically entered "why do you put a cross on sprouts" into an internet search engine) I get information like "Contrary to popular opinion, Brussels sprouts do not benefit from having a cross cut into the bottom of them. Instead of helping them to cook evenly, the cross can make the sprouts waterlogged"[0]. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/brussels_sprouts https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/brussels_sprouts

KirinDave 6y ago

Is the thesis of this article: "it's important not to consume media or accept popular opinions that trigger cognitive dissonance BECAUSE our preferences are often determined by arbitrary aspects of our environment, bolstered by post-hoc rationalization?" If so, that seems like the exact opposite of a good idea, because the dissonance is probably there because of the exact same arbitrary forces. It also seems to imply that majority opinions are things to reject, rather than interrogate. It applies a sort of inherent "don't be a sheep" mentality, but if it's very cold outside then covering yourself in wool and keeping your calorie ingestion up might actually be the most reasonable way to stay warm. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I think this realization leads to the need to challenge everything about your environment, accept the idea that different points of view exist, and carefully evaluate if ideas are good and truthful independently of their popularity. Implicitly siding with the minority opinion every time leaves you just as open to manipulation as trusting the majority every time, and we see both approaches used in many nation's politics.

jancsika 6y ago
> Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I think this realization leads to the need to challenge everything about your environment, If you understand systems-- why and how they work-- you don't need to necessarily challenge everything. In fact, if you don't sufficiently understand a system then "challenging everything" can signal a lack of awareness and tacitly limit your options. For example, the local mechanic can look at the queue of other customers and decide it isn't worth the time to attempt to convince Socrates that fixing the steering fluid leak is urgent. In fact it's "turtles all the way down," because even when Socrates told me of that encounter, I could see just how deep down the rabbit hole I'd have to go to have any effect on their course of action. So I did my due diligence with the weaker position of, "I've never gotten a suspicious estimate from that mechanic." Same with at least two other people Socrates talked to. Then one morning Socrates was late to work because the same car wouldn't run. Socrates had to skip lunch and pay extra for a tow out to that same mechanic. It was odd how Socrates suddenly seemed so reluctant to delve into the exact nature of the problem with the car at that point.
- KirinDave 6y ago

0PingWithJesus 6y ago

Articles like this always remind me of Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief". I feel like no one ever sums up the the importance of thorough and independent thought as well as Clifford did 150 years ago. http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf

crims0n 6y ago

The article seems to be making a case for protecting your mind from the constant bombardment of "junk food" media readily available in our current culture. I respect the idea, but I find it impractical. I do however find it effective to control the flow of that media, and in particular control the order in which I consume it. If I roll out of bed and open reddit or facebook first thing in the morning, I feel like I am priming my mind for failure. Lately I have been trying to read more enriching material in the morning, and slowly move into less useful material as the day goes on. For example, I usually wake up and have my first coffee while reading HN and WSJ. Mid morning break I may read a chapter of whatever non-fiction book I am currently working on. Lunch may be Ars, TC, or hackaday. And finally in the evening I will start moving towards reddit, facebook, etc. Maybe there are more disciplined people out there that can completely avoid non-enriching material, but for some reason I can't shake it. I can however move it to the least productive part of my day, and I generally feel better for it.

omreaderhn 6y ago
I built something to help with this actually: https://omreader.co https://omreader.co You can read blogs (RSS feeds) and email newsletters on your Kindle. It allows you to wake up and read long form content without needing your phone. I personally find that whenever I have my phone on me I almost always end up getting distracted so my solution is to just not have my phone anywhere near me when I wake up in the morning (or throughout the parts of the day where I'm trying to be productive). I just launched it a few weeks ago. Any feedback would be great.
_0ffh 6y ago
> I respect the idea, but I find it impractical I think it depends. I've ditched my telly when I was about twenty. I neither use Facebook nor Twitter nor any other social media, unless you want to count HN as such. But I do consume selected entertainment products, and I don't think such material is really "non-enriching". It's part of recreation, and as such I think it counts as a kind of enrichment in it's own right.
yellowapple 6y ago
Strangely, this is the exact opposite of my normal tendency. For some reason I always want to ponder complex things right before bed, and have zero desire to do so when I wake up.

jonathanwallace 6y ago

Taking the author's advice, does anyone have a link to the study the author cites about the buffet line?

StokoeKeagan 6y ago
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077055 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

vz8 6y ago

The buffet analogy is interesting, but flawed in the sense that: 1. your selections don't radically change what the buffet offers in real time like, say, Google search. and 2. Unless you take pains to anonymize, your buffet options are already skewed to support your biases, say to starches. My wife and I will research the same topic at the same time on our respective workstations and get radically different results. The internet echo chamber feeds back two very different experiences, side by side (Never mind what happens when I fire up a non-US VPN) One of us adds a single negative keyword to their search phrase and the results are dishearteningly dystopic. Coworkers who rely on Facebook for their daily dose of tribal information have an extremely different set of 'facts' for any topic I care to mention. What I find most disturbing about this is that few people can/will take the time to compare notes across tribal or socioeconomic divides in a meaningful way -- we're all consuming a different buffet and its becoming more difficult by the minute to be sure of the chefs and suppliers.

ipython 6y ago

Ugh. I hate these pseudo intellectual puff pieces. What ends up happening is that this is used by all sides to reinforce their own existing thinking patterns, not to challenge existing ones. There are no actual actionable takeaways from reading this. As the article says, we have an abundance of information. This, coupled with bad actors who intentionally inject misleading, false, and emotionally charged information into our incoming data stream, means our lizard brains are overloaded and basically do the easiest thing possible: revert to emotion and agree with information that confirms our already held biases. The only thing that has been helpful to me is two fold: one, to revisit technological triumphs of previous eras. I’m listening to 13 minutes to the moon with my kids. It brings me to tears the focus, determination, and pure dedication to science required to pull off such engineering feats. Second, I push myself to read books. Mostly books about espionage because I find them both entertaining and I like to think it helps me make sense of the noise today. Currently I’m reading Ben Macintyres books - highly recommended.

Smithalicious 6y ago

The buffet example is bad. You can't really go back in a buffet, so it's a gamble where the certain outcome those first things (which you can see). Furthermore it doesn't factor in the cost of having to walk more to get the later items. My only take away from it is that people don't really have as strong a preference for buffet food as they might think. I'd also wager that avoiding "bad" food is much more important than finding particularly "good" food.

headmelted 6y ago
I laughed at the analysis of the buffet because of this. I don’t want sausages and eggs, but if I get to the end of the line and find out Janine has made off with the last of the Cheerios and pastries again my whole day will be ruined and I’m not taking that chance.
yellowapple 6y ago
Not to mention that the way the article presents that "study" doesn't make it sound like they controlled for the very real possibility of "everything in the buffet is appealing to around 75% of buffet eaters, so any reordering will result in 75% grabbing the first thing they see". Plus, the point of a buffet (for me at least, being the fatass I am) is to try a little bit of everything, so unless it's something I already know I don't like, I'm probably gonna grab it.
- red_admiral 6y ago
  In a breakfast buffet, I always go for savoury over sweet, so I'm immune to someone putting the muffins first. I'm probably "vulnerable" to croissants versus sliced bread first though. A friend of mine is a vegetarian; I don't imagine putting the ham first in the buffet line would affect her much either.
markoman 6y ago
I have a hard time accepting that had they placed cabbage or broccoli (or other unpopular items) at the head of the offerings, it would still be taken so often.

ebiester 6y ago

To add to others’ disagreements, I think there are two related traps in independent thought First, there is a giant pyramid of knowledge that experts have absorbed that the independent thinker hasn’t evaluated. Second, we underestimate the pyramid of knowledge required for independent thought. This doesn’t mean that a non-recognized expert cannot cultivate this knowledge independently, but rather that it is exceedingly difficult to have both and independent and valuable opinion of a wide variety of topics. Now, while this does not account for the possibility of blind spots in fields or bias in experts, it does mean that to have truly independent yet accurate thoughts, you must account for that expertise in the thinking, which is a large task. Do I think it makes more sense to directly read experts rather than secondary and tertiary sources when creating opinions? Yes! However, that isn’t independent thought. Perhaps my counter-proposal is independent thought in areas of expertise, educated opinions based on expertise on topics about which you care, and maintain humility in areas outside that sphere.

ngai_aku 6y ago

This idea definitely takes on new meaning depending on which lense you’re looking through. My first feeling was in agreement with the article because I was considering the religious background in which I was brought up. My worldview changed — for the better I would argue — after I really made a conscious effort to examine my own beliefs. It took courage for me to step outside of the group and pursue independent thought. The more I read this article, the more uncomfortable I began feeling with the tone it had, which I could see being used by the conspiracy/anti-science types of the world. This idea that we all believe crazy ideas as a result of overconfident experts is the same fallacy addressed by Isaac Asimov in his essay “The Relativity of Wrong” [1]. The whole thing is worth a read, but I’ll include the most relevant passage below. > In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after. What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete. [1] https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.html https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht...