Эссе на тему: "What kind of cognitive biases do you think are most likely to impact this debate and why?"

OBJECTIVE YOUR TEXT
COGNITIVE BIASES
What kind of cognitive biases do you think are most likely to impact this debate and why? Be sure to define each cognitive bias and to state specifically why and you think it’s likely to occur in this debate. Discuss at least two biases. All other things being equal, few people would like to destroy the world. Even faceless corporations, government interfering with their affairs, reckless scientists and other dangerous people need the outside world to achieve their goals, such as profit, power, property or other unpleasant things in it. If the death of humanity is so slow that a terrible awareness of this process has time to occur, then the actors who launched it will probably be stunned by the understanding that they, in fact, destroyed the world. Therefore, I suppose that if the Earth is nevertheless destroyed, then this will happen, probably by mistake.
RHETORICAL DEVICES & PSYCH FALLACIES
Give examples of at least two rhetorical devices/psych fallacies used in the debate. Name the device or psych (not common) fallacy, define it, quote the example, and cite where you got the quote from, then explain why you think the example uses a rhetorical device. A systematic experimental study of the repetition of errors in human reasoning and what these errors say about the mental processes that precede them is being studied in cognitive psychology through research on heuristics and prejudice. These studies have led to discoveries that are very significant for experts on the risks of global disasters. Let's say you are worried about the risks of some explosive substance P, which could destroy the entire planet if it is exposed to a strong enough radio signal. Fortunately, there is a famous expert who discovered substance P, spent thirty years working with it, and knows it better than anyone else on Earth. You call an expert and ask how strong the radio signal must be for the substance to explode. The expert replies that the critical threshold is probably at 4000 terawatts. "Probably?" - You ask. "Can you tell me the power range of the trigger signal with 98 percent certainty?" “Of course,” the expert replies. "I am 99% sure that the critical threshold is more than 500 terawatts, and 99% sure that it is less than 80,000 terawatts." "What about 10 terawatts?" You ask. “Impossible,” the expert answers.
SURVEY/STUDY
Find a survey or study with reported results on the general topic (don’t choose a topic that doesn’t have related surveys or studies)
Introduce the study and identify its sample, population, and attribute of interest. Let's say you take a random word of three or more letters from an English text. Which is more likely, that the word starts with the letter R (rope), or that its third letter is R (park)? The main idea of ​​the euristic and biases program is that people use thinking methods called heuristics that give good approximate answers in most cases, but which also lead to increased systemic errors called cognitive biases. An example of a heuristic is judging the frequency or probability of an event by its availability, that is, by the ease with which examples of such an event come to mind. "R" appears as the third letter in more English words than in the first place, but it is much easier to remember words that begin with that letter. Thus, most respondents assume that words starting with the letter R are more common.
How credible (from 1-10) is this study? Why? (be sure to reference any inductive fallacies if applicable)
(A) Does it suffer from a hasty generalization or unrepresentative sample fallacy? If so, name the fallacy, define what it is, and explain how it applies to the study. If not, explain why not.
(B) Briefly research the source of the study or survey. How credible is this source in terms of expertise on the subject? (education/training, experience, accomplishment, reputation among peers). Do you have any reason to think this source is biased and should not be trusted for that reason? (A) Cognitive biases based on the availability heuristic influence risk assessments. Lichtenstein's pioneering study describes the absolute and relative validity of risk judgments. People have a general idea of ​​which risks cause more deaths and which ones cause fewer.
(B) However, when asked to calculate risks more accurately, they grossly overestimate the frequencies of rare causes of death, and grossly underestimate the frequencies of common causes. Other recurring errors found in this study were also obvious: accidents were thought to cause as many deaths as diseases (in fact, diseases are 16 times more likely to cause death than accidents). Murder was incorrectly considered a more common cause of death than diabetes or stomach cancer. A study by Combs and Slovic (1979) counted death reports in two newspapers and found a high correlation between reliability judgments and selectivity in newspaper reporting (0.85 vs. 0.89).
COMMON FALLACIES
Find at least two common fallacies in the discussion on this topic. Begin with your own social media feeds and those of your friends. The idea is that you’re looking where you and your friends are normally informed and try to convince others about a subject. Then, if necessary, expand beyond your own feeds to other instances in social media or anywhere Google sends you. Name the common (not psychological) fallacy, define it, quote the example, and cite where you got the quote from. Also, people refuse to buy flood insurance even if it is well subsidized and costs well below the fair market price. Kunreuther (1993) suggests that poor response to flood threats may arise from an individual's inability to imagine a flood that has never happened before their very eyes. The inhabitants of the flooded plains are trapped in their experiences. Apparently, people cannot seriously worry about the possibility of losses and destruction greater than those experienced during the recent floods. Burton (1978) reports that fewer floods occur after the construction of dams and embankments, which seems to create a false sense of security, leading to reduced safety precautions. While the construction of dams reduces the frequency of floods, the damage from each flood that occurs increases so much that the average annual damage increases.
ARGUMENT 1: THE ARGUMENT
Copy and paste a weak argument from one side and cite it It seems that people do not extrapolate the experience of experienced minor hazards to the possibility of larger risks; on the contrary, past experience with small hazards sets an upper bound on the expectations of the maximum possible risk.
ARGUMENT 1: CLARITY
Look for any unclear (vague or ambiguous) claims and explain what is unclear about them and what they could mean? Remember, you’re looking for what’s not clear, not what’s weak about the argument, at this point. A society well protected from small hazards will take no action in relation to large risks. For example, construction is often undertaken on flooded plains after regular small floods have been removed. A society exposed to regular small hazards will consider these small hazards as the upper limit of possible risks (protecting against regular small floods, but not unexpected large ones).
ARGUMENT 1: IDENTIFY WEAKNESSES
What you think is weak about this argument: are one or more of its claims/premises false, or is it that the premises (even if true) don’t provide sufficient evidence for the conclusion? Likewise, the risk of human extinction may be underestimated, since apparently humanity has never experienced this event.
ARGUMENT 1: IMPROVE IT
What could make this argument better and why? (Does a premise need to be changed? Does a premise need to be added? Do any premises need further support?) Cognitive distortions associated with hindsight knowledge occur when a subject, having learned the final outcome of events, gives a much greater assessment of the predictability of this particular outcome than subjects who predict the outcome without knowing the result. This mistake is sometimes called "I-all-this-time-felt-that-so-it-and-is."
ARGUMENT 1: THE PRINCIPLE
What moral or legal principle is or should be used by the argument, and how? Fischhoff and Beyth provided students with historical accounts of little-known events such as the conflict between the Gurkhas and the British in 1814. Five groups of students who received this information were asked how they would rate the likelihood of each of the four outcomes: English victory, Gurkha victory, peace stalemate, or no agreement stalemate.
ARGUMENT 1: STANDARD FORM
Come up with a better version of the argument in standard form (simple or complex) that includes a moral or legal principle.
Your version should include, as much as possible, what you said above would make the argument better. It should also include any hidden premises you think are implied in the argument to make it clearer and more complete. Each of these events was described as a real outcome of the situation of one of the four experimental groups. The fifth, control group was not told anything about the real outcome. Each experimental group attributed the reported outcome to a much higher probability than any other or control group.
ARGUMENT 2: THE ARGUMENT
Copy and paste a weak argument from THE OTHER SIDE and cite it The hindsight effect is important in a court of law, where the judge or jury must determine whether the accused is guilty of criminal negligence without foreseeing the danger. In an experiment based on a real case, Kamin and Rachlinski asked two teams to estimate the likelihood of flood damage caused by the closure of a city-owned drawbridge.
ARGUMENT 2: CLARITY
Look for any unclear (vague or ambiguous) claims and explain what is unclear about them and what they could mean? Remember, you’re looking for what’s not clear, not what’s weak about the argument, at this point. The control group was only given basic information that was known to the city when the authorities decided not to hire a bridge supervisor. The experimental group was given the same information plus information that the flood had actually happened. The regulations state that the city will be negligent if the predictable probability of flooding is greater than 10 percent. 76% of respondents from the control group concluded that flooding was so unlikely that no precautions were needed.
ARGUMENT 2: IDENTIFY WEAKNESSES
What you think is weak about this argument: are one or more of its claims/premises false, or is it that the premises (even if true) don’t provide sufficient evidence for the conclusion? 57% of the experimental group concluded that the flood was so likely that failure to take precautions was criminal negligence. A third group was told the outcome and also explicitly instructed to avoid ex post facto assessments, which did not produce any results: 56% of the respondents in this group concluded that the city was criminally negligent. This shows that judges cannot simply instruct the jury to avoid the effects of hindsight: Debiasing manipulation does not work.
ARGUMENT 2: IMPROVE IT
What could make this argument better and why? (Does a premise need to be changed? Does a premise need to be added? Do any premises need further support?) By viewing history through the lens of our later knowledge, we grossly underestimate the cost of preventing a disaster. For example, in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded due to the fact that the O-ring lost its flexibility at low temperatures. There were warning signs of O-ring related problems.
ARGUMENT 2: THE PRINCIPLE
What moral or legal principle is or should be used by the argument, and how? But preventing the Challenger catastrophe would have required not only attention to O-ring problems, but preoccupation with every similar warning signal that seemed as serious as the seal problem, without the benefit of subsequent knowledge.
ARGUMENT 2: STANDARD FORM
Come up with a better version of the argument in standard form (simple or complex) that includes a moral or legal principle.
Your version should include, as much as possible, what you said above would make the argument better. It should also include any hidden premises you think are implied in the argument to make it clearer and more complete. Although participants generally expressed high confidence in their guesses, only 21% of them guessed the rule correctly in this experiment, and the success rate was usually 20% when repeating the experiment. Contrary to Karl Popper's advice, the subjects in Wason's experiment tried to confirm their hypotheses, not refute them. Thus, those who formulated the hypothesis "The numbers increase by two every time" tested the triples 8-10-12 or 20-22-24, heard that they were suitable, and confidently announced the rule. In all cases, the true rule was the same: three numbers must follow one after the other in ascending order. In some cases, the subjects invented, "tested" and announced rules that were much more complex than the real ones.
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
Consider how your own biases may have entered into this paper:
(A) What did you believe about this issue when you started this assignment?
(B) How did you conduct this search? What search terms did you use?
(C) How did you decide what counted as good or bad arguments for each side?
(D) Has this assignment changed in any way how you look at this issue? If so, how? (A) When people subject evidence that contradicts their point of view to a more biased analysis than those that support it, it is called motivated skepticism or cognitive bias of disagreement.
(B) The bias of disagreement is especially destructive for two reasons: First, two disputants prone to this error, considering the same stream of evidence, can change their faith in opposite directions - both sides selectively accept only the evidence that is attractive to them.
(C) Accumulating more evidence will not bring these debaters to agreement.
(D) Second, people who are more experienced skeptics — that is, who know a wider set of common logical inconsistencies, but apply this skill selectively — tend to change their point of view much more slowly than inexperienced debaters.
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