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From the eponymous Dunning of the Dunning-Kruger effect

In our work, we ask survey respondents if they are familiar with certain technical concepts from physics, biology, politics, and geography. A fair number claim familiarity with genuine terms like centripetal force and photon. But interestingly, they also claim some familiarity with concepts that are entirely made up, such as the plates of parallax, ultra-lipid, and cholarine. In one study, roughly 90 percent claimed some knowledge of at least one of the nine fictitious concepts we asked them about. In fact, the more well versed respondents considered themselves in a general topic, the more familiarity they claimed with the meaningless terms associated with it in the survey.

An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. This clutter is an unfortunate by-product of one of our greatest strengths as a species. We are unbridled pattern recognizers and profligate theorizers. Often, our theories are good enough to get us through the day, or at least to an age when we can procreate. But our genius for creative storytelling, combined with our inability to detect our own ignorance, can sometimes lead to situations that are embarrassing, unfortunate, or downright dangerous—especially in a technologically advanced, complex democratic society that occasionally invests mistaken popular beliefs with immense destructive power (See: crisis, financial; war, Iraq). As the humorist Josh Billings once put it, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

The way we traditionally conceive of ignorance—as an absence of knowledge—leads us to think of education as its natural antidote. But education, even when done skillfully, can produce illusory confidence. Here’s a particularly frightful example: Driver’s education courses, particularly those aimed at handling emergency maneuvers, tend to increase, rather than decrease, accident rates. They do so because training people to handle, say, snow and ice leaves them with the lasting impression that they’re permanent experts on the subject. In fact, their skills usually erode rapidly after they leave the course. And so, months or even decades later, they have confidence but little leftover competence when their wheels begin to spin.

In these Wild West settings, it’s best not to repeat common misbeliefs at all. Telling people that Barack Obama is not a Muslim fails to change many people’s minds, because they frequently remember everything that was said—except for the crucial qualifier “not.” Rather, to successfully eradicate a misbelief requires not only removing the misbelief, but filling the void left behind (“Obama was baptized in 1988 as a member of the United Church of Christ”). If repeating the misbelief is absolutely necessary, researchers have found it helps to provide clear and repeated warnings that the misbelief is false. I repeat, false.

New Ways of Seeing - James Bridle

This made me reflection on biases. If our research methodology is biased from the very beginning, then everything that comes after will also be biased.

so important, it can be a claim biased by the authors opinion.

The advice to separate self from role is good... but let's think about this as a reaction to the student above who says they feel like the instructor doesn't allow equal opportunities to contribute in the class. Sometimes, despite all best efforts, the faculty member may be wrong, and deep listening and learning has to allow for that possibility. Don't take it personally, but model the kind of leadership which recognizes the need for personal change.

True, but how does this interact with the power differential in the classroom? Can students really be expected to productively call out faculty members' biased behavior? It seems like an option not discussed in this paper is finding external facilitators to help navigate some of these issues.

Students and faculty both. Many disciplines are reluctant to introduce critical perspectives on disciplinary publishing too early, feeling that students need grounding in accepted information flows before branching out into active debates.

Of course men haven't been discriminated against as much a women in the work place. Men are "meant" to do jobs in STEM, while women aren't really seen in the STEM program as much. Women deserve to be recognized in anything as much as men are they're just as good.

This reminds me of an article I read in my Feminist Epistemologies class, "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles," which shook me to my core. It argues that science and culture are intertwined and that they influence and reinforce one another. The scientific descriptions of egg, sperm, reproduction, and ovulation she provides to support her argument show how dangerous the perpetuation of the idea of "value-free" and/or unbiased language can be (and is).

i.e. the most available and accessible frames are the most likely to influence public opinion

Two core questions in one? As to "how" bad info bubbles to the top of our search results, we know that the algorithms are proprietary—but the humans who design them bring their biases. As to "what is missing," Safiya Noble suggests here and elsewhere that the engineers in Silicon Valley could use a good dose of the humanities and social sciences in their decision-making. Is she right?

Throughout this article are several highlighted passages that combine to form this annotation.

This research study presents the idea that the social environment is a self-selected learning environment for adults. The idea of social prestige-bias learning is intriguing because it is derived from the student, not an institution nor instructor. The further idea of selecting whom to learn from based on prestige-bias also creates further questions that warrant a deeper understanding of the learner and the environment which s/he creates to gain knowledge.

Using a previously conducted experiment on success-based learning and learning due to environmental change, this research further included the ideal of social prestige-biased learning.self-selected by the learner.

In a study of 167 participants, three hypotheses were tested to see if learners would select individual learning, social learning, prestige-biased learning (also a social setting), or success-based learning. The experiment tested both an initial learning environment and a learning environment which experienced a change in the environment.

Surprisingly, some participants selected social prestige-biased learning and some success learning and the percentages in each category did not change after the environmental change occurred.

Questions that arise from the study:

• Does social prestige, or someone who is deemed prestigious, equate to a knowledgeable teacher?
• Does the social prestige-biased environment reflect wise choices?
• If the student does not know what s/he does not know, will the social prestige-bias result in selecting the better teacher, or just in selecting a more highly recognized teacher?
• Why did the environmental change have little impact on the selected learning environment?

REFERENCE: Atkinson, C., O’Brien, M.J., & Mesoudi, A. (2012). Adult learners in a novel environment use prestige-biased social learning. Evolutionary Psychology, 10(3), 519-537. Retrieved from (Prestige-biased Learning )

RATINGS content, 9/10 veracity, 8/10 easiness of use, 9/10 Overall Rating, 8.67/10

I have to wonder at telephone samples of this age group given the propensity of youth to not communicate via voice phone.

bias in technology

Once you realize that you have a bias, you can try one of the suggested methods to counteract it. In this case, to get a realistic view of our progress towards goals, the suggestion is to build feedback loops into our routine.

Potential bias of younger, more urban Twitter users vs USA population

I think this paper and these data could be extremely useful for psychologists, but I also think this paper needs at least one more analysis: estimating effect sizes by research area, controlling for publication bias.

It's very hard to interpret these estimates given good evidence and arguments that researchers and journals select for p < .05. I think it's safe to assume that all these estimates reported in this preprint are bigger than the true averages (Simonsohn, Nelson, & Simmons, 2014).

One approach to estimating "selection bias adjusted" effects would be to estimate the effect size for each research area using the code provided in the p-curve effect size paper supplements (http://www.p-curve.com/Supplement/). You could estimate confidence intervals or percentiles using bootstrapping procedures or write code to estimate the lower and upper bounds using the same methods to estimate the average effect.

This approach assumes the p-values all test the hypothesis of interest and don't suffer from unique selection biases (see Selecting p Values in Simonsohn, Nelson, & Simmons, 2014, p. 540).

Hope this helps make the paper better!

strategy to diminish gender bias in the peer review process. Suggesting female and young scientist when a male reviewer declines invitation to review.

The right thing according to whom? Clear bias.

I found these specific objects of primary education to be quite important to the standing and image the school wanted and still wants to portray. It addresses the purpose of the University to create better more intelligent citizens for Virginia and the country. However, to me it seemed somewhat ironic due to the University’s background. It reveals earlier in the article that University's location was chosen based on its centrality to the white population in Virginia. This statement clearly implies a bias against non-white Virginians, even though the listed purposes of the University and what it hopes to impart to its students in this report depicts a different message. It paints a picture of in which the students utilize their higher level education to behave morally, accepting, self-aware, and faithful to social relations and knowledge. Does this mean these standard morals don’t apply to non-white Virginians? The irony highlights how the purposes of the University can be interpreted in different ways, either as a way to serve the white people in order to “preserve [their] ideas” of bias and superiority. Oppositely, the students could use their newfound knowledge to “improve [their] morals” and work to bring about change in society by education others ethics and equality.

This is a very powerful statement regarding the purpose of higher education. The commissioners of the university clearly had a vision for how the education that the university provided should affect its students. However, the statement is somewhat idealistic in that it includes the idea that education will drive out any "innate" or subconscious deviations from morality. We all know that this was certainly not achieved at the time of the university's founding, when the practice of owning slaves was perceived as moral, and also has not been achieved today, although UVA has introduced many new efforts to combat this problem. Through the university's response to the Unite the Right rally this summer, the numerous implicit bias modules and presentations it offers, and the engagements themselves, our "innate obliquities" are being discussed and brought to light so that we as a university can take deliberate steps towards achieving this ideal view of education put forth by the commissioners of UVA. Claire Waterhouse

It may sound obvious but it actually works. Just did it with each of these three words (on DuckDuckGo) and the results, though unsurprising, bring home the point. Tried switching on the Canadian filter, to check if their might be a difference, and it mostly reorders the results, for some reason. Also tried “student” and “musician” which provide an interesting contrast. Doing this exercise in class, would probably start by asking learners to write down what they expect to get. (Might even do it in my applied anthro class, tomorrow.)

Is it just me, or am I detecting an underlying disdain from the author towards The Long Now Foundation? If so, I would not blame her as the beliefs The Long Now hold appear surreal and unbelievable to me. I was unaware that their was a group that held such views.

According to this line, the only important characteristics of a piece of land are "healthiness & fertility" and "degree of centrality to the white population." This portion of the text provides important insight into the ethical lens of Jefferson and his peers: something is only worth consideration if it bolsters health, agriculture or white males. The authors presented their guidelines for land consideration as clear-cut, failing to mention the fact that Jefferson was especially inclined towards Charlottesville because of its proximity to Monticello. While the text operates under the assumption that health, fertility, and convenience for white people were the only important considerations (which is a skewed set of principles in the first place), Jefferson's personal bias was a major, albeit hidden, factor as well.

This passage clearly exhibits the desire of human growth and expansion generated by the University. Again, there is this ambition to continue to be better than before; adding to the prestige of the University of Virginia. This quote discusses “qualities of virtue and social worth,” however, they do not outline their virtues and social worths - it is to be implied by the times of it’s creation. From my Doing Fieldwork Engagement, I have learned that social virtues and worths are extremely varied depending on the perspective. It is not fair to assume that everyone follows and conforms to one’s own expectations and values; in fact, this makes one ignorant and biased when collecting viable and strong data.

bias in data

Brain Games persuasion experiment: A fake sales person utilizes the halo effect, expert bias, and artificial scarcity to to promote a worthless product to consumers.

biased terminology

Bias in title, but ambiguous at first (hoax in which direction?)

We should not look at predictors that will not help us to make accurate interventions. Statistics should not be used to support bias.

For anyone interested a good discussion of Confirmation Bias can be found in this (somewhat old) article

Most people don't care, or trust the big companies. I do that. I also think that the existence of some government regulation incentive companies to not sell poisoned food.

On the other hand, there is certification, independent certification, and these are being used today and trusted by people today. It's reasonable to supposed independent certification would be much much greater in a libertarian world.

Of course certification would not cover every field, every product and every possible problem, but neither does the State.

Because of State labor laws, stupid. They make it hard to change jobs, hard to fire workers and hence hard to hire workers. In a libertarian world this would in principle be much smoother.

Here and after the author treats as a libertarian problem what happens today under the rule of the State labor laws.

In a world without State labor laws, contracts would apply. Contracts could evolve and have all these situations expected in their clauses. Also, this seems to me to be a case for actually working law (which the criticism imagines as unexisting in a libertarian society): https://hypothes.is/a/PBirDvnYEeaWvjeIs4H9kg.

The following text shows that people from the seven countries picked both by the U.S. Congress,Obama, and Trump do pose a significant risk of terrorism, despite the mainstream media's statements to the contrary.

Trump's temporary immigration ban from these seven countries was far from optimal, and may have actually caused considerably more harm than good, but it was not nearly as absurd at the mainstream media is propagandizing people to believe.

The author info "Loren Bridge is the executive officer of the Alliance of Girls' Schools Australasia." should be at the top of the article, to highlight the bias involved.

Who is this author? Does she have an area of expertise that's related to this story? How would you find out? What is this source and what are its biases? How would you find out?

Albert Einstein was one of the most important physicists of all time. His scientific predictions have withstood 100 years of scientific challenges. His thinking fundamentally changed the way we understand the universe. Yet people are more likely to be convinced Einstein wasn’t a great physicist than to change their minds on topics like immigration or the death penalty.

It has nothing to do with a person’s intelligence (or the quality of information on Einstein or immigration policy). It’s due to the fact that we’re simply more open to changing our minds on nonpolitical topics. Scientists have been keen to figure out why — because if they can, it may open the door to the hardest challenge in politics right now: changing minds.

Psychologists have been circling around a possible reason political beliefs are so stubborn: Partisan identities get tied up in our personal identities. Which would mean that an attack on our strongly held beliefs is an attack on the self. And the brain is built to protect the self.

When we’re attacked, we evade or defend — as if we have an immune system for uncomfortable thoughts, one you can see working in real time.

This reminds me of how corrupted media is now. If this is how we get entertainment it doesn't make much sense. Almost every story on this site is filled with bias.

Since people keep assuming and getting things wrong, some latinos try to ignore the question of race in order to stop the disagreements.

This is incredibly stupid. I think this would lead to many riots and fights because people are being judged and Census is using cultural bias to put people in a box. Not only is this not accurate this is also racist.

Title: Is Polite Philosophical Discussion Possible? (guest post by Nomy Arpaly) - Daily Nous

Keywords: implicit bias, philosophical discussion, war crimes, moral inhibitions—

Summary: For brevity’s sake, let’s just say it’s a big part of politeness or civility not to correct people.<br>A soldier who is fighting, even for a just cause, is in a precarious situation, with regard to morality, because he has lost, of necessity, the basic moral inhibition against killing people.<br>A philosopher who is arguing with another, even in pursuit of truth, is in a precarious situation with regard to politeness, because she has lost, of necessity, the basic civil inhibition against correcting people.<br>Having lost, of necessity, the inhibition against killing people, some soldiers find themselves shedding other moral inhibitions—and committing war crimes.<br>Having lost, of necessity, the inhibition against correcting people, some philosophers find themselves shedding other social inhibitions—and being terribly, terribly rude.<br>That’s just the nature of inhibition loss.<br>You need the real thing.<br>Being compelled to break the rule of thumb against telling people that they are mistaken in the understanding of an important thing is no excuse for also yelling at them, repeatedly interrupting them and talking over them, responding to their painstakingly prepared talks with a sneering “why should I be interested in any of this”?<br>Furthermore, I will argue against the philosophical Henry Kissinger within many of us who worries that whatever might be true about war and war crimes, realistically speaking philosophical rigor just requires rudeness.<br>It’s clearly a vice, virtue ethicists would say.<br>I would like to add the following.<br>First, if everyone is rude, women are judged unfairly (as potential colleagues, for example) because rude women are treated more harshly than rude men, by everyone, due to implicit bias.<br>Again, changing behavior is much easier than changing implicit bias.<br>Some think philosophy should change here—either through what I called “pacifism” earlier or through changing the way we evaluate people, or otherwise.<br>It won’t solve everything, but if we reduce rudeness, I solemnly promise that more women will want to do philosophy.<br>It is shown most emphatically by downright quiet, mild-mannered philosophers whose objections, expressed in a nice tone of voice, are nonetheless absolutely lethal.<br>They say revenge is best served cold.<br>Philosophical discussion can legitimately feel like a very tiring game of squash.<br>(Vincent Van Gogh, detail of “Four Cut Sunflowers”)<br>

Fish, Stanley. 1988. “Guest Column: No Bias, No Merit: The Case against Blind Submission.” PMLA 103 (5): 739–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/462513.

An interesting essay in the context I'm reading it (alongside Foucault's What is an author in preparation for a discussion of scientific authorship.

Among the interesting things about it are the way it encapsulates a distinction between the humanities and sciences in method (though Fish doesn't see it and it comes back to bite him in the Sokol affair). What Frye thinks is important because he is an author-function in Foucault's terms, I.e. a discourse initiator to whom we return for new insight.

Fish cites Peters and Ceci 1982 on peer review, and sides with those who argue that ethos should count in review of science as well.

Also interesting for an illustration of how much the field changed, from new criticism in the 1970s (when the first draft was written) until "now" i.e. 1989 when political criticism is the norm.

Ah-- now we are getting to a real goal. I do like that Nikole Hannah-Jones is making clear her personal frame for these issues. What's mine? I grew up in a town in Pennsylvania, where "the racial makeup of the borough was 97.32% White..." and the one high school in the town reflected this homogeneity. As a teacher (except for a couple of years in Salt Lake City), I have always taught in segregated African-American and Latino public schools in New York City -- except, I need to remember, for three years of teaching at the East-West School for International Studies in Flushing, where the diversity of students was something special. And there was a lot of diversity at the International School at LaGuardia where I also taught for a few years. SO... There are exceptions, and I suppose these exceptions are important to think about as I consider my own frames and biases on these issues.

positive

p

publication bias

On developing countries and science

History of expectation bias in physics

effect of positive bias

Positive bias

positive bias

Importance of "spinning" data

deliberate positive bias

I do like how there's an example in French.

Check out this sketch from Saturday Night Live that mocks the news media for being uncritically in love with then candidate Barack Obama. There first and second questions for him are whether he is completely comfortable or if they can get anything for him.

You can identify your halos and pitchforks. These are the attributes that cause you to be most easily and unconsciously drawn into the halo effect and they are known as implicit biases.

That is rather outrageous that we've known about this since 1959 and have done nothing about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias

1.27. Bias/Pittacus responds by pointing out the ridiculousness of Croesus' plan to attack the islanders on their own terms.

1.27. Croesus replies to Bias/Pittacus, suggesting that the islanders would be at a disadvantage if they were to attack the Lydians, renowned for their cavalry, on horseback.

1.27. Croesus asks for news; Bias/Pittacus responds with an ironic statement.

1.27. In what is presumably an apocryphal story, one of the Seven Sages of Greek tradition visits Croesus (the fact that the story is told with both Bias and Pittacus makes it even more likely to be apocryphal).

Hdt. 1.1 motive; bias? H's idea of glory and great deeds? "not be forgotten in time" -- I agree this is important.

He cries hypocrisy here, a strong rhetorical device. Although I'm not sure whether this would make the jury rethink their impressions or make them more biased against him.

Can we trust a "true image" of Isocrates if it is written by himself? Especially if his goal is to be remembered as noble and great?