Oooh, I'm soooo smart

Let me see… Which biases do I absolutely have…

  1. Yes
  2. Yes, but not a lot
  3. Yes
  4. I don’t believe it exists :slight_smile: (yes, of course, but that one is tough)
  5. Oh god yes
  6. Not so much really
  7. Again, not so much
  8. Yes, but the posters example is stupid
  9. No, I have gotten over that one
  10. Every. Single. Day.
  11. Hard to say, I’ll have to think about that
  12. Only with fish puns
  13. A bit. Not a lot, but a bit.
  14. Yes
  15. Flat out no. The older the better (which is a related bias!)
  16. No.
  17. Yes.
  18. That isn’t a bias, its a survival technique.
  19. No.
  20. Yes.

I had become aware of cognitive biases from a very young age, long before I had heard of them from others. Basically, I would ask people why they assumed or acted in certain ways, and they often were not consciously aware of it. From there, I noticed that most individuals would seem to make these leaps in similar ways. And that many were either hostile to having these pointed out to them, or otherwise would be nice about it and instantly forget. Honestly, this is the kind of stuff I have nightmares about, and the nightmares are still real upon awakening.

It seems difficult/impossible to get by in society without sharing such biases! Which only reenforces them, so it is no wonder that many seem to feel that they cannot afford to think clearly. It seems to me that people cannot afford not to!

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Oh, it’s a moving target if you’re an actual person. Cognitive biases aren’t a bunch of check boxes where you can solve one and move on to the next., it’s something that you’d constantly need to check and double-check for the rest of your life.

We all absolutely have all of them (and many more) because we’re human beings and they’re tied to shortcuts our brains take in processing that stem from our biological history. Sure, the specific example given may not apply but the concept does. They’re just linguistic abstractions so the moment you think ‘No’ you should next be thinking ‘Where is this little fucker hiding?’

Also, as you pointed out some may be situationally overwhelmed by other biases at times (like your comment on the recency bit), but it’s turtles all the way down and overcoming one doesn’t make the other cease to exist.

I’ve yet to eliminate a single cognitive bias, I’ve only become better at catching them when they pop up and using workarounds to lessen their impact.

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Oh don’t I know it! LOL

I always say that if a job that would take a “normal” person 7 hrs only takes me 2 hrs then those other 5 hrs are mine to do with as I please! (Hence my commenting history here. LOL) And yet… despite my prodigious slack every time I leave a position they have to hire two people to replace me. Also; Don’t knock your own smarts. Took me a long time to realize that when you put yourself or your work down to other people they believe you!!

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  21. The Japhroaig bias.
This is where japhroaig posts a dry, lightly silly response that is meant to be interpreted as a combination of true personal introspection and a little british style sarcasm, but is taken literally.

I know that you know that I don’t believe a word I posted. Do you know that I know that you know that I knew that? (Oh god, the turtles… :D)

Except 12. Fish puns. Those are serious.

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Noone believes a single thing I say.

(Parse that, you (not you) bayseian state machine!! (And find the… Three?.. Logical fallacies))

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Indeed.

Also: Squirrel!

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Me and the squirrel are frieeeends!

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Can I be a mongoose dog?

Now, back on track, derailing has been accomplished.

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[quote=“ActionAbe, post:12, topic:70232”]
In my own life, I was always told I was smart. I was always told that I bordered on, or was, a genius. The environment I was in was not one where everyone got told that, and I couldn’t discount that. I suffered incredibly for it. “Smart” people get lazy.[/quote]

I know that feel. I’m glad you conquered it in time to make it through tertiary education. It took me two tries before my work ethic improved to where I didn’t feel I could just coast on my “smarts.”

[quote=“ActionAbe, post:12, topic:70232”]
This is my kooky theory: On the balance, everyone is pretty much average in terms of smarts, and it’s all a function of skill acquisition and the ability to interrogate ourselves about our own level of knowledge. Then it comes down to motivation and satisfaction. There is no such thing as genius and there’s no such thing as smarts. There’s really no meaning to those terms. I might even go so far as to say that I despise those concepts and our collective fascination with them.[/quote]

My kooky theory: we all have approximately the same potential brainpower at birth (absent genetic defects or other such congenital conditions), but we are predisposed to certain interests. Mine are math, computers, and books, which correlate highly with things that people consider “intelligence.” However, I’m certainly no more intelligent than my sister, who is fluently bilingual, can sing, act, and play two instruments, and is a social butterfly. It’s just that in our youth, we had different interests, and the opportunity to pursue them, so our respective brainpower was diverted to different tasks.

So, had my parents encouraged me to learn music as a child, I’d probably be better than I am at it, but not as good as my sister, who was more interested, and certainly no Mozart, composing music at age six. I don’t think any amount of social activity would have made me a social butterfly, because I just prefer either solitude or one-on-one conversation.

I agree that a lot of it is work ethic and knowing how to learn, but I would say a large part is also individual interests and the opportunity to follow through on them.

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I thought he was a sociomath.

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I’m just a shark.

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Missy doesn’t like me anymore, because I put some popo on her the other day.

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I saw. And I don’t take sides. But I did laugh. I love all you mutants.

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Intelligence is hard to measure. There are so many aspects. But talk to any educator, and they will tell you that not all people are born with the same potential brainpower. There are some slow eggs and some fast eggs and a whole lot in between, thus things like IQ tests. I got sucked into reading this wiki page just now!

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Lotta talk for a dead person…

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Only to you!!! To me, I’m as alive as a jumping banana!!!

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There’s three problems with using the opinions of teachers:

  1. Anecdotal evidence has its limits. It can suggest a conclusion, but that suggestion should be used to target scientific studies, not to replace them.

  2. Intelligence is, as you say, hard to quantify. If a child who might grow up to be a brilliant orator had trouble with his math homework, does that mean he is less intelligent than the dyslexic child who is a math prodigy? Might a teacher not think so, or perhaps think the reverse?

  3. Finally, educators don’t see kids from birth. They see them after four years of their parents reading to them, or not, feeding them well, or not, showing respect, or not, loving them, or not. A four year old who’s never seen a book, much less heard one read, whose parents try their best, but can never really afford enough food, so he is distracted by his hunger, and whose parents are too busy with their two jobs to spend a lot of time preparing their kid for school and helping with homework, might come across as “a slow egg.”

As for IQ tests, I could probably score 10 points higher than my sister across any series of IQ tests that you had the two of us write. I maintain that if either of us is smarter, it’s her. I am smart in all of the ways that IQ tests look for, but that doesn’t mean my intelligence is higher than hers.

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Educators have a larger sample size than anyone else. They see lots of kids and work with them in an academic setting. The others who would come close are child psychologists/psychiatrists, although they are not with the kids during academic activities. Educators don’t need a journal article open in front of them to understand a child’s aptitudes and overall intelligence.

I take issue with this notion of a level playing field. It is so decidedly not a level playing field from birth, on many fronts.

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