Does anyone else find it a little convenient that this claim is always made about the crazy other people?
I'd be more sympathetic to these views if they said "here are *my* false beliefs that serve me only as identity markers"
Putting the "LLM" in "Gell-Mann amnesia"
Henle is so so good.
One favorite from her motivated reasoning work: "There are two curious omissions in this study which purports to show the influence of attitudes on subjects’ reasoning: the authors neglected to determine the attitudes of their subjects and failed to study how they reasoned."
Rather, it's mostly just the weight of facts and evidence that is having such a strong effect on people.
But, importantly, when we say "facts and evidence" we mean "ostensible" facts and evidence. In fact, the LLMs are quite good at convincing people to believe conspiracies as well.
😍😍😍
(Hardwig, 1985)
Fwiw, I can't hear my internal voice (I think in English, but don't hear the words) and I somehow still get a similar effect - not for hyperlinks, but when I take the change as a cue for emphasis
This isn't the physics envy I ordered
Counterpoint: imo, the real uncommon Darwinian cynicism isn't the (ubiquitous) argument that (other) people believe nonsense because it serves their interests, but that evolution doesn't provide *us* with optimal belief-forming mechanisms
"Beliefs* drive behavior" stocks up big
*including ideological, political, identity-central, motivated, etc. beliefs
Philosophy friends, what's stopping you from achieving this rate of bee-examples-per-argument?
(From Paul Helm's Belief Policies)
My god, the language available to psychology was impoverished after behaviorism. Here's Heider (1958) - after explaining in detail that physical stimuli alone can't uniquely determine what you perceive/infer - struggling to say: "what you believe depends on your total evidence"
Oof, really hard to say.
Most broadly enjoyable: Laudan, Thaler+Imas
I probably liked Boudon and Friedman the most for agreeing with me on minority positions
Bloor may have shifted my thinking the most
And I suspect Haugeland might be most novel to people outside cogsci
(All the academic books I read this year can be found here: www.goodreads.com/review/list/...)
Abelson et al. (Eds): Theories of Cognitive Consistency
Ok, I gave this one 4 stars, but this book shouldn't be possible. 6 editors, 84 chapters, they recruited a whole section for contributors who disagreed with them to hash it out - I have no idea how they pulled this off. And it's (mostly) good!
Bloor: Knowledge and Social Imagery
I've discovered that this book is looked down upon for relativism, but I didn't get that impression at all. IMO, he's right that we need to explain both true and false beliefs. Assuming the truth is manifest, such that only error needs explaining, is a mistake
Boudon: The Analysis of Ideology
Boudon is slept on (in psychology?) - his "Anatomy of Self-Deception" is also excellent. After reading, I had to revise a WIP paper to add *8 separate references* to this book where he had anticipated my ideas
Woodward: Making Things Happen
Outside my area, but a really compelling account of explanation and lots of interesting ideas I'd never seen before
Friedman: Power Without Knowledge
Could this book likely be 1/3 shorter with some editing and without reprinting 40% of the collected works of Walter Lippmann? Yes. Did I not shut up about it to everyone I spoke to for weeks? Also yes.
Please more recognition that *belief is hard*
Thaler & Imas (@aleximas.bsky.social ; @rthaler.bsky.social): The Winner's Curse
I've read a lot of JDM (pic 2 related) and figured this would be a nice review of behavioral econ. It was that, but also such a great presentation w/ plenty I'd never seen- and I'm a sucker for anyone who praises Simon
Laudan: Progress and Its Problems
Not sure I agree, but enjoyed the attempt to refute "the distinct presumption that scientific theories are neither true, nor probable, nor progressive, nor highly confirmed." Tons of incredible history of science examples I'd never seen before. Here's just a taste
Haugeland (Ed): Mind Design
A fantastic collection of early papers on the philosophy of cognitive science. Hard to choose a highlight because so many papers were excellent, so this selection got a little intense. Here's some Putnam, Pylyshyn, and (obligatory) Newell and Simon
Evans-Pritchard: Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande
Kind of the opposite to Dewey - this one was for explicit research, but same result: shockingly relevant to ongoing work and (IMO) belief in general
Dewey: How We Think
Read this early in the year on a lark and was pleasantly surprised by how insightful and relevant (a lot of) it was
Well, my New Year's resolution is to read less (seriously). But made it through lots of great books this year, including several from fields I'm less familiar with. Here are 10 books I gave 5 stars to this year along with an excerpt (usually belief-related; I have a type) from each
To the memory of Egon Brunswik A visionary psychologist who challenged the normal science of psychology and whose legacy in psychological history, theory, and method has unequivocally put the lie to E.G. Boring’s off-hand summation that “Brunswik was a brilliant man who wasted his life."
Hard to find a bigger chip on a psychologist's shoulder than the Brunswikians'
You're fine! And I liked Smith's "Vagueness and Degrees of Truth" for more precise accounts of vagueness. Though names like "fuzzy plurivaluationism" aren't doing that literature any favors
Ahh, fair - I should have realized vagueness theories were relevant here - thanks!
This isn't my area of work, but the usual upshot - that concepts don't have definitions (/necessary + sufficient conditions) and instead (most) concepts are something like prototypes and/or exemplar-based - seems right to me. Am I wrong?
Probably the best discussion of the definition of bachelor problem I've ever seen (from Winograd, 1976)
