Truth

In Ronald Purser’s The mindfulness conspiracy (The Guardian), he writes about a fascinating perspective on the mindfulness genre. Here are my 6 takeaways from the article: Mindfulness says paying closer attention to the present resolves our suffering. Mindfulness has been stripped of the accompanying teachings e.g. attachment to self, compassion. Mindfulness advocates are unwittingly supporting the capitalistic monetisation of our attention which mindfulness purportedly solves. Mindfulness attempts to deal with the symptoms (lack of focused attention) without addressing the cause (monetisation of our attention). Mindfulness reframes troubles as the result of individual action rather than systemic conditions. Neoliberalism wants pure market logic and mindfulness says “okay, here’s how you can focus on competing so you don’t think too hard about the social and political conditions that brought about the suffering.” See also Neutralizing social Darwinism Mindfulness of emotions and feelings

BJ Fogg’s video Information -> Action Fallacy opened my eyes to why giving people better information won’t reliably change their behavior. Here are the 4 key takeaways: The fallacy is that giving people better information leads to attitude change which then leads to behavior change. Better information doesn’t reliably lead to attitude change. Attitude change doesn’t reliably lead to behavior change. Changing behavior more reliably leads to attitude change. See also The constitution of knowledge Judging truth External links BJ Fogg | Tiny Habits

Jonathan Rauch’s The Constitution of Knowledge (National Affairs) opened my eyes to how we know what we know. Here are the top 10 points I got from his article: Social epistemology is about our public understanding of objective reality. Reality-making was decentralized away from authoritarian control. This decentralized community relies on free speech and social testing. Decentralizing our understanding of reality gives us freedom of thought. The decentralized community must agree on how objective reality is proven (and can disagree on everything else). Disinformation tries to tear down socially validated reality. The epistemic honor code says that objective truth exists, truth-finding should be impersonal, credentials matter and knowledge should always be tested. Disinformation became weaponized (Russia election interference), profitable (social media) and impossible to ignore (top politicians cannot be ignored). Creating knowledge is a professional, structured and disciplined process. Institutions that create knowledge should be fixed not disregarded and thrown out. See also Information-action fallacy How disinformation hacks your brain Judging truth Wanna bet?

Here are the key insights I took from chapter 1 of Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets: Resulting is the tendency to say a decision was good when the result is good. Chess involves very little luck so it’s not a good model of life. Poker is the sum of decision quality and luck. Our lives are the sum of decision quality and luck. A few outcomes is not enough to measure decision quality. A great decision is the result of a great process. When a less likely outcome happens, it doesn’t mean we’re wrong. Similarly, when a more likely outcome happens, it doesn’t mean we’re right. See also Wanna bet?

Here are my key takeaways from chapter 2 of Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets: Everything is a bet. Skill in life is learning to be better belief calibrator. Our default is to believe what we hear. We generally process information by altering our interpretation to fit our beliefs. Motivated reasoning is when a belief is lodged and remains unchallenged. Fake news is a planted false story that is meant to amplify existing beliefs. Disinformation has some truth with powerful spin. Being smarter, more aware or better with data doesn’t help overcome bias. View the world through lens of “wanna bet?” Communicating uncertainty advances knowledge and invites dialogue. See also The constitution of knowledge Life is poker, not chess Judging truth How disinformation hacks your brain

In chapter 5 of How to Take Smart Notes, 2 of my favorite ideas from Sönke Ahrens are: Truth results from the scientific exchange of written ideas. Do everything as if nothing counts other than writing. See also Judging truth Stop collecting, and start producing Elaborate by thinking, writing and connecting

In Judging Truth (Annual Review of Psychology), the authors make the claim that truth judgments are constructed and reflect inferences drawn from 3 types of information: Base rates Feelings Consistency with information retrieved from memory Each of the three inferences usually increases accuracy. However, specific kinds of errors can result from each class of inference. People tend to accept incoming information from the environment as true. People tend to interpret feelings as evidence of truth. People tend to favor consistency with facts and memory. See also Information-action fallacy The constitution of knowledge Wanna bet? Writing is the only thing that matters How disinformation hacks your brain

The 5 key insights I got from Brett Beasley’s How Disinformation Hacks Your Brain (Scientific American) are: Illusory truth effect says repeated claims are more believable. We often accept claims as true when they fit with our memories. Search algorithms return results based on keywords not truth. We will soon consume more false media than truth. Become a fact checker or rely on crowdsourced fact checkers. See also Wanna bet? Judging truth External links Illusory truth effect - Wikipedia