We’re Doing an Experiment

1. We’re Doing an Experiment • One psychic to be tested • One person to administer the experiment (me) • One recorder to write down the results • This is to ensure a proper double-blind procedure • One randomized deck of Zener Cards

2. Zener Cards Here are your options:

3. The Results • What’s the percentage of “hits?” • Somewhere around 20%, perhaps? • Seems like a lot, really, but it’s not • Most people don’t understand probability • Take my dad’s motorcycle…

4. Magnification/Catastrophization • People think a single event creates a general pattern • They explode that event and give it greater significance than it really has • You need more than one data point to form a reliable conclusion

5. Emotional Reasoning • Often responsible for catastrophizing • “I’m afraid the motorcycle will crash, therefore it will” • The two are completely unrelated • Often people see what they want to see, or what they’re afraid of • The “evening news effect”

6. Cherry-Picking Evidence • If you count just the “misses,” you’re Disqualifying the Positive • The evidence has to speak for itself • You can count just the “hits,” too, and it’s just as wrong • It’s the Mental Filter thinking error • All or Nothing thinking

7. Black and White? • Is guessing 20% of the cards a total failure? • A bad person from one bad action • “You’re either with us or against us” • This is called the “False Dilemma” • Use Lipozene or stay fat

8. Fixing Black and White Thought • Finding the grey area • 20% success • A good person who’s done a few bad things • Find other options • Remaining neutral • Diet and exercise • Reject the dilemma • A politician says “Vote for me or the country will go down the tubes”

9. Ignoring the Evidence • That’s what it’s all about • The Emperor’s New Clothes • Snake Oil Hucksters • The Loch Ness Monster

10. Thinking Errors and Evidence • Catastrophization • Ignores a lack of positive evidence • Emotional Reasoning • Uses emotions as substitute for evidence • Disqualifying the Positive • Ignores positive evidence • Black and White Thinking • Ignores alternative solutions or ideas

11. More Thinking Errors • Mind Reading • Makes assertions with no evidence at all • Labeling and Overgeneralization • Uses a single piece of evidence to sum up an entire person or thing • These can be applied to yourself or your relationships or to reality itself • Ignoring evidence leads to misrepresenting reality

12. Evidence and Real Life • Is one experiment enough? • Does a single failure render you a failure? • Should you ignore your successes? • If someone is a jerk to you once, does it make sense to label them a total jerk? • Should you ignore when they’re nice? • Should you write them off immediately?

13. Evidence and Real Life • You shouldn’t make a conclusion until you have a good amount of evidence • Jumping to conclusions is the easy way out • It is okay to say “I don’t know” or “I’m suspending my judgment”

14. Your Horoscopes • Find a nice corner of the room by yourself • Your horoscopes were ordered from a licensed astrologer, therefore they’re as accurate as horoscopes get • Read over them • Think about how accurate they are

15. The Reveal • You all got the same horoscope! • It was based on my birthday • Look at them more critically • Pick out accuracies and inaccuracies • Chances are you ignored the inaccuracies because you were seeing what you expected to see

16. “Confirmation Bias” • Letting your perceptions be colored by prior assumptions and biases • What is a bias? • At work in Emotional Reasoning, Mind Reading, Catastrophization, Minimization, Labeling, Mental Filter, etc.

17. How and Why • The “how” for thinking errors • Cherry picking • Ignoring evidence • The “why” for thinking errors • So you can continue to believe what you already believe • So you won’t have to change your mind • So you can believe what you want instead of what is

18. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. --Phillip K. Dick

19. The Fallout • Poor thinking can affect you personally • Wanting to be miserable • Feeling like a victim • It can also affect you outside your head • If you don’t see reality for what it is instead of what you want it to be, you can believe all sorts of silly things • You might even get hurt, or hurt someone else

20. Dr. Don • I need a volunteer to be a “patient” • I’m sorry, sir, but you have lung cancer • You don’t want surgery, chemo, or radiation because they’re scary • But never fear, because I have the miracle cure!

21. What Might Happen? • With your perceptions of reality colored by fear, desperation, and a bias against proven treatment, what might happen? • What might the fallout be of a poor decision made against the evidence, because you wanted something to be true, or because you refused to investigate alternatives?

22. Question yourself! • Thinking Errors effect more than just your own attitude • They can color your perception of reality in inaccurate and dangerous ways • The first step is to always question your own perceptions

23. Perception is Fallible • This is exploited by opticalillusions • Humans are fallible • It is vital to question your perceptions and judgments of people, events, or things and look for the evidence • Don’t jump to conclusions

24. Examine Your Biases • Examine your personal biases • Why do you hold them? • Are they justified by the evidence? • Do you want them to be true? • Are you afraid they might be true? • Did you just make them up?