Pop Quiz: Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
a. Yes
b. No
c. Cannot be determined
(No, the polar bears have nothing to do with Jack, Anne, or George).
What's your answer? If you answered c. Cannot be determined, you're probably one of the 80% who is a lazy thinker, or a 'cognitive miser' as Keith Stanovich proposes in his book
What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. Excerpt from the Toronto article below:
"... most people have the intelligence if you tell them something like “think logically” or “consider all the possibilities.” But unprompted, they won’t bring their full mental faculties to bear on the problem.
And that’s a major source of dysrationalia, Stanovich says. We are all “cognitive misers” who try to avoid thinking too much. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Thinking is time-consuming, resource intensive and sometimes counterproductive. If the problem at hand is avoiding the charging sabre-toothed tiger, you don’t want to spend more than a split second deciding whether to jump into the river or climb a tree.
So we’ve developed a whole set of heuristics and biases to limit the amount of brainpower we bear on a problem. These techniques provide rough and ready answers that are right a lot of the time – but not always."
The solution is easy (a. Yes) if you take the time to work out the two possibilities re: whether Anne is married or single.
At least at the time this post is being written, the entire Scientific American article can be read:
here.
In
this older paper by Stanovich, "thinking dispositions" (habits of mind?) (e.g. length of time spent on difficult problems, disposition to weigh new evidence / other opinions vs. a favored belief, etc.) are presented as being very different from the cognitive capacities measured by conventional IQ tests, and this would seem quite true.
Stanovich would like our educational system to spend for effort on teaching (and requiring) more rational thinking, and this seems to be a lofty goal (examples given...more general thinking strategies, scientific thinking, basic statistics). Hey given the magnitude of educational need, it would even be helpful if students were given more hard problems to solve with opportunities to be put into difficult spots so that can examine their assumptions and consider others' opinions and perspectives.
The truth is, some of this concept of being a 'cognitive miser' is part of the
dark side of expertise. Expertise strives to categorize seemingly random choices, simplifying and speeding downstream decisions. But of course it can result in mistakes like the Jack-Anne-George dilemma.
I liked coming across this article because like jolt of coffee, it woke me up a bit about mistakes I can make by thinking too quickly.
What I am not so sure about is the Dysrationalist discussants might be placing too much importance on rationality as the ultimate guide to decision-making. What about moral philosophy in decision-making for instance? Last night as an exercise in philosophy we watched 'Fountainhead' as a family, and couldn't help but wondering whether uber-rationalism can also lead smart people to dumb conclusions.
Why smart people do stupid thingsRationality, Intelligence, and Levels of Analysis pdfLazy polar bear
Pop Quiz:
Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
a. Yes
b. No
c. Cannot be determined
(No, the polar bears have nothing to do with Jack, Anne, or George).
What's your answer? If you answered c. Cannot be determined, you're probably one of the 80% who is a lazy thinker, or a 'cognitive miser' as Keith Stanovich proposes in his book What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. Excerpt from the Toronto article below:
"... most people have the intelligence if you tell them something like “think logically” or “consider all the possibilities.” But unprompted, they won’t bring their full mental faculties to bear on the problem.
And that’s a major source of dysrationalia, Stanovich says. We are all “cognitive misers” who try to avoid thinking too much. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Thinking is time-consuming, resource intensive and sometimes counterproductive. If the problem at hand is avoiding the charging sabre-toothed tiger, you don’t want to spend more than a split second deciding whether to jump into the river or climb a tree.
So we’ve developed a whole set of heuristics and biases to limit the amount of brainpower we bear on a problem. These techniques provide rough and ready answers that are right a lot of the time – but not always."
The solution is easy (a. Yes) if you take the time to work out the two possibilities re: whether Anne is married or single.
At least at the time this post is being written, the entire Scientific American article can be read: here.
In this older paper by Stanovich, "thinking dispositions" (habits of mind?) (e.g. length of time spent on difficult problems, disposition to weigh new evidence / other opinions vs. a favored belief, etc.) are presented as being very different from the cognitive capacities measured by conventional IQ tests, and this would seem quite true.
Stanovich would like our educational system to spend for effort on teaching (and requiring) more rational thinking, and this seems to be a lofty goal (examples given...more general thinking strategies, scientific thinking, basic statistics). Hey given the magnitude of educational need, it would even be helpful if students were given more hard problems to solve with opportunities to be put into difficult spots so that can examine their assumptions and consider others' opinions and perspectives.
The truth is, some of this concept of being a 'cognitive miser' is part of the dark side of expertise. Expertise strives to categorize seemingly random choices, simplifying and speeding downstream decisions. But of course it can result in mistakes like the Jack-Anne-George dilemma.
I liked coming across this article because like jolt of coffee, it woke me up a bit about mistakes I can make by thinking too quickly.
What I am not so sure about is the Dysrationalist discussants might be placing too much importance on rationality as the ultimate guide to decision-making. What about moral philosophy in decision-making for instance? Last night as an exercise in philosophy we watched 'Fountainhead' as a family, and couldn't help but wondering whether uber-rationalism can also lead smart people to dumb conclusions.
Why smart people do stupid things
Rationality, Intelligence, and Levels of Analysis pdf
Lazy polar bear