Category: Head Trips

Screenshot 9/3/2021 CNN Story Link NPR Story Link  

“In their article Fitness Beats Truth in the Evolution of Perception, Chetan Parakash et al. use evolutionary game theory to show that the likelihood for higher organisms to have evolved to see the world as it is (to have veridical perception) is exceedingly small. … [A]n evolutionary game is a game where at least two… Continue reading Why we are like this

charts appropriated from this short and interesting Wikipedia page about the tiny Serbian hamlet of Donji Srb.

Screenshot from Oyez, which has audio of the argument before the Supreme Court in the matter of RJR Nabisco v. The European Community Catchy caption, huh?

I am dubious of the proposition that humans are all that rational. Here is a longish list of reasons for such doubt. List of cognitive biases – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Here are some of my favorites Availability cascade A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing… Continue reading Ammo for Ed

“Tell me how this ends.” –David Petraeus, March 2003 How does it end? The dictator dies, shrivelled and demented, in his bed; he flees the rebels in a private plane; he is caught hiding in a mountain outpost, a drainage pipe, a spider hole. He is tried. He is not tried. He is dragged, bloody… Continue reading How it ends

From Planet Money Given a choice between $50 now and $100 in a month, many people would take the money now. But offered $50 in a year, or $100 in 13 months, they’d wait the extra month to double their money. Another example from This Wikipedia page In the experiment, subjects of the study were… Continue reading Present Bias