Why Our Brains Do Not Intuitively Grasp Probabilities
Michael Shermer is a psychologist, author and well-known skeptic. He also writes a monthly column for Scientific American and contributes other articles to it, in addition to editing Skeptic magazine. He has an fairly short article up right now about why humans have a hard time thinking-as he puts it-statistically rather than anecdotally.
"Folk numeracy is our natural tendency to misperceive and miscalculate probabilities, to think anecdotally instead of statistically, and to focus on and remember short-term trends and small-number runs. We notice a short stretch of cool days and ignore the long-term global-warming trend. We note with consternation the recent downturn in the housing and stock markets, forgetting the half-century upward-pointing trend line."
This also provides a reasonable explanation for the occurrence of unlikely events that are sometimes attributed to supernatural phenomena. Like when you're thinking about a friend and then they call you out of the blue, or you happen upon a note from someone you haven't seen in a long time only to run into them at lunch the next day. Is it reasonable to point to a psychic connection as the cause of these events? I, and Shermer, would say no.
You can read the entire article here.
Thoughts?
ETA some markup showing the second paragraph is quoted from the article and not my own writing.
"Folk numeracy is our natural tendency to misperceive and miscalculate probabilities, to think anecdotally instead of statistically, and to focus on and remember short-term trends and small-number runs. We notice a short stretch of cool days and ignore the long-term global-warming trend. We note with consternation the recent downturn in the housing and stock markets, forgetting the half-century upward-pointing trend line."
This also provides a reasonable explanation for the occurrence of unlikely events that are sometimes attributed to supernatural phenomena. Like when you're thinking about a friend and then they call you out of the blue, or you happen upon a note from someone you haven't seen in a long time only to run into them at lunch the next day. Is it reasonable to point to a psychic connection as the cause of these events? I, and Shermer, would say no.
You can read the entire article here.
Thoughts?
ETA some markup showing the second paragraph is quoted from the article and not my own writing.