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Do you have some book recommendations on cognitive biases and how to improve rationality?

OrangeJuice 6 Apr 3
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Read Erich Fromm;s ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM, and the writings of Leon Festinger.

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Best of luck, but see that you might be seeking less rationality, not more for that. Biases come from being rational, in a sense

Could you elaborate? Or point me to a source for more info?

@OtisJesser hmm, kinda hard in this venue, but a nutritionist would naturally have a bias toward, say, "eat your vegetables," that to an Eskimo would be complete nonsense, right. So perspective plays a big part in this. Biases are not bad, of course, they are even essential, but they are also situation-specific. So imo you are really asking the best way to "think," and for whatever reason i am led to point out that a Westerner has a strikingly different thought process from an Easterner, the difference usually being described as "logical v dialectal" reasoning...
"...Dialectical reasoning is actually opposed to formal logic in many ways.

Western Logic Versus Eastern Dialecticism
Aristotle placed at the foundations of logical thought the following three propositions.

  1. Identity: A = A. Whatever is, is. A is itself and not some other thing.
  2. Noncontradiction: A and not A can't both be the case. Nothing can both be and not be. A proposition and its opposite can't both be true.
  3. Excluded middle: Everything must either be or not be. A or not A can be true but not something in between.

Modern Westerners accept these propositions (but Easterners do not)...
...three principles underlie Eastern dialecticism. Notice I didn't say "propositions..." the term "proposition" has much too formal a ring for what is a generalized stance toward the world rather than a set of ironclad rules.

  1. Principle of change:
    Reality is a process of change.
    What is currently true will shortly be false.
  2. Principle of contradiction:
    Contradiction is the dynamic underlying change.
    Because change is constant, contradiction is constant.
  3. Principle of relationships (or holism):
    The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
    Parts are meaningful only in relation to the whole...

These principles are intimately linked...
The principles also imply another important tenet of Eastern thought, which is the insistence on finding the "middle way" between extreme propositions...
...and Talmudic scholars developed it over the next two millennia and more..."

"Mindware" Richard E. Nisbett, pp. 224-5

@OtisJesser with the added caveat that logic also produces the "Hegelian Dialectic" (an implied winner and loser; the dialectic that we all understand and internalize quite early; "go team" ) that is different from "eastern dialectic."

@bbyrd009 Nisbett's third principle of eastern dialecticism seems to get overlooked quite a bit in the west

@bbyrd009 have any books you'd recommend on eastern philosophy?

@OtisJesser none that would match spending a year with some easterners lol. Tao stuff maybe? this is a good intro to the concept--Valences of the Dialectic, Fredric Jameson--but it is dry in places, and spends too much time on the Hegelian dialectic imo. Actually the Bible is the highest work for this, but the symbolism has to be understood, Adam and Eve should be interpreted as "you," Cain and Abel are also "you," like that. "Seen and not seen" iow.

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"How to think about weird things" by Schick & Vaughn is the book I use in my critical thinking classes. It's an entertaining and informative read!

If ever I went back to school, it would be to go take some Philosophy classes. I've only done some reading on my own, but it would be grand to be able to actually study them formally.

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The Organon.

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I will ask the lady at Barnes & Noble tomorrow on a book for me on that subject as well. I am interested. I have been ever since someone made a post about it a week ago. I want to understand it and learn about it. I don't want to be ignorant in the subject anymore.

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Malcolm Gladwell : The Tipping Point
Nessian Trleb: Fooled by Rabdomness

Good, well written books.

cava Level 7 Apr 3, 2018

Huh. I have both of those. I haven't yet read them. 🙂

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Not a book recommendation but this might help

[youarenotsosmart.com]

from his site:

"You Are Not So Smart is a blog I started to explore self delusion. Like lots of people, I used to forward sensational news stories without skepticism and think I was a smarty pants just because I did a little internet research. I didn’t know about confirmation bias and self-enhancing fallacies, and once I did, I felt very, very stupid. I still feel that way, but now I can make you feel that way too..."

3

A Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan is terrific.

JimG Level 8 Apr 3, 2018
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