How rational are you

How Rational Are You? At: Columbus Rationality, subgroup of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio Dr. Gleb Tsipursky Co-Founder and President, Intentional Insights Tenure-Track Professor, The Ohio State University Author, Find Your Purpose Using Science Monthly donor to HCCO and long-time member and organizer of Columbus Rationality

Rationality Test!

• 45 seconds per question • Don’t cheat, that’s irrational

Question 1 • Max was the president of his secular student club in college. He is an outspoken teacher in Alabama, defending the theory of evolution against religious parents who push him to teach creationism. Is he more likely to either: – Be a teacher of biology – Be a teacher of biology and not vote for Trump

Question 2 • If all A’s are C’s, and all B’s are C’s, then are all A’s also B’s?

Question 3 • Imagine your favorite actor endorsing a toothbrush. Are you more or less likely to buy that toothbrush?

Question 4 • You are offered one of two choices: either get $50 or 50% chance of $110 dollars. Which do you choose?

Question 5 • You are told that a coin is fair and observe a coin being flipped 99 times and it lands heads every time. What is your probability that it will land heads the 100th time?

We Are Not Cohesive!

How does our mind work?

System 1, Elephant

System 2, Rider

•

•

AUTOPILOT

INTENTIONAL

• Subconscious • Automatic • Habits

• Conscious • Mindful • Attention

• Fast • Intuitive • Emotional

• Slow • Reasoning • Logical

Cognitive Biases!

Retrain the Elephant and Rider to win at life!

Now You Can Cheat!

• Talk to a partner about your results for 5 minutes • Then, we’ll discuss the actual answers

Answer to 1 • Look out for the conjunction fallacy!

All possible Maxes are teachers of biology. Only some will not vote for Trump.

Answer to 2 • Avoid the undistributed middle term error!

Assign the word “human” to letter A, and “ostriches” to letter B. Letter C is “two-legged.” Now it reads, “all humans are two-legged, all ostriches are two-legged.” If all A’s are B’s, then “all humans are ostriches.” Oops!

Answer to 3 • Beware the Halo effect! The Halo effect causes us to perceive one positive characteristic of a person to judge the rest of the person’s characteristics positively, regardless of the actual truth.

Answer to 4 • Loss aversion can cause us to do quite irrational things.

Imagine repeating the exercise 100 times. If you chose $50 each time, you would wind up $500 poorer on average.

Answer to 5 • If you said 50%, you might be falling into the conformity to authority fallacy. If an authority figure tells you the coin is not loaded, but then you observe it land heads 99 times, it’s time to update your beliefs!

Think and Discuss!

• Think and write by yourself for 5 minutes about how these biases might be negatively impacting your life.

• Then, discuss this topic with other folks around you.

• Write down any additional ideas you get.

Thank You! • PowerPoint of this presentation: slideshare.net/intentionalinsights • Free version of my science-based book, Find Your Purpose Using Science: tinyurl.com/fypus2015 • Get in touch with me at gleb@intentionalinsights.org • Intentional Insights – – – – – – –

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