Truth Bias anyone?

Psychology Today wrote:People want to believe others despite evidence to the contrary. This is a normal reaction because, in general, people tend to believe others. This phenomenon, referred to as Truth Bias, allows society and commerce to run efficiently. Absent Truth Bias, people would spend an inordinate amount of time checking information provided by others. Truth Bias also serves as the social default. Relationships with friends and business colleagues would become strained if their veracity were constantly questioned. Faced with minor discrepancies in a story, people tend to excuse away inconsistencies because they want to believe the person who is telling the story. Truth Bias provides liars with an advantage because people want to believe what they hear, see, or read. The effect of Truth Bias is stronger if the person telling the story is a close friend, a spouse, or our children. Truth Bias diminishes when people become aware of the possibility of deception. The best defense against Truth Bias is judicious skepticism.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/let-their-words-do-the-talking/201306/truth-bias

I was interested in this particular paragraph.  It could be the basis for conservatism, but then there is the other side.

I,think this is what I call a blinkered view. When people will believe something no matter what.
That's why I'm a bit of a fence sitter about certain topics - politics namely - as its changeable and prone to smoke and mirrors and none of the MPs can get it right all the time.

I always find people that are too fixed in what they think are pretty ignorant actually.

eddie wrote:I,think this is what I call a blinkered view. When people will believe something no matter what.
That's why I'm a bit of a fence sitter about certain topics - politics namely - as its changeable and prone to smoke and mirrors and none of the MPs can get it right all the time.

I always find people that are too fixed in what they think are pretty ignorant actually.

Bold statement. What do you mean by "too fixed in what they think?"

Anyway, to contrary of truth bias, I find people very quick to question assertions made by others.

Original Quill wrote:Anyway, to contrary of truth bias, I find people very quick to question assertions made by others.

It seems like more and more rapidly in recent years, we're using human reason to identify the weaknesses of human reason itself, particularly when it comes to biases. That is fascinating to me because it seems like we might be evolving away from the cognitive state that originally evolved to help us survive outside of civilization. Maybe someday historians will talk about confirmation bias the way we talk about polio.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Original Quill wrote:Anyway, to contrary of truth bias, I find people very quick to question assertions made by others.

It seems like more and more rapidly in recent years, we're using human reason to identify the weaknesses of human reason itself, particularly when it comes to biases. That is fascinating to me because it seems like we might be evolving away from the cognitive state that originally evolved to help us survive outside of civilization. Maybe someday historians will talk about confirmation bias the way we talk about polio.

You need to explain that last...lost me.  But before you do, can you define or describe "the cognitive state that originally evolved to help us survive outside of civilization"?  For me, if there is one profound realization, it is that humankind is social.  The wonder is that during the 18th-century so many thinkers began with the premise of individualism...were they, like Plato, searching for a haven for philosophers?  I'm talking about Adam Smith, among others, who made an institution of selfishness.  As John Maynard Keynes said: "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

I think that there are some innate questions, primary of which is 'purpose'.  Viktor Frankl wrote about that in Man's Search for Meaning, http://www.anderson5.net/cms/lib02/SC01001931/Centricity/Domain/222/man-s-search-for-meaning.pdf  The idea is that one accompaniment of self-awareness is a need to find origins, which has lead to a quest for meaning.  So, religion probably began with the family, and has morphed into sience and technology, and...

surely true truth is based on facts provable facts ,you may dismiss those facts as in the case of global warming deniers who given the facts "choose" not to accept them but that doesn`t make those facts false

truth can not not be biased it can only be misconstrued or in many cases ignored completely as many people do
that is personal bias regardless of the facts. this happens a lot on this forum and others for many reasons

facts are based on a reading of the evidence presented and if people cant be arsed to read the presented facts and form a informed opinion they often go of half cocked with poor information that when repeated become a accepted fact regardless of the truth and that muddy s the waters even more


fox news is famous for it on many subjects

for example(not related to FNC ) Hitler Has Only Got One Ball The rumour is considered either a plausible fact or an urban myth.
The British military song "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" may have been the origin of the story. Nevertheless research, eyewitness testimony and historical study have not been able to prove or disprove the rumour.

truth is the truth facts are facts people are people anything else is speculation

And that one was very very small, Himmler had something similar, and we wont mention Goebbels.

"the cognitive state that originally evolved to help us survive outside of civilization"?

Basically the mindset that evolved in early hominids allowing them to survive the wilderness. We know that we're more apt to perceive patterns in noise because a pattern is a potential threat to survival -- while if we perceive a threat in something that's really just a noisy pattern, there's no evolutionary price to pay.

An example would be a person in a rainforest who hears something rustling nearby in the tall grass. It could be a dangerous animal or just the wind, but if the person reacts as though it's a dangerous animal every time he hears such a sound, he has a better chance of surviving than someone who's curious to find out what's causing the sound.

Ben_Reilly wrote:"the cognitive state that originally evolved to help us survive outside of civilization"?

Basically the mindset that evolved in early hominids allowing them to survive the wilderness. We know that we're more apt to perceive patterns in noise because a pattern is a potential threat to survival -- while if we perceive a threat in something that's really just a noisy pattern, there's no evolutionary price to pay.

An example would be a person in a rainforest who hears something rustling nearby in the tall grass. It could be a dangerous animal or just the wind, but if the person reacts as though it's a dangerous animal every time he hears such a sound, he has a better chance of surviving than someone who's curious to find out what's causing the sound.

So what you are saying therefore is that I have bee right all along

if I see a (potentially ) dangerous person (from a group KNOWN to have decidely dangerous members) and I react EVERY TIME as If the said person is dangerous......I have a better chance of surviving

OR ...to remove a chance for your "stupid" reply trick

SOME persons of a particular group are dangerous so treat all the same....?????

if not ...why not (given your argument above)

yes I know other groups have "dangerous members" but few have any relevance to me directly.....

for instance there are none AFAIK that want to carry out a " Munbai" style attack here...except one....
same with bus and train bombings......


think on that....in relation to what you posted above.....

darknessss wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:"the cognitive state that originally evolved to help us survive outside of civilization"?

Basically the mindset that evolved in early hominids allowing them to survive the wilderness. We know that we're more apt to perceive patterns in noise because a pattern is a potential threat to survival -- while if we perceive a threat in something that's really just a noisy pattern, there's no evolutionary price to pay.

An example would be a person in a rainforest who hears something rustling nearby in the tall grass. It could be a dangerous animal or just the wind, but if the person reacts as though it's a dangerous animal every time he hears such a sound, he has a better chance of surviving than someone who's curious to find out what's causing the sound.

So what you are saying therefore is that I have bee right all along

if I see a (potentially ) dangerous person (from a group KNOWN to have decidely dangerous members) and I react EVERY TIME as If the said person is dangerous......I have a better chance of surviving

OR ...to remove  a chance for your "stupid" reply trick

SOME persons of a particular group are dangerous so treat all the same....?????

if not ...why not (given your argument above)

yes I know other groups have "dangerous members" but few have any relevance to me directly.....

for instance there are none AFAIK that want to carry out a " Munbai" style attack here...except one....
same with bus and train bombings......


think on that....in relation to what you posted above.....

Well, for one thing, we don't live in the rainforest any longer.

(I'll let that one sink in for a bit.)

OK, so first of all, amongst human beings, there is no single group that is more or less dangerous than any other single group, unless we're talking about something pretty obvious like little children vs. grown adults. (Even then, little children can and do kill people with guns in my country.)

Yeah, if we lived in jungles or savannahs, reacting to everything that could be a threat as though it was would be a good survival strategy.

Since we don't, we have a different set of circumstances, under which reacting to everything that could be a threat as though it was a threat poses a great risk of undermining your ability to succeed in a multicultural society. And, I don't know whether you know this or not, but we're not going back to monochrome societies that all speak the same language and share the same beliefs, any more than we're going to give up on this whole Internet thing and go back to carrier pigeons.

KD wrote:surely true truth is based on facts provable facts ,you may dismiss those facts as in the case of global warming deniers who given the facts "choose" not to accept them but that doesn`t make those facts false

"All facts are in se values."  Sebastian de Grazia.

KD wrote:facts are based on a reading of the evidence presented and if people cant be arsed to read the presented facts and form a informed opinion they often go of half cocked with poor information that when repeated become a accepted fact regardless of the truth and that muddy s the waters even more

Unfortunately, truth, although a noun, is a process more that a finding. It is not static. As empirical scientists are so fond of saying: All facts are corrigible.

This is one of the great escapes in philosophy: by speaking of truth, they promise something static; but then, by describing a process, they give us a moving target. Disgusting, ain't it?

This is how the climate debaters avoid the problem...they say: the facts aren't all in.