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Thursday, April 15, 2021

I BELIEVE I AM A PARROT

PARROT LIKE

Which job is more dangerous—working as a U.S police officer or a U.S fisherman? If you guessed police officer, you’re wrong. According to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, fishing workers are 10 times more likely than police to be killed on the job. 

 The reason most of us believe police officers are more likely to die at work is because of the mental shortcut that can lead us to overestimate the frequency of an event when that event is more “available” or vivid in our memory

When a police officer is killed in the line of duty, it’s widely reported in the news and sticks with us in memory, so we tend to believe it must be more common than deaths in other professions. If a fisherman falls overboard it is not even news.

Who is more likely to kill you in the U.S if you are black, is it a policeman.No it's another black. Statistics prove this. 80% of black or African-American victims are killed by African-Americans but this is a statistic very hard to find on the internet . African Americans are highly overrepresented in murders and gun assaults. 

Doctors sometimes believe that diseases are more widespread than they really are—their jobs naturally fill their memories with vivid examples. In fact, when any of us read or watch a news story about an instance of terrorism, voter fraud, or other crime, we’re likely to overestimate how common such events are. Unless we’re careful, the vivid nature of the news story in our memory can unconsciously bias our estimate of how often these events actually happen. Because it's on T.V it gains much more important when it might not be very important.


Whether we like it or not, all of us can be powerfully swayed by emotions. We'd like to think that our feelings are driven by logic and reason, particularly when it comes to our political beliefs. Unfortunately, this relationship is often reversed. Sometimes we end up using our reasoning ability to justify or defend a conclusion that we’ve already drawn based on our emotions. Let's look at a romantic relationship. We try to believe someone loves us when they clearly do not. They hardly ever get in touch and we make excuses for them that do not exist 

This phenomenon, called emotional reasoning, can lead us astray without our ever knowing. We argue and argue something because we want it to be true or we want to win an argument.

Psychiatrist A.Beck  first noticed this in depressed patients. He observed that many patients drew obviously untrue conclusions about themselves based on how they felt, rather than the actual facts. "If I feel depressed,” one of his patients might say, "then there must be something objectively wrong with my job, my marriage, my children, or other parts of my life." This is wrong as depression can come for no real reason. 

But feelings are just feelings, even when they're powerful, and they can sometimes lie to us. Even in those of us who aren’t depressed, this tendency can affect our beliefs about virtually any emotionally charged topic, whether we’re talking about sexuality, religion, money, crime, or war. The Haute left will use any argument to justify their belief just as the right will do so.

 On the internet, there are what seems to be scholarly intellectual arguments that are really based on someone searching for something to back their belief and lots of people think it is true because they see that the font of the argument is a top university. This is even worse than the obvious lunatic on Facebook who tries to back an idea or belief with silly conclusions and not very convincing so-called facts. 

Take the arguments on Brexit. One side says we will be better off with making decisions entirely of our own the other side says it is a disaster to leave the E.U. Quite frankly I do not know. I have not seen any conclusive statistics on the question. I do know that when I have asked someone to prove their ideas they can't.

 When we feel scared, angry, anxious, or even just uneasy about a topic, we can easily jump to the conclusion that the topic is somehow objectively bad or dangerous. Next time a topic makes you feel uncomfortable, that’s probably a reason to keep an open mind, not to draw a conclusion.

But feelings are just feelings, even when they're powerful, and they can sometimes lie to us. Even in those of us who aren’t depressed, this tendency can affect our beliefs about virtually any emotionally charged topic, whether we’re talking about sexuality, religion, money, crime, or war. When we feel scared, angry, anxious, or even just uneasy about a topic, we can easily jump to the conclusion that the topic is somehow objectively bad or dangerous. Next time a topic makes you feel uncomfortable, that’s probably a reason to keep an open mind, not to draw a conclusion.

Confirmation Bias

Once we have a belief, we tend to cling to it, even when it’s untrue. and the tendency to seek out information that supports what we already believe. 

We do this in two important ways. First, we tend to surround ourselves with messages that confirm our pre-existing opinions. This is why both leftists and rightists tend to get their news from sources that already agree with them. 

The idea is you believe something then you see a piece of writing or news that you do not even know if it's true but you accept it.

Second, we tend to ignore or discount messages that disprove our beliefs. If we’re sure that climate change is a hoax and someone shows us a research study disputing this belief, we might dismiss the study’s findings by saying that the researcher is obviously biased or corrupt. This protects us from having to change our beliefs. When our ideas are true, this probably isn’t such a bad thing. Unfortunately, it also can keep us firmly believing things are false.

1. Do most people value the real truth_

2. Do people understand that truth can only come from statistics and data 

3. Can you prove a belief intellectually

4. I am always interested in listening to people not so much for what they say but where their ideas come from. What about you.

5. Why are scholarly university type articles as biased as the mug on Facebook according to the article

6.  What is confirmation bias 

7. Are people basically parrots who repeat rubbish

8. Why do we read things into people in a romantic relationship that do not exist 





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