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Exercise: Pretend you are your evil alter ego when analyzing the reasons for your rationalization. What would your alter ego say about your rationalization? Your alter ego will probably come up with some selfish, lazy or just plain silly reasons for your rationalization. Once you have this list see the section on how to accept the truth.
5 second level for evidence as soldiers
- Notice that all your evidence favors your belief; or Notice the anger/resentment/fear when coming across evidence against your belief.
- Pause and remember that
- beliefs are just expectations and truth is a measure of how accurate your expectations are
- evidence is not for or against a belief, it is a flow of probability between expectations
- Feel aversion to not internalizing all the evidence, to not letting reality constrain your expectations (beliefs)
- Make an bayesian calculation, incrementally incorporating all the evidence, so that your expectations (beliefs) are accurate (true).
A recent example for me comes from reading The Nurture Assumption and Selfish Reasons to Have more Kids.
- I noticed I was really convinced by a lot of evidence in favor of the view that parental influence is less important than I thought.
- My beliefs were being updated, but only by evidence in one direction - in favor of the hypothesis.
- Not wanting to be inaccurate about the best way to raise children I searched google scholar for twin/adoption studies and criticisms.
- I updated by beliefs based on the criticisms of the studies and I now feel confident in my expectations about parental influence.
Exercises include picking a belief (maybe one you recently acquired from a convincing friend) and researching all arguments for and against the belief. Write down your expectations before the research. As you research compare the research to your expectations and update your expectations as you go (I actually mean writing down so others can read it what you actually expect). Repeat. Eventually pick beliefs you have held for a long time and are a part of your identity (after practicing on recent beliefs that matter less).
I've had similar discussions and I have found it useful to mentally (or actually on paper) tally the number of times I did the dishes and the number of times she did the dishes for a week or two.
Even though I thought I did them more and she thought she did them more, it turned out even. I was biased to remember the times I did the dishes and she was biased to remember the times she did them, and neither of us remember the times the other person did them.
I have taken this as a lesson that examples are useful.
And as a lesson that without examples I should be less upset than I am.
I think your scenario is good. I think the group dynamic and individual personality determine when this is easy and when it is difficult.
I have been in groups where it is easy to admit mistakes and move on; and I have been in groups where admitting a mistake feels like you are no longer part of the group.
So this can be realistic. I find taking the approach of admitting mistakes often helps others follow the same path, and leads to a better group dynamic.
I wish I still lived in Madison, I would be there
Where can I get an IQ test? I am an adult and was never tested as a child. Searching google has only given me online tests. I want a professionally done test.
I considered myself intelligent, but some of the sequences/posts on this site are quite challenging for me. It has made me curious on exactly how intelligent I am. I don’t want to be too over or under confident when it comes to intelligence. I try to learn new things and that helps me find the limits of my intelligence, but I figure my IQ will also be interesting to know as well.
Thanks.