Rationally Speaking #68 - Applied Rationality

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2012

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You've heard plenty about biases: the thinking errors the human brain tends to make. But is there anything we can do to make ourselves *less* biased? In this episode, Massimo and Julia discuss what psychological research has learned about "de-biasing," the challenges involved, and the de-biasing strategies Julia is implementing at her organization, the Center for Applied Rationality.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.6	For more information, please visit us at NYCCEptics.org.
0:31.6	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:41.2	I'm your host, Massimo Pilducci, and with me as always is my co-host Julia Galeff.
0:45.9	Julia, what are we going to talk about today?
0:48.8	Massimo, today we're going to talk about the science of applied rationality, which is a phrase that is near and dear to my heart
0:57.0	since I sort of came up with it. The name of the organization of which I am now the president
1:03.5	is the center for applied rationality, or C-FAR for short. And so the science that we're going to
1:08.8	talk about today is the science that inspired the founding of our organization.
1:13.8	Basically, it's...
1:15.2	So first of all, before you go ahead, is there such a thing as a misapplied rationality?
1:20.2	Yes, I would argue that there is.
1:21.5	Yes, I think actually that's true.
1:23.6	Okay, go ahead.
1:25.2	The idea behind applied rationality is that cognitive science has learned a lot over the last few decades about cognitive biases, about the systematic errors that the human brain commits when we try to reason or make decisions, and specifically what contexts or situations or, you know, environmental factors cause us to commit cognitive biases. And so there's
1:45.0	been this wonderful proliferation of research in the field of heuristics and biases about how our
1:50.1	brains go wrong. But what there hasn't been nearly as much of is research on how to fix it,
1:55.1	on how to de-bias ourselves. And there definitely hasn't been anyone so far until my organization trying to take that research
2:04.8	and use it to help people not make those mistakes in their own decisions about their career
2:10.2	or their health or finances or personal relationships.
2:13.7	And also the decisions that they make about that affect society as a whole, like the decisions
2:18.8	they make about who to vote for or how to treat other people or where to donate their money,
	...

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