Comments on: What Purpose Self Insight?

By: Individual versus collective rationality, lawyer-ly versus scientific rationality, et c. « Mike Kenny

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:00:41 +0000

[...] commenting here about how maybe we should think about individual rationality as part of a larger tribal rationality, [...]

By: TruePath

TruePath — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:24:51 +0000

This isn’t new news. An interesting little tidbit is that Timothy Leary gained his academic reputation partially on the basis of just such a study (showing that of people who were randomly assigned to recieve therapy or not for depression there was no/little difference in outcomes).

By: Warren Winter

Warren Winter — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:55:12 +0000

You would enjoy reading Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber’s work on the social function of reasoning. Some links to publications are on this page: http://hugo.mercier.googlepages.com/theargumentativetheoryofreasoning

By: Dexter the quack « Entitled to an Opinion

Dexter the quack « Entitled to an Opinion — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:52:28 +0000

[...] recovered memories and facilitated communication. Now consider Robin Hanson’s take on the value of insight in psychotherapists and medical doctors. It is even harder for laymen to challenge their expertise [...]

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:31:22 +0000

If the relation is there but weak, it doesn’t explain much of the behavior.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:54:17 +0000

People do often let it be known that they are or have been in therapy. It is not clear how context sensitive are our evolved habits of affiliating with impressive folks. The exact degree is not especially important for the main overall predictions.

By: aram

aram — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:09:36 +0000

You build elaborate logical towers on top of a base of there being “no relationship” between effectiveness and outward signs of quality, when I’m guessing that these studies really say that there is “no statistically significant” relationship.

By: Jess Riedel

Jess Riedel — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:46:27 +0000

I think that this is an example where Robin’s phrasing is a bit unclear (to me, at least). Robin says things like “People associate with high status individuals to signal their own status” when I think he could better say “People have evolved the desire to associate with high status individuals because such associations typically signal their own status, which increases fitness.” That desire exists even though it is ineffective at signaling in this particular situation.

In other words people are adaptation-executors, not fitness-maximizers.

(Of course, it wouldn’t be correct to say that people are never consciously trying to signal status. I imagine it is typically a combination of conscious and unconscious factors at work. But I think in this situation the signaling must be purely unconscious, for exactly the reason you mention, Phil.)

Robin, could you please comment?

By: Jonathan Graehl

Jonathan Graehl — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:42:28 +0000

So, the implication is that no matter the insightful response my therapist has, I won’t pay any attention to its content? All I’ll get out of the experience is a greater consideration that an outside view worth respecting exists?

I’d like to think that I’d benefit from actual insights and observations. But if the claim is true, either most people can’t benefit from the content, or else it’s *very* easy to come up with the stuff that works (any therapist can do it equally well if they try).

By: Constant

Constant — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:05:18 +0000

So does self insight into our personal biases help us overcome them any better? It is not obvious why they would.

Seems you’ve pulled the rug out from under this blog – at least, when “overcoming bias” was a more descriptive title, and at least as it was understood by many participants.