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July 26, 2007
Robin Hanson: Overcoming Bias
Second keynote of Thursday morning at OSCON 2007 is Robin Hanson (Overcoming Bias blog).
We have congnitive biases which cause errors between what is and what we think is. We read our newspapers, textbooks and trust the truth. Even though we recognize that "yes, we have biases," it is much worse that we think.
On average a person's opinion move to what they hear from other people more than we think.
Folks in this room are passionate about things (open source, vegetarian). What happens when someone else doesn't agree with our passions? We think there are reasons, people were raised differently or badly. But even after we explain our position that other person still doesn't understand our passion.
An interesting fact, when you have to bet on something you are more honest. Betting markets are good for encouraging being unbiased.
Bottom line is that we should put more effort into working on overcoming our biases.
Posted by mike at July 26, 2007 9:02 AM
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