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“The Wisdom of McRibs” — Annie’s Newsletter, November 16, 2018
THE WISDOM OF McRIBS – Nick Maggiulli and our tendency to infer causality from coincidence
CROWDS AS DECISION TOOLS – The power of a large, independent sample
BELIEVE RESPONSIBLY – William Kingdon Clifford and the universal moral responsibility for calibrated beliefs
“THEY RUINED POPCORN!” – Cass Sunstein and the value of information and willingness-to-pay
HOW MUCH, THEN, IS IGNORANCE WORTH? – How and why we’ll PAY to avoid partisan information
“Mid-Term Election Edition”— Annie’s Newsletter, November 9, 2018
CONSTRUCTIVE IDEAS ON PROBABILITIES FROM PRE-ELECTION COVERAGE
Or … as a friend called it, “What happened after Annie lost her shit on Twitter”
SPILLOVER EFFECTS FROM FORECASTING TOURNAMENTS
Can forecasting depolarize our political conversation?
WEIGHT & RATE: GREAT TECHNIQUE FOR CRITICAL THINKING
Vital tool (with a cool name), via Joseph Sweeney
“Why A Good Truth Is Hard To Find (Part I)” — Annie’s Newsletter, November 2, 2018
— Why A Good Truth Is Hard to Find (Part I)
Processing fluency: We like and believe things oft repeated
— Why A Good Truth Is Hard to Find (Part II)
The “confidence heuristic”: Make it simple, sound certain, and we’ll believe
— The Hidden Tribes Study
New data on why we’re polarized and where to go from here
The trouble surmounting the intractable minority
— Algorithms To The Rescue?
For fake-news detection, AI finds what we can already spot
— Morality To The Rescue of Algorithms?
If you’re concerned about self-driving cars making moral choices, this should make you feel better: Humans don’t even agree on those choices
“My-Side Bias, Part II” — Annie’s Newsletter, October 26, 2018
1. MY-SIDE BIAS, PART II – The counterintuitive effect of training on mitigating bias
2. WHAT FRESH HELL …? – Midterm-election polls, pre-election expectations, and Nate Silver’s sobering message
3. TRANSPARENCY MATTERS – But sometimes HOW MUCH it matters depends on whether you’re looking OUT or looking IN
4. IS EIGHTY MILLION SUPPOSED TO BE A LOT? – Netflix seeds its narrative with a potentially meaningless statistic
5. TEST YOURSELF – Did these 21 social science experiments replicate?
“Accentuate The Positive” — Annie’s Newsletter, October 19, 2018
In this week’s newsletter:
1. “ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE” – What biases in the reporting of drug studies show us about our own decision-making
2. “DIFFERENT KINDS OF SMART” – We’re fortunate if we’re one kind of smart but that means there is still a lot we don’t know
3. WHAT’S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT? – If “it” is wealth distribution, luck has plenty to do with it just like it does in all our outcomes
4. (A SYLLOGISM:) ALL PEOPLE HAVE COGNITIVE BIASES – Some cognitive biases involve motivated reasoning – Some people engage in motivated reasoning
5. WHY EXTREMISTS AND SCAMMERS THRIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA – And why banning individual accounts won’t accomplish much
“Tribalism on Steroids” — Annie’s Newsletter, October 12, 2018
TRIBALISM ON STEROIDS When partisanship increases, it leads to hatred of the opposing tribe – and we’re there. Now. Jon Haidt recently tweeted that our partisan hatred is
“No, judges don’t give harsher sentences when they are hungry”— Annie’s Newsletter, October 5, 2018
NO, JUDGES DON’T GIVE HARSHER SENTENCES WHEN THEY ARE HUNGRY How a sexy narrative can make us forget that correlation does not equal causation Ego
“Communicating Uncertainty and Inspiring Confidence: Conflicting Messages?” — Annie’s Newsletter, Sept 28, 2018
COMMUNICATING UNCERTAINTY AND INSPIRING CONFIDENCE: Do the two messages conflict? A question from product-management team leader Sacha Adam I love hearing from readers for many
“What Does the Raw Data Say About Sexism By Tennis Refs” — Annie’s Newsletter, Sept 21, 2018
WHAT DOES THE RAW DATA SAY ABOUT SEXISM BY TENNIS REFS? It’s a trick question: RAW Data doesn’t SAY anything WE collect and interpret it,
“When An Auto Accident *Doesn’t* Happen” — Annie’s Newsletter, Sept 14, 2018
WHEN AN AUTO ACCIDENT DOESN’T HAPPEN Why “Tesla Autopilot saves a life” is barely news Tesla’s Autopilot technology includes a collision-avoidance feature that an owner recently credited with