ÿþ<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><HTML><HEAD><TITLE>The Irrational World Blog by Stew Green</TITLE><META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"><META content="Stewart Green, : Opinion Blog 2009 Stew Green" name=description> <META content="Stewart Green, Opinion Blog 2009 , Stew Green" name=keywords><META content="Stewart Green, Stew Green" name=AUTHOR><STYLE type=text/css>BODY { FONT-SIZE: 12px; FONT-FAMILY: verdana, sans-serif}TD { FONT-SIZE: 12px; FONT-FAMILY: verdana, sans-serif}P { FONT-SIZE: 12px; FONT-FAMILY: verdana, sans-serif}A { TEXT-DECORATION: none}A:hover { TEXT-DECORATION: underline}</STYLE></HEAD> <BODY leftMargin=0 topMargin=0 rightMargin=0><BASEFONT face="comic sans ms"><p><center><FONT color=#ff00ff><FONT face="Maiandra GD" size=5><B>The Irrational World Blog : The Intro </B> 2/2/2010</font> <br> - It's a mad mad world. Humanity never has a grip on reality. We have to see thru the BS</font> <p> <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="900"> <tr><td valign=top width="50%"> <TABLE cellSpacing=2 cellPadding=4 bgColor=#ffffff> <tr><TD bgColor=#aaaaaa><FONT color=#ffffff face="comic sans ms" size=3>Introduction <tr><td bgcolor="#dddddd"> <p><B>I try to live my life on a rational basis as much as possible. Sometimes I even succeed for a while. <br>In my experience this makes me a member of a pretty small minority.</B> - For some time I have been writing about this irrational world so I guess I should tie it all together in a new blog. <p>- Why is it important ? - <b>The problem is if we have BS picture of the world we can't make good decisions for the future even if we have fantastic reasoning.</b> <br>- Understanding life is like swimming in jam <p>- 1 year later this page is still messy. Notes on memory sick got lost last year when my USB stick got corrupted ..and everyday I seem to have 28 hours of stuff to do so I haven't had time to fix this <br>-- And then it's actually difficult to get back in the zone and write properly as with a complex world and the media disinforming etc it's easy to lose focus. <br><br><tr><TD bgColor=#aaaaaa><FONT color=#ffffff face="comic sans ms" size=3>So much Irrationality <tr><td bgcolor="#ddddff">- Bonkers, Bollocks, BS, Bull, Tosh, Bunkum - there's so much of it around : Religion, TV, romanticism etc. <p>Quote : - "Very few (if any) people have a full rational worked out for everything they do and believe.The vast majority at least take short-cuts by making a few assumptions and simple preference selections. After that they may or may not try to work out a logical basis for their decisions." <br><br> <tr><TD bgColor=#aaaaaa><FONT color=#ffffff face="comic sans ms" size=3>So much Noise <tr><td bgcolor="#ddffff">- Have you ever noticed that when you try to get to the bottom of a subject how difficult it is . There is so much noise on the internet forums are jammed with posters putting the same old point or making stupid comments etc. <p>- Noise on the net TV etc<br>A Rational person in a Irrational World <br><br> <tr><TD bgColor=#aaaaaa><FONT color=#ffffff face="comic sans ms" size=3>Other sources about reasoning errors <tr><td bgcolor="#ddffdd"> - <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases>massive list on Wikipedia</a> <br>- See <a href=<a href=http://www.stewgreen.com/thinking.htm>my fallacy list</a> and <a href=http://www.stewgreen.com/essays/humanism.htm>about the importance of The Scientific Method</a> <p>- <a href=http://listverse.com/2010/01/07/top-10-common-faults-in-human-thought>listverse.com/2010/01/07/top-10-common-faults-in-human-thought</a> very well presented but full of errors - <a href=http://listverse.com/2010/04/12/10-more-common-faults-in-human-thought/>more-common-faults-in-human-thought</a> <br>- they suggest continuing with a failing project just because you have invested so much in it already <br>- <a href=http://www.skepdic.com/essays/Haskins.html>useful info on critical thinking from Skepdic</a> <br>- <a href=http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/-/9780749455064/chapter-29-common-thinking-errors/the_gamblers_fallacy>interesting book </a> <br><br> </table> <td width="50%" valign="top"> <TABLE cellSpacing=2 cellPadding=4 bgColor=#ffffff> <tr><TD bgColor=#aaaaaa><FONT color=#ffffff face="comic sans ms" size=3>DIRECTORY of STORIES</b> <tr><td > <p><b>- <a href=rational0.htm>0 Top20 BS Issues</a></b> <br>.. 2010 <br><b>- <a href=rational1.htm>1 Media manufactures it's own news </a></b>, <br><b>- <a href=rational2.htm>2 The Tony Blair "He's a war criminal" Mentality </a></b>, <br>- <b><a href=rational3.htm>3 We are Programmed to be wrong </a></b>, <br>- <b><a href=rational4.htm>4 Pychological pattern of "True Believers" </a></b> <br>..2011 <br>- <b><a href=rational5.htm>5 The Racism of Greenies</a></b> <br>- <b><a href=rational6.htm>6 Garbage In - UK Media harms proper thinking about the world</a></b> <br>- <b><a href=rational7.htm>7 Climate Claptrap III</a></b> <br>- <b><a href=rational8.htm>8 Bollocks on Dragons Den </a></b> <br>- <b><a href=rational9.htm>9 A BS Lead News Story Every Friday ? </a></b> <br>- <b><a href=rational10.htm>10 Various Stories</a></b>.. <br>- <b><a href=rational11.htm>11 Climate Claptrap IV</a></b> <br>- <b><a href=rational12.htm>12 Climate Claptrap V</a></b> <br>- <b><a href=rational13.htm>13 Media IV</a></b> <br>- <b><a href=rational14.htm>14 Statistics & Context</a> </b> BBC More or Less <br>- <b><a href=rational15.htm>15 BBC More or Less II</a> </b>.. <br>..2012 <br>- <b><a href=rational16.htm>16 Fighting Racism with Racism : mad</a> </b> <br>- <b><a href=rational17.htm>17 Mad support for Railways</a> </b> <br>- <b><a href=rational17a.htm>17a Climate Claptrap VI</a> </b>.. <br>- <b><a href=rational18.htm>18 The world is completely Insane </b> <br>- <b><a href=rational19.htm>19 Fundamentals </a> </b>not finished <br>- <b><a href=rational20.htm>20 Reds hiding behind Green </a> </b> <br>- <b><a href=rational21.htm>21 How BBCNews's editors are not impartial anymore</a> </b> <p><font size=1>(I'm repeating myself <b><a href=http://www.stewgreen.com/essays/give.htm>my old blog also has lots of essays about BS world</a></b> )</font> <p>There are some updates on my <b>Twitter feeds</b> <br> <table><tr> <td valign=top><img src=twitter-logo1.jpg> <td valign=top> <b><a href=http://twitter.com/No2BS>No2BS</a></b> BS Detecting <p><b><a href=http://twitter.com/peaklogic>PeakLogic</a></b> other things like Interesting TV <p><b><a href=http://twitter.com/stewgreendotcom>StewGreenDotcom</a></b> My personal account </table> <tr><TD bgColor=#aaaaaa><FONT color=#ffffff face="comic sans ms" size=3>Unlearning Contaminated Info <tr><td bgcolor="#ffddff"> - Apart from in school science lessons info rarely comes in a pure form, rather it comes inside stories which include emotion and with other info which may turn out to be false. There is always a need to unpack the story to get to the raw info. Do we need to take into account the context i.e. From a Daily Mail Article or direct from your scientist friend ? <p> - I know this from teaching English; some students are worse than beginners. They have learnt to do something the wrong way so first you have to get them to unlearn this habit, before you can teach the correct way. One may see an emotional story banged in again and again by newspapers so form a picture in ones mind. But 10 years later in a calmer more objective time understand the picture in a completely different way and realise your initial point of view was wrong. Whereas if your mind had been less contaminated, then you would have reached the truth quicker. <p>- It would be good if their was an information service which supplies uncontaminated information .... actually Wikipedia with it's policy of NPV is aiming for this I suppose. The BBC although aiming for impartiality seves a lot of contaminated info through it's choice of agenda, lifting stories from other media, emotional input etc It's the nature of TV, radio in comparison to encyclopedic writing. <br> - Rather than being productive reading newspapers leaves more muddled than before, unlless one has imense skill in filtering bad info from good. <br><br> </table> </table> <p> <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="400"><tr><TD bgColor=#dddddd> <center><b>a Stew Green opinion</b> <br>Out of the box thinking <br>- from someone who was never in the box in the first place </table> <p> <TABLE cellPadding=3 border=0 spacing="3"> <TBODY> <TR> <TD bgColor=#dddddd><B><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=-1><A href="../../index.html" target=_top>HOME</A></FONT></FONT></B></TD> <TD bgColor=#dddddd><B><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=-1><A href="irrational_world.htm" target=_top>OPINION BLOG INDEX</A></FONT></FONT></B></TD> <TD bgColor=#dddddd> <CENTER> <CENTER><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=-1><A href="../../travel/comment.htm">note/comments</A></FONT></FONT></CENTER></CENTER></TD> <TD><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=-1><A href="rational0.htm">NEXT --&gt;</A></FONT></FONT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></P></BASEFONT></BODY></HTML>