How Your Brain Figures Out What It Doesn't Know 96
hex0D passes along an article at NPR about a study that examined the biology behind the self-assessment of knowledge. Quoting:
"We isolated a region of the prefrontal cortex, which is right at the front of the brain and is thought to be involved in high-level thought, conscious planning, monitoring of our ongoing brain activity,' Fleming says. In people who were good at assessing their own level of certainty, that region had more gray matter and more connections to other parts of the brain, according to the study Fleming and his colleagues published in the journal Science."
relation to politics (Score:4, Funny)
They should have correlated the study's participants with their preferred political party.
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As well, the should have correlated the study's participants to whether their occupation is politician or not...
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Why? So they could see that people who vote based on a political party color have less development in those areas than people who make their vote by putting the effort into figuring out which politician will most likely do what they want regardless of political party or promises?
Its cute that you wanted to make it political, but the very fact that you bring up 'party' shows you're an idiot.
Vote for the guy who's going to do what you think is right, not because the guy flies your favorite color or animal.
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Republicans have run for quite a while of FUD, tax cuts for the rich and corporatism. Whereas Democrats have run more on emotions and notion that things ought to be more just and that we can do better than what we're currently achieving.
Independents OTOH are tougher in many ways to pin down as some of them think that the party on their side isn't extreme enough, some wa
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Let me guess: You are for the Democrats, right?
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And I'm going to guess you're for Republicans but the truth is that things are pretty much that way. Democrat *voters* are likely to choose "socialist" strategies. socialist means, for the betterment of society, specifically through government action since the context is governing policies.
Socialism is the *obviously good* option as being opposed to it implicates being antisocial or in other words, for the detriment of society. So it's not Democrats but Republicans who have a more nuanced and rationalized p
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And you're going to guess wrong. I'm not American, so I'm voting for neither, but if I were, and I'd decide to vote for one of the large parties, it most probably would be the Democrats.
Well, his choice of words was what clearly revealed him: For Republicans he used words with clearly negative connotation ("FUD", "corporatism"), while for the Democrats he used words with positive connotation ("more just", "we
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Actually I think I have a better way to describe the political goals of both parties.
See for so much the Republicans complain about government intervention they are enthusiast proposers of extending and empowering law enforcement agencies to unreasonable ends or indeed, to no end.
Whereas it is population surveillance, suppression of free speech and public gathering etc
Republicans are basically for the status quo and Democrats for change in contrast, which is why the Conservative/Liberal labels make much sen
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Independents OTOH are tougher in many ways to pin down
Well, you are trying to handle INDEPENDENTS as a group.
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They've already done brain-scans on people with political affinities. Those who are right-wing show under-developed regions dealing with emotion, those on the left-wing show similar defects in other areas of the brain.
{citation needed}
Re:relation to politics (Score:5, Informative)
Let me know when you're done with those and I'll find some more.
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Yeah, most of those studies are jokes and border on college classroom exercises. However,
most partisans responded using the emotional, and not the reasoning, parts of their brains
is almost just common sense. Just sit back and think about the people you know and their political affiliations, and observe their tendencies in critical thinking discussions (in general). It doesn't take a study to figure this one out.
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Here's another study [cnn.com] that shows more disparity that you'd think in the intelligence area.
Spoiler - Liberals, atheists, and people who stick to one sexual partner are smarter. I think we all knew that already, though. :)
Re:relation to politics (Score:5, Insightful)
They've already done brain-scans on people with political affinities. Those who are right-wing show under-developed regions dealing with emotion, those on the left-wing show similar defects in other areas of the brain.
I've seen some half-baked studies making similar claims that, curiously, always echo popular stereotypes. This stuff really isn't any better science than the hoary old studies measuring skull sizes of African-Americans. The biggest problem with any of them is determining what someone's orientation really is. Most people, nominally left or right, have poorly constructed views on a mess of issues, a tribal identity, and a fair amount of political paranoia. They are generally all over the map, and often don't realize their beliefs are contradictory. Honest to god partisans, who have independently developed their views and ideology, are a pretty small percentage of the population, mostly because there's so little economic benefit to doing so.
I'd like to say politicians have no brain, but politicians fit into the same category as CEOs and CEOs are well-established as schizophrenic sociopaths and politicians will likely therefore exhibit brain damage accordingly.
I'm calling bullshit on this. People need to believe in the devil, and in a secular society they substitute powerful figures for it. Politicians and CEOs and such ride the wave, for the most part, and have little actual control over anything outside a narrow domain. In other words, bad things happen because people, generally, are bad, not because there is some unaccountable elite scheming behind the scenes.
I find few powerful figures whose controversial actions aren't (eventually) explainable by a. them having superior knowledge of their domain than I have or b. them being poor leaders and surrounded by yes-men. B is a big one, never underestimate the Peter Principle.
All political persuasions, by definition, operate on the theory that ideology comes before consequences, so all political persuasions can be considered neurological diseases.
Nope, American conservatism operates on precisely the opposite theory. As Buckley put it, "don't immanentize the eschaton", meaning, don't try to bring about the end times or a utopia. The whole notion is that you can't have a perfect world, you don't even consider a perfect world in what you're trying to achieve. You have to work with what you've got, and you have to realize that their lives and dreams are valuable in and of themselves, and temper any changes you might try to achieve with the realization that your ends are not necessarily any greater than what they have now. The more thoroughly conservative a person is, the more consequences are everything, the ideology is nothing.
Libertarians, Tea Party loonies and other fanatics are worsening the situation by devolution.
Progressivism has always, in all of its incarnations, had reasons for why the right-thinking adherents to the movement were smarter, wiser, better human beings, and why people who disagreed were mentally defective, overwhelmed by hate, or even subhuman. The most depressing development lately is that as more women are taking leadership positions in the conservative movement, we now have liberals deriding them as insane or sexually damaged. Modern American progressivism started with women's suffrage, and has now come full circle to attack them in the most vicious, misogynistic ways.
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the idea that any high minded or even marginally abstract ideal drives conservatism dies seconds after entering any room with more than 2 people who identify as conservative in it. beyond "taxes are bad" and "regulation is bad" there is no unifying principle. Jim DeMint just said at a rally that you can't be a fiscal conservative without being a social conservative... an amazingly ridiculous statement. And he's one of the most powerful "conservatives" in this country today. Tell me what Sarah Palin's i
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That evolving political process you describe sounds interesting.
But the only way that I can see it happening is by providing maximum freedom to the most people. Which is really that individualism you treat so contemptuously.
We are pack animals who evolved to live in tribes. Not a hive.
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We are indeed pack animals, and packs do not exhibit total individual freedom. Rather, they balance individual freedom with societal freedom and governmental freedom (the sum total of which is the same for all societies, no matter what the form). I do not pretend to know where in this three-way division the ideal balance should be, but I am absolutely certain that political evolution must involve changing those values. Holding them fixed, regardless of what they are fixed to, is a Bad Idea. Holding any of t
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Wow. That was extremely well written. I wish it wouldn't get buried down in /.'s bowels.
I will spend some serious time thinking about it. I can't come up with a way to write that sentence that doesn't sound snarky, but I really do mean it sincerely.
I only have one problem (admittedly, it's a big one). How do you pick a government to find that balance between society and individuals?
I can't come up with any way that doesn't allow individuals to compete amongst themselves. That whole messy "evolution" thing.
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It =IS= a big problem and as much as I think that I'm working along the right lines, all of the reasoning is based on the idea that you can identify when forces are balanced and how to get them there when they are not. In Britain, there were two attempts at achieving some semblance of balance - Alfred the Great's educational and legal reforms, and (to a lesser extent) the Magna Carta. Plato also emphasized the need for education. Education would enable individuals (and communities) to determine if a degree
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I am willing to bet that if they did they wouldn't find much of a difference over all. Political Affiliation has influence of your environment your emotional response to particular issues and only a small fraction of actual rational thinking.
Environment
Left Wing Parties. Tend to have supporters who are people who directly benefit from government support. Live in Cities where they need governments to keep the infrastructure up so they can survive, or are students where the government invests into their fu
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How would matching participants with their flatlines help?
Oh dear.. (Score:3, Funny)
So my brain didn't know that my brain didn't know...that my brain didn't know... break;
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Let me see if I understand this correctly (Score:5, Funny)
Nope.
Re:Let me see if I understand this correctly (Score:5, Funny)
We found a distinct part of the brain that, if more developed in a particular way, lets one know that he sucks at making correct decisions. For everyone else, they don't realise that they suck.
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Let's give this a shot (Score:4, Insightful)
The ability to introspect about self-performance is key to human subjective experience, but the neuroanatomical basis of this ability is unknown
Error correction is important; but we're not sure where the EC functionality is on this board.
Such accurate introspection requires discriminating correct decisions from incorrect ones,
Let's parrot the definition of EC in pretentious sounding verbiage so we'll look more important.
a capacity that varies substantially across individuals
Some of the EC chips are better than others.
We dissociated variation in introspective ability from objective performance in a simple perceptual-decision task, allowing us to determine whether this interindividual variability was associated with a distinct neural basis.
We ran the bogomips benchmark while some logic probes were placed in strategic locations.
We show that introspective ability is correlated with gray matter volume in the anterior prefrontal cortex, a region that shows marked evolutionary development in humans
We found some interesting signals on pin 3A of the 3rd chip from the CPU. By the way, did I mention that the Homo Sapiens model rocks? That's us. We RULE!
Moreover, interindividual variation in introspective ability is also correlated with white-matter microstructure connected with this area of the prefrontal cortex. Our findings point to a focal neuroanatomical substrate for introspective ability, a substrate distinct from that supporting primary perception
We're pretty sure that the ATMEL 5344-C with the glob of thermal goo performs some of this functionality on the system too. It looks like EC functionality is done on a couple of separate chips.
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Bored, and under pressure to come up with something quickly since the article already had quite a few posts. I've been around here long enough to know you shouldn't waste too much effort once a handful of posts have +5.
Mostly, it doesn't (Score:5, Interesting)
In The Science of Fear (a book I heartily recommend), Daniel Gardner claims the strength of our "feeling of knowing" generally has no statistically significant correlation with factual reality. Humans are not very good at "knowing." and our most cherished concepts of "truth" may be unverifiable or demonstrably false.
Which is why, paradox intended, a person who knows he knows nothing is wise.
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It's odd sometimes how gut feeling and instinct end up being correct.
Re:Mostly, it doesn't (Score:5, Insightful)
It's odd sometimes how gut feeling and instinct end up being correct.
Nope. Confirmation bias is perfectly normal.
And resulted in religions (Score:1)
And it sprouted religions. If I pray for x and I get it, my god did it. Therefor he exists. If I don't get it, it was busy or had other plans.
Bert
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I would wake up in the morning without really recalling anything from the previous night. I must have dreamed, though, that I finished the chapter. I would walk into my exam feeling good about it: Constantinople was named after Emperor Constantine, there was
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I'm quite certain that you're wrong!
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[..]
Which is why, paradox intended, a person who knows he knows nothing is wise.
No, they aren't. They're retarded.
Someone who imagines they know nothing is as retarded as someone who imagines they know everything. Wisdom cannot possibly be found in either of these simpletons.
Some things are known. Some are not. Some are knowable. Some are not. Some are difficult to figure out, others are obvious. There's a universe of subtlety and complexity there, with all shades of grey from the deepest back to the most brilliant white.
Wisdom is the ability to acknowledge this and find one's wa
Re:Mostly, it doesn't (Score:4, Insightful)
Or they find the infinitesimal unconvincing and so when they look at their own finite knowledge divided by the infinite knowledge they don't have, they get 0.
So they're saying ... (Score:3, Funny)
.... there's an anatomical explanation for who is ignorant. If it takes an autopsy to arrive at the proper conclusion, I'm fine with that. Shoot them all and let the coroner sort them out.
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End result: world full of coroners and shootists. This can't end well.
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Ever heard of functional MRI ?
I seem to have a lesion (Score:3, Funny)
Well, at 3 weeks prior to the most important professional exam of my career, I appear to be posting on Slashdot.
I hereby donate my brain to medical science so that the lesion present in my prefrontal cortex can help pinpoint this area more precisely.
thanks (Score:5, Informative)
...for not linking the NPR article -- and for linking the same paywalled article twice. Good job. Is this what you were going for?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/09/16/129910351/how-your-brain-figures-out-what-it-doesn-t-know [npr.org]
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So, obviously the poster sucks at making correct decisions, but doesn't realize it.
NPR article link (Score:2)
Bill and Ted therefore must have been geniuses... (Score:4, Funny)
Bill: "So-crates . . . the only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing."
Ted: "That's US, dude!"
Bill: "Oh, yeah!"
I think I am.. (Score:1)
Employment precondition (Score:1)
So in the future, they'll demand a scan of your forehead, and if that region isn't large enough, you'll not get employed?
Retraining self-assessment skills (Score:4, Informative)
What you don't know (Score:1)
Re:What you don't know (Score:5, Informative)
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Visual processing is done on the opposite side of the brain, at the back of the head.
I guess it all boils down to distance (Score:1)
Think impressionist paintings with thick strokes. You have to take a few steps back to see them clearly. I think the same thing applies to decisions and planning; they're difficult to make because the one making them is too close, too attached to the situation.
Years ago, I made some poor decisions. A few years later I saw how stupid they were and I thought "Ah, if only I had been as wise as I am now, I would have made good decisions back then". What I think now is I never got a lot wiser; it's just the det
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EMOTIONAL detachment is part of the key. Emotions are a dangerous input to allow in the decision-making process. Sadly as a species we are wired to allow exactly that, excepting those blessed with specific neural damage or mutations.
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You should read this:
Emotions Can Negatively Impact Investment Decisions [stanford.edu]. One of the study's authors was the same person, Antoine Bechara, who authored the other paper you mention.
One study does not equate with proof or dis-proof.
Doh! (Score:2)
Anyone with a fully functioning prefrontal cortex knows this.
So this is how you know... (Score:2)
...what you know that you don't know?
How Your Brain Figures Out What It Doesn't Know (Score:2)
hummmmm (Score:1)
Dirty Harry said it best when he simply said... (Score:2)
"A man's gotta know his limitations."
At least a slim majority of H. sapiens seems to come up a few cards short of what's required to do this effectively; I don't think there's nearly enough "marked evolutionary development". I wish it were fun for me to watch this circus. Will it ever be better?
Religion (Score:1)