By David
McRaney
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Chapter 3
Confirmation Bias
THE
MISCONCEPTION: your
opinions are the result of years of rational objective analysis.
THE
TRUTH: Your opinions are
the result of paying attention to information that confirmed what you
believed, while ignoring information that challenged your
preconceived notions.
Chapter 10 The
Bystander Effect
THE
MISCONCEPTION: When
someone is hurt, people rush to their aid.
THE
TRUTH: the More people
who witness someone in distress, the less likely it is that any one
person will help.
The Help
Chapter 14 the
Argument from Authority
Neurologist Walter Freeman won the
1949 Nobel prize for medicine in honour of his work- lobotomizing
mentally ill people by jabbing a spike behind their eyeballs. Some
reports say he performed this technique around 2500 times, often
without anaesthesia.1
...At first he used an ice pick but eventually he developed short
thin metal spears he drove through the back of the eye socket with a
mallet. The technique made formerly unruly2
patients calmer, as you might imagine severe brain damage would do.
Somewhere around 20,000 people were lobotomized in this way before
science corrected itself. Freeman was criticized by many in his
heyday, but for two decades
his work continued and it earned him the highest accolade
possible...the rise and fall of the ice pick lobotomy had a lot to do
with the argument from authority...his authority went unquestioned as
one after another, he pulled patients aside who needed help and
turned them into zombies.3
...Just two decades later the
science caught up to Freeman and revealed that what he was doing was
unnecessary from a medical standpoint and horrific from a moral one.
His license to practice was revoked and he died an outcast. The same
community who lauded him in one era rejected him in another. 4
...This sort of turnover in science
is common...whether in churches or legislatures, botany or business,
those who are held in high regard can cause a lot of damage when
no one is
willing to question their authority. 5
If you feel more inclined to believe
something is true because it comes from a person with prestige,6
You are letting the argument from authority spin your head.
Spin
Till Dizzy and Nauseated
Personal
Experience in Being “Spun”
By
Patricia Lefave, Monophrenic
A
psychiatrist says that when psychiatrists are thinking like
psychiatrists, they never take ANYTHING
the patient says at face value. How do you get identified as the
patient?
Usually, these
days, by the label planted on you, identifying you as such, from
within ten to fifteen minutes after you say “how do you do”?
Even
better, some big bio psych enthusiasts were first labelled as
patients THEMSELVES
and then decided to become
psychiatrists promoting their own belief in the labelling process,
and all of the wisdom that goes with it, as perceived by them, often
INCLUDING
their acceptance that they
have a
perception problem.7
So
DO these psychiatrists still
have “perception problems”?
Should
we, who are being legally controlled BY
them take anything THEY
say at face value? Or should we, LIKE
them, look for the hidden meaning behind what they are saying? Of
course, according to them, looking for hidden meaning means you're
psychotic....8
So
is the psychiatrist psychotic, are you psychotic, are neither
psychiatrist nor patient psychotic, or are you BOTH
psychotic? Don't worry about an answer to this question. The
incurable psychotic psychiatrist will decide what the answer should
be for both
of you. S/he may be crazy him/herself but s/he has something that you
don't have... the legal power
to control you
and to impose his/her own beliefs on you.
This
is what I like to call anti-logic. It looks and sounds just like
logic for as long as you don't look too closely.
In reality, it is a kind of mirror image of logic, not unlike Alice's
old trip through “Wonderland.”
Now
Back to a Few More Quotes from ; You
are Not So Smart.
Chapter
18- The Just World Fallacy
The
MISCONCEPTION:
People who are losing at the game of life must have done something to
deserve it.
THE
TRUTH: The
beneficiaries of good fortune often do nothing to earn it and bad
people often get away with their actions without consequences.
Chapter
23- Groupthink
THE
MISCONCEPTION: Problems
are easier to solve when a group of people get together to discuss
solutions.
THE
TRUTH: The desire
to reach consensus and avoid confrontation hinders progress.
Chapter
33- Conformity
THE
MISCONCEPTION: You
are a strong individual who doesn't conform unless forced to.
THE
TRUTH: it takes
little more than an authority figure or social pressure to get you to
obey because conformity is a survival instinct.
Chapter
34- Extinction Burst
Chapter
37- Learned Helplessness
The
Misconception: If
you are in a bad situation you will do whatever you can do to escape
it.
The
Truth: If you feel
like you aren't in control of your destiny, you will give up an
accept whatever situation you are in.11
...when
battered women, or hostages, or abused children, or longtime
prisoners refuse to escape, they don't because they have accepted the
futility of trying....in 1976...a study by Ellen Langer and Judith
Rodin showed in nursing homes where conformity and passivity are
encouraged and every whim is attended to, the health and well being
of the patients declines rapidly.12....
this research was repeated in prisons.
Chapter
38- Embodied Cognition
THE MISCONCEPTION:- your opinion of people and events are based on
objective evaluation.
Chapter
42:- Self Fulfilling Prophecies
THE MISCONCEPTION:- Predictions about your future are subject to
forces beyond your control.
THE
TRUTH:- Just
believing a future event will happen can cause it to happen if the
event depends upon human behaviour.14
(Psychiatrists
also see the
Thomas Theorem 1928.)
Sociologist
Robert K Merton coined the term 'self fulfilling prophecy' in
1968...initial phase is always a
false interpretation of an ongoing situation.
The behaviour
that follows assumes the situation is real,15
and if enough people
act as if
something is real it can sometimes make it so. What was once false
becomes true...
Self
-fulfilling prophecies gain their power
from social definitions of
reality,
and most of your life is defined socially, not
logically. Ideas like these .16...are
socially defined. They depend upon subjective feelings and a
vacillating consensus
of beliefs. The social hive
mind creates
a reality all it's own that is separate from the reality of
things.17...you
swim in 18a
sea of social ideas and mental constructs....when these ideas become
beliefs, and then those beliefs become actions19,
the logical and measurable side of reality changes
to match.
Chapter
45: The Representative Heuristic
THE
MISCONCEPTION:- Knowing
a person's history20
make it easier to determine what kind of a person they are.
THE
TRUTH:- You jump
to conclusions based on how representative a person seems to be based
on a preconceived character type.21
Chapter
48:- The Fundamental Attribution Error
THE
MISCONCEPTION:-Other
people's behaviour is the reflection of their personality.
THE
TRUTH:-other
people's behaviour is more the result of their situation
than their disposition.
The
buildup to an experience can completely change how you interpret the
information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective
senses.22
... in
psychology true
objectivity is pretty much considered to be impossible.
23...when
you hear about a shooting....what is the first thing you assume about
the killer? The most comforting thought is that the killer was
crazy...he or she was nuts and one day something just came over that
person. In it's own dark way this is comforting. You don't want to
think potential killers are all around you or that you, yourself,
could lose it in such a grand and total way. Yet most of the time
people who snap don't wake up one day with murder on the brain. The
rage builds for years. They are usually frustrated and angry because
of grievances at work....many of them feel they have been tormented
and shamed for too long and want to settle a score. To them life has
become a relentless depressing assault and they are powerless...the
situation, in their minds 24is
driving them mad...you see killers on a rampage as lunatics but
co-workers and family rarely agree. They say the job and stress drove
them to madness...For you, on the outside, it's easier to blame the
personality of the murderer as if that person was bound to kill one
day no matter what. 25...As
distressing as it may be, it is another way the fundamental
attribution error drives you to jump to conclusions. You see the
person and ignore his or her surroundings and then cast blame only on
the individual. 26
... if it could happen to anyone it could happen to you. It is an
unpleasant thought to imagine that evil could be more the result of a
series of terrible events and social pressures than the working of a
deviant mind. Knowing this is so does in no way excuse those who harm
others, but nevertheless it seems to be true.27
A few final
comments on this one from me personally-
Did you find this information helpful
in some way personally? Could you relate to it in some way in
relation to your own life? If you are like me, the answer is most
likely “yes.” Now I want to point out something else about it to
you that you may not be noticing.
The reason we can find these things
personally helpful and can relate
to them is because they are written mostly as abstractions. Though
our personal experiences are not
identical, they are similar on an
abstract level of thought. So we can use this kind of information to
become more aware personally when connected to our own personal life
experiences. The danger in this comes when we decide that our
personal life experiences, and the concrete details of our
relationships and events, are specifically represenational of
everyone else's as well and that
anyone who thinks otherswise must be lying, or denying, or only
saying theirs' are different to “seek attention” or to make “us”
look bad, or are simply our inferiors who are unable to understand
their own lives as well as we, who will do their understanding and
even their feeling FOR them, are
capable of doing.
Now go back to the first quote in this
entitled, Chapter 3- Confirmation
Bias
THE TRUTH:-
Your opinions are the result of paying attention to information that
confirmed what you believed, while ignoring information that
challenged your preconceived notions.
This
is written in absolute terms, although it is also written in the
second person. However, if
this is true for everyone, in absolute terms, then it is ALSO
true for psychiatrists, for psychiatric hospital staff members on all
levels and everyone else involved in all of this, right here in my
own case.
It
is ALSO
true for David McRaney who wrote this book.
Will
he now ignore what I just said while looking to others to confirm his
beliefs for him? According to him,
he will, as his truth is understood by him to be an abstraction in
absolute terms.
REALITY:
there
IS
NO TRUTH which
can be used realistically, as a one size fits all truth
in absolute terms. To believe there is, is delusional. I believe it
comes from a human desire to simplify thought and to feel safe and
confident while doing it.
The
DSM in my opinion is an attempt to do just that. Defining “reality”
like this comes with a huge cost. It comes at the cost of the real
lives of the people so defined, often done now in ten to fifteen
cost effective minutes and once labelled by experts, the life of the
one labelled is changed forever, and there is nothing s/he can really
do about it. It will be the self fulfilling prophecy when no one will
admit
they are wrong to do this and while those doing it are defining harm
as help, the invidvcual on the receiving end of it will only CONFIRM
their bias, by “proving” resistant to the “help” which will
now be understood to be another “symptom” along with anything
esle
s/he may say, or feel, or do by objecting
to it.
This
largely predictable outcome is BUILT
INTO
the program and exists in it BEFORE
any label is ever applied to the one being assessed and evaluated. So
if you want to learn more about confirmation bias, an excellent
example of that is the DSM
a cooked book, which often reads
like a book of recipes for disaster.
If
you are programmed to hear the words “set up” as symptoms and you
believe this is true, in absolute terms, then EVERYONE
who says those words
will be suspected of being crazy by those who hear that way apart
from any differences in CONTEXT
which will seem irrelevant
to the believer in abstractions.
In
reality though, real life is NOT
an abstraction and it cannot be judged “as if” it was.
1 It
has been widely accepted in the past and still heard today, that
those defined as “schizophrenic” don't feel pain, despite the
fact that they 'claim' they do. PL
2 I
wonder how that always got
defined in that way? PL
3 Now
though the kinder, gentler lobotomy known as the chemical lobotomy
is used on those who often fight against their labels and being
drugged against their will. I wonder what the books of fift years
from now will say about it. PL Ironically these drugs appeared on
the scene after alienists went in search of the drugs “zombies,”
who had been drugged by practioners of voodoo “ turned them onto.
What is this obsession with creating ”zombies” one wonders?....
5 Of
course with bio psych it is even more
powerful since those who “resist” authority can have their
resistance pathologized in a way
that “proves” how right that authority is to do what it does. PL
6 Or
perhaps believe that something is NOT
true because it comes from a person without any prestige....PL
9 It's
about changing “behaviour” through “conditioning,” an older
gentler word for brainwashing using reward and punishment....
10
This is the basis of behaviourist “therapy.” Now remember he is
talking about this as an abstraction applied to all
humans so here is is my question...was what Skinner was
doing rational or not? Had he been conditioned to think the
way he was thinking when he invented the Skinner Box? If something
is accepted as universally true then it is ALSO
true for him is it not? Or am I
being too rational for all you conditioned people?
11
Well unless you are a bit of a “weirdo” and decide to expose
the situation itself so we can
all “enjoy” the experiment on the Subject together.....
12
The sense of self as an INDIVIDUAL
disappears with the pressure to “socialize” all the time, with
others pressured to do the same and having virtually
NO PIRIVACY or alone time at all.
13
When it really gets messy is when you do this for others and not
just yourself. Like when you say, “she just thinks” even though
the she you are talking about has not told you a thing and does not
think what you believe. Then you pass that along as though the
thought was “hers” when in fact, it is all your own
fabrication.
14
Unless some other human decides to change that future of course by
engaging in behaviour that the expectant one does not understand and
does not expect.
21
Isn't that just what the DSM is designed
to do?
22
Especially I think if you have been pre-programmed to HEAR
things in a specific way which you have not questioned..
23
In bio psychiatry though it is considered to be the normal and is
represented by the abstractions/generalizations of the DSM. One
must leave psychology behind if one wants to embrace bio psychiatry
without becoming totally confused by the contradictions of it.
24
When you read this description, i want you to read it as if there
were two premises. First assume that the situation that is driving
the individual “mad' exists only in the mind of the individual.
Then assume that the situation is in fact real
in external reality but
is being denied by those creating
it and then attributed TO the bad brain
of the individual on whom ALL participants are focused as THE
problem. FEEL it as a group member and
then feel it as the INDIVIDUAL being defined in this way. I have
long maintained that most of the time this is the final act of
someone who sees no way out
and reaches the end point of murder and/or suicide as the
final act that ends the situation for him or her.
25
Bio psych of course supports this view by perceiving individuals as
self contained “disease processes” without relationship to
external reality, events or other people and in DOING so CREATES
isolation and increases the stress, and social pressure on the one
so labelled.
27
If it is true, and I tend to see this as well, based on my own
experience of it, which is STILL being
denied, do you think that maybe
it might be worthwhile to acknowledge
this as reality and do something to actually CHANGE
these kinds of semi- predictable outcomes? If you could actually
save the lives of both
individuals and dysfunctional group members, would you then
be motivated to change your
minds or is appearances and sound bites going to remain at the top
of your priority list?
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