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^ prima facie evidence of type of thing I am on about.
Science does get things wrong, it is however far the best and most successful method of determining outcomes. In fact, it is the only way of modeling the world we live in that is consistently better than guessing, more than that, the tests are repeatably consistent.
The more complex and chaotic a system is, the less reliable the modelling is, though any increase in reliability above that of pure chance is considered extremely valuable in for example financial markets.
If your 'system' is better than chance, then it can beat the odds. It takes a lot of money and a lot of bets to make money from it, but in the long run, with large sums to play with, extremely large amounts of money can be made - that is where the overal trends are more significant than short term random variations.
Short term however, natural variances in outcomes, like flipping a coin twice giving 2 heads in a row is much more likely even with a coin that is ever so slightly biased towards tails than if you were to flip it 100 times and see the overal distribution. The larger the number of flips, the smoother the overall distribution and closer to the expected probability.
.... sometimes though, you will flip a coin 10,000 times and even though it's weighted to generally favour tails and you predict it should come out at around a 3:7 heads to tails ration (3000 heads to 7000 tails) it just happens you get a random result that gives a 6:4 result (6000 heads to 4000 tails).
Now imagine that 10,000 coin flip prediction happens during a period of time when someone with an ideologically based 'system' that is no better than guessing over the long term happens to have a random variation that closer matches their guess.
In isolation, completely ignoring random variation and long term results, if you were invested in that ideological system, it would appear as pretty solid evidence that your ideological system is right.
That is classic confirmation bias at play.
It's remembering and counting all the times you guess right and when your opponents guessed wrong, yet failing to and dismissing off hand comparing all the times you guessed wrong and others were right.
It's the same thing that corelates to people who believe in telepathy and the supernatural on the basis of having been thinking about someone and then they rang or knocked at their door.
It fails to account for all the times you do think about someone and they don't call, as you never keep count, you (your brain) highlights patterns where it seems interesting - like when they do happen to coincidentally call at the same time or just after you thought about them.
Because experts in a particular field, News agencies or other organisations either support or appear to support different and especially opposing political or ideological view points, it is when they were wrong that sticks in our minds. When similar agencies support or appear to support our political views, we remember and count when they get it right and completely forget or dismiss when they get it wrong.
Ergo, that's one of the significant reasons why some people swear by homeopathy, dowsing or that the Daily Mail is a better quality newspaper and source of information than the FT or the Guardian  |
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Author: Jezza99
26-11-2019 02:38:04
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