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BLIND_FIELD

                                             July      2, 2014
                                             November 27, 2017

People who work in particular intellectual
disciplines often develop shared blindspots
that seem very peculiar to anyone looking
in from the outside.
                                                     SANDPITS
The psychologist Kahneman comments that the
fact that people are "loss adverse" comes as no
surprise to anyone but economists.

The psychologist Robert Hutchinson expounds on his
great insight: "cognition is culturally distributed"!
But this would come as no surprise to anyone but a
psychologist.

                                                Everyone on the boat doesn't
                                                know everything about how to
                                                run the boat?  Different
                                                sub-specialties are necessary
                                                to do the job?  Wow, that's
                                                amazing.


  This particular insight can give one
  some sympathy for climate change denialists.

  Is it arrogant of them to presume that they
  know better than experts in the field?

  Well, yes, probably... but on the other hand,
  it's at least a distant possibility that the
  climate scientists are wrong, despite the large         One of the reasons
  degree of unanimity among them: the cognitive           we place great
  biases that lead to "group think" don't go away         store in predictions
  because you're intelligent and well-trained--           as checks on our
  it's possible that can make them worse.                 scientific conclusions
                                                          is that it can help
                                                          cover for these sorts
                                                          of biases.

                                                   The expectations of the
                                                   anthropogenic climate
                                                   change hypothesis
                                                   unfortunately look like
                                                   they're being borne out.

                                                   It's unfortunately rather
                                                   difficult to do experiments
                                                   on the entire biosphere, but
                                                   unfortunately we're doing
                                                   it anyway.




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