Why do intelligent People still believe in religion? 19: Humans suck at probabilities | GinaConspiracy
The human mind is very limited as stated prior in this series This is because the entire drive in evolution is to survive and pass on genes
Being able to contemplate infinity or even large numbers are not traits required for survival or success in the wild The average human mind can only grasp the concept of numbers up to 5 6 or 7 and in some cases as high as 9 at some extremes in areas where primitives do not have numbers After that point it just becomes “many” and we process it algorithmically At a certain point our brain can't even process algorithmically once it becomes too large I worked on an aircraft carrier in the navy and just looking at it hurts your brain to contemplate
Astronauts get vertigo from looking at the earth from space until their brains can adjust and learn to ignore the fact that it can't process what it is seeing So there is little wonder that the human mind really sucks with probabilities which are nothing but calculations of ginormous numbers Because of this people can lie to and prey on uninformed people using false statistics very easily Penn and Teller did a show on how easily con artists can trick our brains just by using large numbers including one where they tried to break a large and made it complicated and the person never even noticed that the person walked away $20 richer Other type of con artist uses our limited mind to their advantage
These are the religious types Take prophecy for example The a religious person, there seems to be a higher chance that prophecies in the bible came true, than it was either a passage taken out of context to fit the prophecy, or that the prophecy was written retroactively to make a better story When living prophecies occur, people fail to take into account that only the winners of the prophecies and only their correct predictions are ones that are paid attention to If you make a ton of predictions, especially about disaster, one of them is statistically going to happen, and because of this people will flock to the person who happened to make the correct prediction and ignore those who weren't lucky enough to guess correctly about the future
Miracles are exactly the same concept, no one wants to hear about the thousands of tragedies that occur, that's depression, they just want to hear about that one statistical outlier and believe it is supernatural Any person who believes in revelation will tell you that the end times are very near because the bible says that there will be more wars, people calling for peace, and more natural disasters They fail to realize that the number of wars have actually dropped, and the numbers of natural disasters have remained the same except for the ones linked to climate change However due to our explosion in communication and media, and the fact that the American new media knows that disaster news sells like hot cakes, we are now constantly being told about disasters that occur, things that we would have been previously oblivious to Creationism uses our limited perception of probabilities when they use the argument against abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection as being as probable as a Boeing 747 being made by a tornado
They fail to realize that this mathematician himself said that the statistics were quite probable over a very slow gradual change Watch my very first series called “A case against intelligent design” for a breakdown of the probabilities Probabilities and statistics were the very last linchpin that kept me from accepting evolution and rejecting religion I remember my dad telling me that statistics were stupid and the majority of people tend to have a distrust of the field especially in terms of surveys, unless it or a tiny fact mined piece of it goes in their favor and then quote it as gospel Just this morning I heard a republican senator site a poll showing that the majority of Americans disliked the health care bill
He tired to make it sound as if the majority of Americans agreed with the republicans If you stopped there your perception would appear that he was right think he was right NPR looked at the survey and found that there were other questions asked on it, and the majority of Americans supported health care reform but the majority of Americans had problems with certain portions of the bill and agreed with it over all The poll also found that the majority of Americans wanted Obama to be more forceful with the republicans and that majority Americans distrusted Republicans by 10% more than they distrusted republicans Its amazing how you can use any poll or statistic to your advantage if you omit most of it
Science based polls require multiple questions ask from multiple angles and varying levels of detail or they will get confirmation bias While people distrust big odds when it goes against their beliefs or ideas, they have no problems with taking huge and foolhardy risks where the odds are completely against them We have a naturally evolved trait linked to our reward pathway system, to gamble and take risk In the cases of casinos the possibility of a big reward can blind them to the ridiculously staggering odds of losing This is why Christians jump as Pascal's wager so easily and don't even take into account that another religion has equal probability of being right as their own given the evidence they fail to have
Risk taking is a trait that inherent to us as humans This is because, if the risk pans out, the winner takes all, and that has for millenia meant mates as well Especially in hunter/gatherer societies In Jarod Diamond's book, “Why sex is fun” He discussed tribe of people who have had little to no contact with the outside world In their societies, Women pound sago which is a boring but steady job, no risk involved
While the men basically live on hunting parties killing small game which they will eat among themselves and not share with the women and children About once a month they will bring down big game and then take it back and share with the tribe The purpose is not however for altruistic purposes, the purpose is to barter for infidelity with many of the women of the tribe The men could easly pound sago too and if you look at the actual amount of food men and women each bring in, women bring in way more However it is the perception of all that food at once that allows this sort of risk to continue
Being hailed brave and a hero as well as a risk taker is something women are primed to find attractive Throughout history, warriors have received the same status by genetic psychology of women The reason for this is that a risk-taker that wins has a lot more goods to care for their mate and children and tends to pass on a lot more genes with more women than a man that does not take risks many times with the non-risktakers mate Just because a man has more good however does not mean that he will be a good father, but its quantity over quality strategy in evolution However just because you are a risk taker does not mean you will win
Natural selection only allows risk takers who succeed to pass on genes Many of the risk takers fail and die or in the modern market fail financially, but tend to be capable of passing on their genes still because they are removed from the gene poll via natural selection anymore They also have an added bonus for passing on genes in this safe world as women are still wired to be attracted to the bad boy Women don't really want to date a guy who is abusive or who takes stupid risks in their mind, but hormonally the traits a risk-taker exhibits make a lot of women weak-kneed These women then can't figure out why they can't find any good men, when there are good non-risktakers there but they don't give nearly the same drug rush a bad boy does
This is why so many nice guys finish last, until they reach their 30's or 40's when women have learned to distrust their hormones can't The only way to make a good assessment of probabilities is through the meticulously proven study which we call math Emotions can make any probability seem either too probable or impossible depending on which our emotional and personal interests lie Confirmation bias is our bane with out the mental construct of math because huge numbers mean nothing to our limited brains
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