Constraints on Generality in Science

From social media disinformation and phishing emails to grand-scale scams such as multimillion-dollar counterfeit art, Ponzi schemes or scientific fraud, our world is full of deceptions.

Surprisingly, it is our own intuition that can be our worst enemy. The tendency to blindly accept what we already believe in or trust what sounds too good to be true leaves us vulnerable to deception. 

So how do we find the right balance between blind trust and constant skepticism?

Daniel Simons is an experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, and the co-author of several books. His latest book, Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It, explores how our instincts lead us to fall prey to scams and how to spot deceptions. 

Daniel and Greg discuss how our limited attention resources result in a focus on specific tasks and potential neglect of other crucial elements, and how personally appealing information can easily lead us down the wrong path. They also talk about the need to parse the world more finely without succumbing to wholesale distrust by evaluating our assumptions and posing challenging questions.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

The problem with attention

09:52: This is the general problem with attention. We tend to focus on one thing well and need to do that. We need to be able to filter out those distractions. So you want people looking for the thing that they’re supposed to find, because most of the time, that's what you want them doing, right? You want them devoting their resources to the diagnosis that's most likely. It's just that every now and then, you're going to miss something that's sometimes rare and sometimes not what you're looking for.

Looking at consistency in a different way

23:48: We often take consistency as a sign of deep understanding and credibility when we really should be looking for noise and should take it as a red flag.

How do you know what the optimal allocation of trust resources is?

10:04: We have to trust, and we have to accept that what other people are telling us is true much of the time. Otherwise, you really couldn't function if you were perpetual, cynic and skeptic about everything. You couldn't get anywhere. You'd be checking the ingredients on every box of food you buy to make sure it truly is what it says it is. You couldn't function in society and be a perpetual skeptic. And there's going to be a spectrum of people who are going to be much more trusting and much less critical and skeptical, and others who are much more skeptical. But you have to find this happy medium.

Considering how we can be deceived

02:26: This book is more about how our patterns of thought and the information that we find appealing and attractive can lead us down the wrong path. (02:51) The problem for most of us is that we don't typically think about how we can be deceived. So in that sense, it's probably less likely to become a tool for scammers than for users and consumers. 

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Selective Attention Test
• Max Bazerman
• Don A. Moore
• Daniel Kahneman
• Uri Simonsohn
• Leif Nelson
• Diederik Stapel

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Professional Profile on Psychology Today
• Daniel Simons' Website
• Daniel Simons on LinkedIn
• Daniel Simons on Twitter
• Daniel Simons on YouTube
• Daniel Simons on TEDxUIUC

His Work:

• Daniel Simons on Google Scholar
• Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do about It 
• The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us

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