Having a Political Belief Makes you Suck at Math

I kind of believe this, because I myself, who used to be quite logical and was one class short of a math . physics major, started losing logical abilities once I got too involved in politics! Super interesting to me.

Does Political Belief Make you Suck at Math?

reply to post by darkbake


"Studies are showing that people's beliefs, their pre-conceived beliefs, are actually affecting their judgement."

Nice. Go for the jugular, mathematicians.

reply to post by darkbake

Bias is a human failing which has been documented in other studies also.
We have to constantly check ourselves for our own bias, and even then sometimes we may miss it.
As the video concludes, this failing is just one of the things that "peer review" can address (authors falling victim to their own bias and not even realizing it).
We don't like to admit we are this fallible, but as studies like this remind us, we are, or can at least have such tendencies, whether we want to admit it or not.

reply to post by darkbake

Not having a political belief makes you an unwitting facilitator of a course of action and set of consequences which you are unlikely to appreciate or support.

darkbake
reply to post by darkbake

 

"Studies are showing that people's beliefs, their pre-conceived beliefs, are actually affecting their judgement."

Nice. Go for the jugular, mathematicians.

edit on 2-10-2013 by darkbake because: (no reason given)

Oh please, lord, let me have the strength to not go for the jugular of religious beliefs!!! Please!!!

The end of the video states that this was done on the general public. I hope doing it with mathematicians doesn't yield the same results. (6:34)

This study is actually surprising. I can understand say, history and science, but math? Math is probably the only subject that's as rigid as it is. There's really no grey area when it comes to say, solving a function. There is a right answer.

reply to post by technical difficulties


As a psychology major, I was really impressed with the validity of the study. They had the correct amount of people in order to make a statistical correlation, there was a control question and a political question, and it was unbiased because they switched both around.

It basically shows that anyone involved in politics subconsciously messes up their math when working on proving or disproving a point.

reply to post by greencmp


True enough, there are people in this world though who get a lot of enjoyment out of purely logical things and hobbies that are not politically related, and such.

Arbitrageur
reply to post by darkbake
As the video concludes, this failing is just one of the things that "peer review" can address (authors falling victim to their own bias and not even realizing it).

I agree, peer review is pretty important I didn't realize that until this study, though!

reply to post by darkbake


I don't want to go into it....but I think the assumptions in that study are either hogwash, or not very prevalent. My "boss" and I both have very similar ideals (although he aligns less with my near anarchy viewpoints and more with the GOP....we agree on the major things, other than gay marriage). We are both very opinionated (what do you guys think....am I opinionated? ).

We are both in accounting positions. I do math for a living.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan

Actually if anything your comment that you think the study is wrong, suggests it is right.

Fort example, using one or two anecdotes like you and your "boss" shows that you don't seem to appreciate that the study is based on statistics of larger sample sizes. There is nothing in the study precluding anecdotes like you and your "boss" deviating from the statistical norm observed, but moreover, your approach to this may actually be validating the study (meaning for example you are looking at this anecdotally rather than statistically).

greencmp
reply to post by darkbake

 

Not having a political belief makes you an unwitting facilitator of a course of action and set of consequences which you are unlikely to appreciate or support.

edit on 2-10-2013 by greencmp because: (no reason given)

Wow yeah, that is definitely a good counter-point. Star. Yes, and the opposite of statistical / empirical evidence is anecdotal evidence. I used to understand empirical evidence but have no idea that anecdotal evidence was what it was replacing.

Once I realized that anecdotal evidence is the source of bias (I bet it is culturally related), it made me rethink a lot of things I say on ATS.