User talk:Jtneill/Archive/2023

3D Brain app
Hi James, just wanted to let you know that the 3D Brain app you recommended seems to be compatible only with older versions of Android (I've had my phone for approx. 2years). Do you maybe have another one you could recommend? Thx, Vanessa U3223114 (discuss • contribs) 08:35, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know Vanessa. I'll try to find a better app (hasn't been easy). I've tweeted here. Let's see if something turns up. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 08:47, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Abusive supervision v. Motivation and emotion/Book/2023/Abusive supervision
Looks like this page got created again. I think the problem is that Motivation and emotion/Book/2023 is using the wrong syntax to link to this page, so it's ending up getting created as a top-level page instead of as a subresource of the book. Omphalographer (discuss • contribs) 20:38, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks again. Moved, removed, and incoming link fixed as suggested. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:54, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

On the questionable hypothesis of 'confirmation bias'.
I feel this term is used very loosely, not just on wikiversity but in the context of media and education at large. The first sentence of Wikipedia's article on confirmation bias reads, "Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.". If there exists such a tendency, it is very much the exception rather than the norm. Yet often it is taken for granted, as in Confirmation bias and conflict. Consider my comments in Talk:Confirmation bias and conflict and the essay I linked there. As another example, it's commonly assumed that confirmation bias is a large part of why online discussion is partitioned into "safe spaces" or "echo chambers", yet it seems likely that such things are at least as much a result of web design and policy decisions as they are any innate tendency toward ignorance, and I write about this in Policy and Standards for Critical Discourse. The phrase appears about nineteen or twenty times in Motivation and emotion across several different chapters. Since psychology and emotion seems to be your area I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject, if you have time. I don't doubt something similar to "confirmation bias" can be reproduced experimentally in specific contexts, yet Wikipedia's article (at least the intro, which is all most people probably read) seems to take it for granted as an nigh-intractable deficit, inherent to human psychology, and frequently without reference to any particular context: " Confirmation bias is insuperable for most people, but they can manage it, for example, by education and training in critical thinking skills" which is part of the lead paragraph (and it's a featured article, no less). As someone involved with psychology, don't you find this all a bit dubious? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 13:18, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I hypothesize in Socialism/Bipartisan fraud (which is still incomplete, I intend it to make it less polemical and more dialectical but it is hard), that confirmation bias is frequently applied as a facile assumption by which many (otherwise remarkable) social issues can be explained away. The idea of confirmation bias is mainstream enough that most people likely do so without ulterior intentions, so I'm not assuming any intent here but rather suggesting that the concept deserves more scrutiny and that one should be reluctant to use it in a broad, explanatory manner. I have concern about using various types of cognitive bias in this way because such assumptions essentially shift blame to the public and human nature in general for various social problems that may actually be artifacts of social engineering. I had a look at Motivation and emotion/Book/2023/System justification theory. Does our 'system' even need to be justified per se in the first place, in order to placate the public, if people simply take it to be the natural order of things? Incidentally, I may incorporate some of what I've written above into my essay. I seem to have a better time developing the point when I'm directly addressing someone. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 14:29, 1 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Apologies, flat out working through undergraduate marking and grading ATM, so will be brief. But, you might be interested to contrast the various cognitive biases, to which we are vulnerable (particularly under stressful conditions), with something like the opposite e.g., actively open-minded thinking (Motivation and emotion/Book/2023/Actively open-minded thinking). Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:13, 1 November 2023 (UTC)


 * It's a bit flowery, if I'm honest. It seems to presume or ascribe a certain relevance to confirmation bias, which is precisely my concern in general. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 02:33, 2 November 2023 (UTC)