Monday, December 29, 2008

dBlackSwan-53

... This inability to automatically transfer knowledge and sophistication from one situation to another, or from theory to practice, is a quite disturbing attribute of human nature ...
We react to a piece of information not on its logical merit, but on the basis of which framework surrounds it, and how it registers with our social-emotional system. Logical problems approached one way in the classroom might be treated differently in daily life. Indeed they are treated differently in daily life.
Knowledge, even when it is exact, does not often lead to appropriate actions because we tend to forget what we know, or forget how to process it properly if we do not pay attention, even when we are experts. Statisticians, it has been shown, tend to leave their brains in the classroom and engage in the most trivial inferential errors once they are let out on the streets.

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