How think about whether games affect thinking

Think video games make you smarter? Not so fast…

http://theinvisiblegorilla.com/blog/2011/09/13/think-video-games-make-you-smarter-not-so-fast/

In Texas, even fallacies are bigger

Krugman: “What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is “Well, duh.” The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.”

Beware the spurious correlation…

Nice explanation of why you need stratification and how it works.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/05/bad-science-adjusting-figures

More generally, nice illustration of why, if you’re operating below a certain level of sophistication, you effectively just can’t  think about certain topics.   You’re out of your depth.

gas gaffe

From the Herald Sun, Melbourne’s low-brow, anti-progressive newspaper:

“Asked if he agreed with [Australian Leader of the Opposition] Mr Abbott’s comment that carbon dioxide was weightless, [Opposition frontbencher] Mr Turnbull replied: “Carbon dioxide does obviously have a weight and if you drop a large lump of dry ice on your foot you’ll find that out very quickly”.”

First comment:

get it right of melbourne Posted at 7:34 AM Today

Well well…..has Malcolm made the ultimate gaffe? Dry ice on your foot?? that is a solid. CO2 is a gas.

Cherry picking has its uses

“Ya know, perhaps it would be worthwhile taking a look at the presentations made to get funding for or sell stock in actual mining operations.

Do you suppose they would reveal similar misstatements, equally invisible to the mining industry people?”

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/bob-carter-does-his-business/

Why foresight is harder than hindsight

The Hindsight Fallacy: The real reason it's so hard to predict bubbles.
Related to why the "experts" find it so hard to predict future events

Fading from view

“If you stare long and hard enough at a tiny piece of the puzzle that gives you the answer you want, you find the rest of the picture conveniently fades from view.”

Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?

Organic label makes food tast better, healthier

Halo effect – just labeling food makes it taste better, healthier

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110410130831.htm

“Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.”

Attributed to John Wayne.

A grittier version of my preferred definition of critical thinking: “The art of being right.”

Students not learning much critical thinking

Study: Students slog through college, but don’t gain much critical thinking

“An unprecedented study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn’t learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education.”