Wait, now you've confused me. Earlier, you said:
it seems to me that people are becoming less and less critical
....which I assumed you meant in the context of the 1000-year period you'd previously cited. I don't know how to reconcile that with:
I don't believe that people have become steadily less or more critical,
Can you clarify that?
I see how that might have been confusing. The 1000 years ago was simply an example to question whether people have always made the same thinking errors. The criticalness is based only on recent history, mostly on the people around me and is an attempt to argue in favor of possible external factors.
What would you expect to see if people have become steadily less "critical" over the last thousand years?
What would you expect to see if people have become steadily more "critical" over the last thousand years?
What would you expect to see if people have remained equally "critical" over the last thousand years?
What would you expect to see if people's "critical"ness has varied in non-steady ways over the last thousand years?
I don't believe that people have become steadily less or more critical, but it seems plausible that this has varied in non-steady ways, increasing or decreasing depending on the circumstances. I would expect that in this case the degree to which people make common thinking errors also varies. In fact, I suspect that the 2 4 6 test yields different results depending on the subjects' education, regardless of whether they know of positive bias.
Nice article! I was wondering though whether there were any theories on why our brain works the way it does. And did we make the same mistakes, say 1000 years ago? I am new here, so I don't know what the main thoughts on this are, but I did read HPMOR which seems to suggest that this was always the case. However, it seems to me that people are becoming less and less critical, perhaps because they are too busy or because the level of education has steadily decreased over the last decennia. How could we actually prove that these fallacies aren't caused by some external factors?
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Well, OK, but still: over whichever period you have in mind, does it seem to you that people are becoming less and less critical, or that they haven't become steadily less critical?
Regardless, I would agree that some common thinking errors are cultural.
Over the last 1000 years: varying criticalness Over the last 20-30 years or so: less and less critical
Has there been some research on culturalness of thinking errors? I thought the claim was that these thinking errors are hardwired in the brain, hence timeless and uncultural.