Thought Experiment: Which Button do you press?

General Chat
167

It’s been mentioned a lot at the beginning of the thread but for some reason I can’t find the messages.

I agree that the phrasing matters a lot. It’s a coordination problem, so if the phrasing encourages you to think that one option is “more normal” than the other, then it’s best not to overthink it and choose that option.

There was a psychology experiment once where participants were asked to answer multiple-choice questions and really did get a reward for every question where they were in the majority. Not really questions at all, just choices. Like “Pick one: red, green, yellow.” “Pick one: A, B, C”. Etc. For most questions people faired pretty well, ie, almost everyone picked “A” amongst ABC, etc. (the order of the choices was randomised and the participants were aware of that, I think).

So if our red-blue button question is worded in a way that makes it sound like Red is a mass-murdering option, it makes sense to press blue, and if the question is worded in a way that makes it look like Blue is a suicidal option, it makes sense to press red.

The first post of this thread tried hard to word it in a relatively neutral way, but we’ve seen in this thread that everyone interprets it their own way nonetheless. And then everyone is making their own circular argument of “I picked colour X, and if everyone picked colour X like me then no one would die, so why are other people introducing risk by picking the other colour?”.

(That’s why I can’t make sense of the “everyone understands the problem perfectly the same way and everyone is aware that everyone understands the problem perfectly” clause in the FAQ. I think this was a great thought experiment before the FAQ was added. In my whole life I have never, ever been in a situation that everyone understood perfectly, and trying to imagine such a situation is outside the realm of my imagination. By adding this FAQ you’ve turned a great thought experiment into something that makes so little sense to me that I cannot even imagine it.)

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168

It depends on what we are talking about. I think it’s important to differentiate between A. the actual theoretical thought experiment and B. the concrete poll on OGS.
For A that point is not relevant as specified in the FAQ. For B it might be relevant but looking at the replies here it seems that everyone understood the experiment just fine (but you never know).

You are saying this. But then you immediately contradict your own point by pointing out that:

As you have pretty much stated yourself here everybody understood the experiment and came to their conclusion without focusing on the wording to much. An easy way to verify that is to think about this yourself. If the content of question stays exactly the same but I change the wording would you want to change your answer?

This thought experiment is pretty intense. So intense that some people cannot bring themselves to grapple with the situation and are trying to find a cop-out. That’s why we have this long list in the FAQ because I removed all the ways people tried to cop-out of this experiment. Saying that you cannot imagine that everyone understands a simple question is ridiculous.
You just cannot seem to fathom that everyone understands this but we still end up with a 50/50 split here. You somehow try to cope by making up this scenario where people understood the experiment in different ways but that’s just not what is happening. You should try to come to terms with the reality that not everyone thinks the same way you do.

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Okay, I’m done with this thread. Call me ridiculous as much as you want.

That was literally my point.

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170

I did not call you ridiculous. And I did not intend to upset you. I stated that “saying you’re not able to imagine that everyone understands a simple question is ridiculous”. I think that statement is fair. That should really not be the cop-out to this thought experiment.

No, your point is that people are not interpreting the experiment in the same way and therefore come to different conclusions.
My point is that people are indeed interpreting the experiment in the same way and still come to different conclusions.

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This was a great thought experiment and interesting discussion to begin with, but if you can’t stay civil then I don’t want to be part of it. I had already unsubscribed from the thread after your first attack. But if you quote me then I receive notifications anyway. Please stop.

So, you understand what I say so differently than I do, that it upsets you so much that you have to call me ridiculous and talk about what I need to “cope with”. And yet you don’t believe in misunderstandings. The only thing I need to cope with is people I don’t know attacking me on Internet forums. Please stop quoting my messages, @ me or trying to ping me in any way. Thank you. And also please stop trying to tell me what it is that I think or say. I know what I think and I know what I say and very obviously you don’t know what I think. So just stop. It’s insulting and it serves no purpose.

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Smart I am not, plenty of anectodal evidence of that, unfortunately. :roll_eyes:

The answer is easy. As I have already pointed out, those researches are not conclusive at all.
The words they use make it very clear, if you are into “science-talk”.
I know that it looks like “hey we found something”, but in reality they are saying “we probably, maybe, under very specific circumstances suggest that there is a range of probability that X is happening” and I bolded all those instances out.

That’s not conclusive, sorry.
If you had not gone around using that stuff as established fact and claimed that “science is looking into it and there is a good probability that the genetic characteristics we inherit from our parents create a persistant lattice upon which the learned behaviours later sit upon, but are molded by the genetic predisposition of each individual” then that would have been reasonable and scientific, because it would allow for dissent and more research, as any good scientific position does.

Now, on your final issue, given that we are talking about “behavioural science” and psychology which is not exactly the “we create repeatable experiments and formalistic equations that explain natural phenomena” kind of science, yes, in a lot of cases empirical data and observations can actually be more practically useful than what the current concensus says.

For example, last time I checked, the behavioural science concensus on pedagogy was that is a child is causing trouble in the classroom, the teacher should interrupt the lesson, put all the kids in a circle and hold a “light therapy session” for the whole class, right then and there. :sweat_smile:

Needless to say I’ve never met a teacher that has gone along with that “behavioural science concensus” and I haven’t either, in the time that I did that work.

This is why we had things like that:

The “behavioural science concensus” can be wrong and that’s ok… meanwhile a few years worth of children where used as a guinea pig, but hey, “science told us to do it”… well, no, you have to put some thought in what science says in such instances where it needs to go from theory to application. They could have tested that out in a smaller scale and checked if those theories held any water. That’s not the fault of scientists though, but of administrators, who didn’t understand how science works.

Science rarely concludes anything. There is always margin for error and always margin for more research. Science never stops re-examining or, at least, it shouldn’t.

This was already mentioned earlier. E.g. What about the parents that will think “I cannot afford to die, who will raise my children if blue doesn’t come up?”

There are many thought-patterns and cases between each choice, which is why I said earlier that we cannot really make moral judgements against people that choose either one.

Everyone will have a reason for their choice which they consider good enough, moral enough or smart enough. None of us know the real outcome, so we cannot really judge if their estimation would be correct or not. :slight_smile:

A lot of us have tried to generate some alternatives above, but that led to slightly different issues, each time.

I assume that people that have the talent could turn this into some sort of questionaire and steer/manipulate people to each answer that they’d want, like this.

.

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173

This has to be the biggest freak out over the smallest thing I’ve ever witnessed in an online debate. I did not think that the term “ridiculous” was such a bombshell insult and I did not intend to upset that user at all. I guess I won’t use that term anymore on OGS just to be safe, but come on now :grin:

We have drawn a few circles now but it always comes down to you trying to put your own opinion on the same level, or even above the level, of two major research teams with expert scientists on that topic.

Again I’m not saying science is always right, and I’m also not saying that the presented science is rock solid. But at least it’s something, at least it’s some people putting significant resources and effort into finding out what’s going on. On the other hand we have one internet user, without any sources or evidence, just stating his opinion.

So to conclude this side topic. I respect your opinion but I do still tend to trust the scientists more than you. Also in my own personal experience and according to my own personal anecdotal evidence what the scientists are saying sounds about right.

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I correctly predicted the clip :slight_smile:

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Well then you should probably just go and read what the scientists say rather than seeking opinions on OGF.

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I’m seeking opinions regarding the thought experiment on OGS.
But I wouldn’t seek opinions on the question if Paris is the capital of France or not on OGS.
I think that should be easy enough to understand :smiley:

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I am not doing any of that, but hey, if that’s how you perceive it, I cannot do much about it.

I am happy to hear that.
As long as we’ve moved past statements like these:

…then I consider this a good outcome for our discussion. :slight_smile:

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First day on the internet?

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179

What do you mean by “any of”. In that quote I stated that you are doing one thing. Not several.
You can do a lot about it actually. Maybe I misunderstood you. So to clarify, you are agreeing with me that each of those two studies is levels above your opinion in terms of relevance and validity?

I never said that the science is rock solid in those quotes.

The first statement is true. Many studies do believe that there is about a 50/50 split in terms of nature vs nurture when it comes to human behavior. Also most modern scientists say that you cannot really split those two anyways since they believe those are interacting. Your initial statement was that “most of our behavior is learned and not inherited” and that is contradicting what the science says.

The second statement is not accurate. I give you that. It still points to genetics playing an important role. But maybe not the best study to cite for my argument, that’s true. Then again you didn’t cite any studies at all.

Hahaha true. I mean I’ve seen people get angry about all kinds of stuff. But I didn’t know some people would take such offense in the word “ridiculous”.
And it’s not just that he got upset and bailed out of the thread, it’s that he wrote a text including “please stop” three times! And then another “just stop”, like I’m somehow harassing him or something. I actually only replied to his comment replying to mine. Anyways, what can you do. It is what it is.

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English is my second language, but I am fairly certain that the word “conclusion” which you used is… well… very conclusive. By definition, then, it means that something has completed and that this is the final/definite verdict.

It is very similar to an observation Carlin made on the phrase “final destination” being superfluous, when he exclaimed that "all destinations are final. Destination comes from the word “destiny”."

So, unless I’ve understood this wrong, during all those posts, you are just quibbling about the word “most”, while the presented science itself, at it’s best current “guestimation” in some very particular cases and some behavioural characteristics is giving a 30%-60% range, which means that approximately 2/3 of that scientific estimation (30%-49%) would still make the word “most” the correct word to use.

So, even if we took the science at face value and we expanded its estimations to “conclusions” then the word “most” would still be the most likely word to be correct. So, maybe you are understanding the word “contradicting”, wrong? :thinking:

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English is my second language too, and I’m very certain that conclusion isn’t a synonym for rock solid science but maybe some native can chime in here?
I meant to use the term “conclusion” similar to the term “outcome” as described in merriam-webster 2a.

You really want to be right, don’t you? :wink:
You are doing such a good job argueing about every little term here and linking your dictionary definitions, I’m sure you won all the medals in your high school debating club.

Even though you used the term “more” I inferred from your wording and the context that you meant that nurture is “much more” influential than nature when it comes to this issue. Now you’re saying you meant “most” as in nature accounts for 49.9% and nurture for 50.1%. Am I understanding you correctly? In that case we actually agree, I guess.

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It’s not really necessary for me to pile on here but I feel moved to add that for a meta-analysis to find “50% of personality is inherited”, this necessarily reports on those aspects of “personality” that all the studies in question were able to quantifiably measure.

The very idea of being able to scientifically encompass personality, in order to make a definitive statement about “50% of personality” (or “50% of the differences in personality”) is a little questionable when you stop to think about it eh?

You could give these scientists the full genome and family tree of person X and they would have a lot of trouble predicting what that person will do and say in the next hour in the wild.

A lot of money has been going into genetic research for decades, more than goes into ‘environmental’ research that can’t be done in a lab, so it is not surprising to see a meta-analysis of recent studies shifting the balance of estimates in favor of genetics. Yet as these estimates are constantly changing and will certainly change more in the future I too would hesitate to call them conclusive.

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True. But again the same goes for the other side. JethOrensin has quite confidently stated that nurture is more important than nature when it comes to personality/behavioristics. There is no clear evidence for this either though.

I never called anything conclusive in this thread, feel free to search my replies.

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As far as I can tell… conclusive is actually even stronger than “rock solid”…

Good to know, then now we can return back to what I said earlier that I am glad that we are now beyond statements like the ones you made earlier, about things being conclusive.

So, since you, yourself, amended that statement, I am not sure what exactly is your problem now. :thinking:

Wooo, nice passive-aggressive swipe. :slight_smile:
Well, there were no medals, nor clubs in my high school, so that’s not true at all.

And I’ve expanded and clarified on that point, quite a bit. Feel free to re-read it.

No, now I am saying what I said. That even if we are magnanimous about what the science said and turn their potential findings into certainties, the word “most” is still well within the range of posibilities presented by those papers, therefore I am not exactly sure what’s your problem with my statement.

Now is the chance 49.9% to 50.1% or 30%-70% or something else… noone actually knows, not even the scientists, which explains most of my points above.

So, until there are is more and better scientific research that narrows the percentages down and expands the reasearch to more cases and more ages and more people and more personal characteristics, then words like “conclusion”, “rock-solid” or “outcome”, are off the table for the time being, as far as science is concerned.

If you still think that there is something controvertial about a statement like that, then I am not sure that I can actually do anything about this, since that’s the main premise of science, to always look into the issue more and improve and refine the results.

Quite so, which is why, if I recall correctly, the scope was narrowed down in more specific characteristics.

There is also a lot of money in various “genetic” tests of dubious veracity that claim that can find your origins and stuff like that…

Also heaps of money are made by “pseudo-scientific” scales like that “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator” (what a fad that was a few years ago, everyone going around opening most of their statements like “Because I am INT-J I think that… blah…INT-J…blah”).

Now imagine if you could combine those two and provide genetic tests and be able to correlate them with “personality categories”.

The money would rain down like the water in Niagara falls. :rofl:

It is hardly “my idea”, by the way… :sweat_smile:
As it stands, this is the baseline observation under which parents, education systems and society operates.

eehmm…

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“50% of personality” doesn’t make sense. For instance you could measure

  • the probability that two random people press buttons of the same color. That should be about 0.5.
  • The probability p that two twins that were separated at birth would press buttons of the same color.
  • The probability q that two people who were raised together, but who are not genetically related, would press buttons of the same color.

If p>q, then this suggests that genetics determines button color more than upbringing. However

  • Personality cannot just be summarized by button color. There are many other personality traits, each of which may be more or less determined by genetics.
  • Even if we restrict ourselves to button pushing, people are not “purely blue” or “purely red”, there are many shades of purple.
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186

But I never used the term “conclusive”.

I didn’t amend anything. I never used the term “conclusive”. Or does “conclusion” always mean that something is “conclusive”? If so then that would be actually news to me and I should indeed amend that statement.

Would you think it’s more passive aggressive than philosophizing if someone understands the term “contradicting” or not, instead of focusing on the topic, or less?

I never said any of the science is “rock-solid”. And I don’t think that the terms “conclusion” or “outcome” are problematic in any way, or implying that something is “rock-solid” in any way. But this might be a language issue and if someone with rock-solid English skills wants to chime in here I’d appreciate it.

First, please clearly state what your position on nature vs nurture is. Is it that nurture is “more” important in a “above 50%” way or is it “way more important”? What is your actual opinion?

Second, if you meant “way more important”, then modern scientific studies indicate that you’re wrong and also you’re saying this with absolutely no basis or scientific backup.

Finally, and I’m repeating myself here, even if you only meant “most” as in “above 50%” and even if all the science trying to put numbers on nature vs nurture are wrong. Then modern science would still disagree with your initial statement because modern science points to behavior being a result of an interaction of nature and nurture so the way you learn behavior is itself inherited.

See above.