(another) inconvenient truth?

Kahneman and Gigerenzer have clashed many times over the years with regard to their individual points of view on intuitive heuristics.

Why they are at each others throats is slightly puzzling to this reader, as they are both saying the same thing, for the most part.

When confronted with a problem that requires some degree of thinking, and where there is at least partial ignorance (ie just about everything) - some examples often cited are; choosing a chess move or deciding whether to invest in stock — decisions are governed mostly by intuitive thought, and the intuitive mind does the best it can with whatever information it can use.

In Gigerenzer's writing he identifies a number of smart heuristics - 'take the best' and 'recognition validity' are two.

Similarly, Kahneman would say that if the individual has at least some relevant 'expertise', she will recognise a solution, and that this intuitive solution that comes to mind is quite often correct.

But what happens when the question is more difficult and a 'skilled' solution or smart heuristic is not available?

DK would say that we instead answer an easier and related question, automatically and usually without noticing the substitution.

Indeed, attribute substitution is thought to underpin a number of cognitive biases and perceptual illusions, something GG and DK can agree upon, and is part of a larger set of shortcuts that form the effort-reduction framework as proposed by Shah and Oppenheimer, which states that people use a variety of techniques in order to reduce the mental effort of making decisions.

So, an easier question to answer might be one that allows us to simply look at our previous behaviour. If that feels related to the problem at hand we then feel reasonably happy proceed in-line with what we have previously done.

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable thing, of course.
We want our attitudes to be in line with our behaviours.
Whilst we might believe that we are not the sort of person who drinks and drives, once a couple of beers have gone down and we have to get home we soon change our minds.
The behaviour has been done so that's impossible to change, so of course we want our attitude to be consistent and tell ourselves a story to rationalise it. It's just easier to do this.

I've done some of my own research that seems to indicate that despite having more access to information than at any point in history in order to do proper evaluation of alternatives in choice situations, we simply cannot be arsed and will use all manner of effort reduction strategies to dramatically simplify and limit consideration sets.

Especially, as it would appear from our studies, in categories such as insurance; where making the wrong choice could have pretty serious consequences. Yet the vast majority of buyers are happy to buy from an existing FS provider, or if they do switch; then the brands with biggest share of market and share of voice tend to pick up most of the switchers and new to market buyers.

So, for example,  if the difficult question (or computationally complex attribute) asked is “Should Scotland be an independent country?”.

The reality is that for many voters perhaps an easier to calculate heuristic attribute might be “Am I already deeply invested in a pseudo-religious and political sectarian Unionist or Republican 'philosophy', (imported from somewhere else) and based on my allegiance to a particular Glasgow based football club?”

Despite the fluffy rhetoric about a nation engaged in a new passion for political discourse, debate and democracy, we fear that this description does not account for all of the voting public.

But for a number of the reported 1.4million Scots who are R*ngers supporters this will almost certainly be the case. Numbers for C*ltic are unavailable, recognition validity indicates they will be similar, though...

Whether those numbers are enough to have made a significant impact on the final poll we will never know. Perhaps they cancelled each other out, in which case an engaged minority held the balance.

What was clearly visible were the ugly scenes of from George Square last week.
Far from any intellectual jousting of political and national ideologies the scene resembled more closely the famous 1980 Scottish Cup Final. A sorry affair in which a narrow one-nil victory for the green half of the great unwashed resulted in a pitch invasion from the blue side, a mass bricks and bottles battle between thousands, and TV commentator Archie MacPherson prompted to remark 'its like a scene from Apocalypse Now'.

The Unionists won the vote, of course. Goodness knows what might have happened had they lost.

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drummond, brown, artisanal toast and fantasy nationalism

There's a splendid chapter in Bill Drummond's book 45 entitled 'A Cure for Nationalism' that seems to neatly sum up the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance at the heart of a certain kind of Scottishness, and particularly poignant at this defining moment in modern political history.

To set the scene, our protagonist, Drummond, is in Paris for the 1998 World cup where Scotland faced - and were narrowly defeated by - Brazil in the opening fixture.

Drummond's dissonance is revealed, made manifest and resolved within a few short paragraphs.

'I was present at the births of all five of my children; not once did I well up with the mystery and wonder of it all, but just the notion of Scotland is enough to make me weep. 

This morning I sit silent on the train. I feel totally empty. Not because Scotland lost. Even if they had won I'd feel the same. It's investing all that emotional energy into something that you have no control over. 

At least Bruce's men were willing to give their lives to defend Scotland's sovereign statehood. 

What do I or any of the Tartan Army ever actually do for Scotland? For the good of its appalling nutritional standards, its chronic abuse of alcohol, its stagnant economy, its highest rates of cancer in Europe? 

"Let us do or die" - what a lie. we do nothing but die. 

Forget fantasy football, this is fantasy nationalism. None of us really gives a sh*t about Scotland, even those that vote SNP. 

Thank God we are not about to do or die like some former Yugoslavian state. We have never had an empire, never wanted one.'

But on the upside, he concludes... 

'Thank God we do not suffer from a crippled national psyche that makes us go around kicking Johnny Foreigner and smashing up continental bars and thinking we are doing it because we and our pompous has-been country deserve respect.'

It was also interesting to notice former UK PM Gordon Brown's final rallying call to the 'NO' lobby, in which he waded straight in with a deft pulling of the 'No True Scotsman Fallacy' lever within the first few seconds of his speech.

'[You] are the REAL people of Scotland...'  he declares to the faithful.

Now, obviously, one is either a person of Scotland or one is not, there is no 'real' about it, however whilst Brown was often framed by the English media as a somewhat out-of-date and dour irrelevance in his time as PM, his playing of the (fake) authenticity card - straight out of the blocks, no less - is as much a slice of zeitgeisty 2014-ness as any artisanal toast.





Speaking of logical fallacies and biases, then the 'No' lobby would seem to have 'System 1' on it's side.

Given the uncertainty that surrounds a possible 'Yes' outcome, tendencies towards loss aversion ( ie things are not too bad just now, so do we want to risk things being worse? And are the potential gains heavy enough to outweigh anticipated losses given that we weigh them a bout 2.5 to 1 on the loss side?) will be a significant factor when it comes to the crunch.

From an 'availability' or 'recognition' perspective the fact that just about all of the British mass media (most significantly the supposedly balanced BBC) has come out firmly in the 'No' camp it's probably pretty remarkable that less than 24hrs before the polls open it's still neck and neck.

It would seem that up to half of the turkeys are not voting for Christmas.

Whether the final polls reflect this neck-and-neck ness that has been salient throughout the campaign remains to be seen.
And from a peak-end-rule standpoint, how we remember the campaign will be influenced by it's outcome.

To keep up the football theme that we started with, the famous 1999 Champions league Final is regarded as one of the great footballing episodes of recent times.

Principally because of how the Fergie-led United snatched victory with two goals in the nail-biting last minute.

What no-one mentions is that, for the experiencing self  the previous 119 minutes was pretty stodgy stuff.
The peak and the end followed in such quick succession that the remembering self has a somewhat false recollection of excitement over the entire piece.

Similarly if the indyref does finish in a 'No' and the final polling numbers stray into, say, 70/30 territory at the death (and as the aforementioned loss aversion, status quo bias and system justification bias do their worst), then the memory of what has been a fairly significant episode in mass engagement in politics may appear somewhat more cut-and-dried in hindsight than is a true reflection.

With all that said, and whichever way it goes, it's still shite being Scottish.

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