For those wondering, it's 39. He said bias 39 times. Though one of those was a "biased" and another was "biases". So if you don't count those, it's 37.
I saw the title of this video in the "suggested" area and I was prepared to be furious... and then I saw it was by vlogbrothers and all was well again.
oh my god. this video has helped me. i'm currently dating a guy, and there's this one thing that slightly bothers me about him, and i kinda regret asking him out. this made me realize that it's just a bias i have, and that i need to look past that. thank you.
I love that I learn things when I watch your videos, it makes me feel like I can delay actual work just that much longer. They are like perfect, bite size, guilt free, procrastination cookies.
Is he though? The only reason I watched this video is because he referred to it in another video. He definitely knows what he's doing when it comes to marketing.
I am completely biased about Harry Potter. That is my deciding factor about every person. The first thing I ask anyone when I meet them is, "Do you like Harry Potter?" If the answer is no, I will probably harbor extreme distain for that person for the rest of my life. I can't help it.
While I do like Harry Potter and absolutely loved it as a child and even though it will probably always have that positive nostalgia factor going for it, I also realize that it is not perfect, I'd even say far from it, and I think it is "objectively" probably not a great book series. Maybe good, but not great. That doesn't stop me from really liking it a lot, though.
PirateTHESteam1 54 to 58. But it's such a subjective number that it's pretty useless trying to find out. I mean it changes all the time and most sources aren't even sure if certain countries count as countries. Plus Some people count the islands around it as being part of Africa.
I just watched the latest John Green video about this video is the first video you see when you google him, and this video was first in recommendations... Nice one TH-cam!
My anchor bias is science. If you're scientifically illiterate or, even worse, distrusting of science, I'm not going to be a fan of you. And I certainly won't want to date you. Maybe that's terrible of me, but I can't really help it.
Kind of curious about what you mean. If you mean somebody who disagrees with science as an institution and just won't accept that scientific methods work at all? Yeah, I get where you're coming from. But, I mean, the whole point of science is to use evidence to challenge commonly-held beliefs until the final result is that all evidence currently available matches the scientific theory on the subject. So if somebody has a good argument against something that's commonly held to be true by scientists everywhere, I feel like that shouldn't be a relationship killer.
HeliosKitty Yeah... but that's not what your dealing with when you're talking to an anti-vaxxer or a naturalist that thinks all engineered medication is poison or a climate change denier or your hippy artsy friend who thinks mental disorder is a lie and that meds are the men working to rob you of your soul.
How do you guys feel about social sciences and the fact that they call themselves science without meeting the scientific methodology? Does their inability to predict outcomes like other sciences affect your opinion?
Skull Voorhees What I mean is, because religious people hold a very strong bias towards their particular religion and hold onto that so firmly, they disregard any scientific evidence (however strong it may be) that may suggest their religion is wrong in some way.
The Business Cat What I'm telling you is that atheists hold on to their disbelief so strongly that the ignore all science and reason and even go as far as saying we are bias when in reality it is scientifically impossible for there not to be a god orsome higher level being that is spaceless and timeless.
Drama_Llama_5000 Isn't it those who follow religion that are the ones who ignore science and reason? Aren't they the ones who hold onto their beliefs so strongly that they ignore new theories (such as evolution) and instead believe books that are thousands of years old?
I kinda thought it was common knowledge that there are 54 countries in Africa. Or I at least thought people looked at maps enough to know that there's way more than 15.
I thought that spinning wheel experiment was silly, until I found myself thinking there were around 60-ish countries in Africa merely because I just heard the number 65 twice.
With the wheel-spin-thingy (around 2:00), maybe they thought the questions changed based on what number the contestants land on. For example, someone who landed on 50 would guess close to 50 because they thought something like "Well, if I landed on 31, they'd probably ask a question about Baskin and Robbins."
I think it has more to do with "subconcious suggestion" (I don't know the correct term and my google searches were unsuccesful), but its basically what "psychics" or mentalists do. They will say certain things that may seem irrelevant, but, as Hank said, they stick with you. So a mentalist might say a few passing comments containing the number 14, and then minutes later ask you to think of a eandom number. Your brain, being as efficient (lazy) as it is will take the shortest possible path to "generate" a number, and so will default to the last number it thought about, 14. There are articles and videos on this, where you can see a guy, either through repetition or intonation, literally suggesting their predictions. And it has happened to me. A few days ago I had to remember that a sheet of paper had 23 lines, then hours later when I suddenly needed a random number, you can guess what was the first thing to come to mind. And I am sure that I used the number 14 in my mentalist example because I had just seen something with that number.
This is one of these effects that has been replicated many, many times in different contexts, so it's not issue of the specific question. We actually generally don't call this a bias, we usually refer to it as the anchoring and adjustment heuristic-- the idea is that people like to make decisions by starting with a concrete anchor, and then will adjust away from that anchor if they know the anchor is inaccurate. However, people tend not to adjust far enough away from the anchor. So people can know that the number from the wheel is incorrect-- you might know that 15 is way too small a number-- but you would fail to adjust far enough away from 15 to make up for the influence of your starting point.
Can we really say that anything is unbiased? Lets take science for example, we look at the universe and make theories and laws on what we can perceive or understand, but that may not be what things actually are. This is what annoys me about when they talk about things like the 'Goldilocks zones' where exo-planets have the right set of conditions for life to inhabit. But we are taking this habitable environment from what we know and experience. Just because life on this planet has a certain set of needs that must be satisfied, doesn't mean that all life that could ever possibly exists needs the same conditions in any way. A biased way of thinking is the only way of thinking for us, because to expand our minds above the realms of what we know would be to much, imagine trying to think about every possibility that could ever be about space, which we cannot see or comprehend. The fact that we cannot comprehend such things shows that we all must be, in some way, very very biased.
+Rebecca Davies well, it isn't that scientists think there is no life other than the type we know of, it's that they don't know what it is like and so can't search for it. you seem to think that everyone thinking about extraterrestrial life have a massive blindspot bias, where in fact this is just your ''blindspot bias' blindspot bias.'
+Rebecca Davies The biggest problem with this is people always assume that bias always means something bad and talk about it as if it is always a terrible thing, when it's actually a natural human behavior and essential in many ways. Bias is bad when it's overdone, but you can't ever be completely without it. He tried in the video to convey that bias isn't always bad, but he didn't do a great job as a lot of people still don't really get it. We cant be perfect, we're humans. We act certain ways and do certain things and people should learn to just accept that as a part of life. So many strive too hard to be completely unbiased viewpoint where they can always be in the moral right, but that's impossible to achieve. Like he said, we're all stupid idiots, we need to learn to accept this.
Science strives to eliminate biases, but valuing being bias-free is itself a bias. The idea that we should elimate our biases is a bias toward value-freeness. No one, even scientists, can detach themselves from their own subjective experiences. Everything requires interpretation.
Okay so as a budding writer, thinking about the biases of my characters is actually kind of a fascinating exercise. Try it, it's actually pretty cool to do. I, for example, have a character named Miranda. Her anchor bias is music. If you can't appreciate music and you don't intrinsically love it, she's not gonna be a fan of yours. Her best friend's anchor bias (and mine) is logic. Every facet of it. Fallacies, arguments, debates, every side of logic is her (and my) bread and butter. If there's anyone else with characters that you figured out a bias for, I'd be really interested to see that.
Yeh. And also I don't really find it all that stupid for a person to acknowledge that they might be dead in 5 years. Or just not to care about having more money because it's still a lot of money.
I watched this video because I was in a very bad mood and had just written a blog post about how human being are all idiots. and. This is perhaps the best justification.
I definitely suffer from this. Typically my bias revolves around intolerance. I see a hot girl, then suddenly she says something derogatory about someone or a group and it's like a switch has been flipped.
But if we ourselves can't judge whether we are less bias than others since that's a bias in itself, how do we check this? Especially that when someone says that we are very bias and we feel we're not? I personally believe I'm fairly aware of my biases. Even when I make a judgmental decision based on bias alone I do sometimes think that I'm stupid because of that, although mostly it takes time for me to realize it. But yeah, that's the thing. How do we check it.
That's why is it essential to have someone that you can trust (mum, sibling, friend.. Etc) to talk to so when you blindly bias they can show you the other side of the matter
Actually, many financial experts suggest that lottery winners accept a smaller lump sum instead of installments. The value of the lump sum increases substantially when parked in a stable investment. Take the S&P 500 index fund for example. Were you to invest in the S&P 500 over the same time period as installments (say, 25 years) and it were to maintain it's historically annualized return of 10%, your return would be approximately 983% (1.1^25=10.83 x your original investment). The real return would likely be smaller as you would likely spend some of the winnings over the years, but the point stands that accepting as little as 1/5 of the winnings now could very well be worth more than the entire winnings over 25 annual installments.
Up to a point a few years ago I thought that I could consider things from an unbiased point of view because I was aware of bias. That continued until I actually got a little smarter (reading can help with that. It certainly helped me) and realised that by assuming I'm not biased I was actually being far more biased than the majority of other people. I was an idiot back then, I'm still one now but at least I'm not quite as ignorant of it. Btw thanks for the video.
I agree. It may sound cynical; but our individual levels of ignorance and shortcomings are what make us human instead of robotic. Emotion itself is a psychological effect about increasing bias in your mind toward a particular attitude. But it's also what makes life worth living.
@AuntEon And other people do because the think they can get better returns on the cash than the over time payment amount represents, or because the initial lump sump would allow something they want. But that isn't actually hyperbolic discounting, that's just standard exponential discounting. Hyperbolic discounting when you take the $1 option when given the choice of "$1 today, or $5 next week", but take the $5 option when given the choice of "$1 in 52 weeks, or $5 in a 53 weeks".
@fdesouchecom 1) he's not talking about 'me me me', he's talking about John Green and bias, 2) the vlogbrothers have been editing using jump cuts since they started in 2007, so they're not 'copying everybody else', and also 3) jump cuts are there because they have a 4 minute limit on their videos.
The example of the Hyperbolic Discounting bias in terms of winning the lottery and choosing the lump sum over annuity is a little more understandable if you're a 90 year old person who realizes that (if you live in a state that doesn't sanction beneficiaries to lottery winnings) if you die before all of the winnings are paid out through annuity, then the remaining sum goes back to the state.
So I work in aviation. The MRO I work at is in contract with a customer who recently went bankrupt. This was already worrisome for various obvious reasons, but then I learned that right before the filed bankruptcy the CEO of that customer gave himself a pay raise to the tune of $500k/year. This is relevant to the small sum in a short time versus a large sum over a large time argument you made, because that moron may have just had a hand in ruining his company.
A really common bias is also the one when you really like someone, you tend to overrate their good qualities and think their bad qualities are funny or cute or something you can change. Like when girls fall for bad guys.
First, Shermer was just on the Colbert Report promoting this same book. Second: I'm a Decision Science major at Carnegie Mellon University. Whenever I tell someone this, only one person outside my family has ever NOT then asked, "what's decision science?" I used to say it's a mix of economics and psychology and cognitive science that studies human heuristics and biases, which it is... but now, instead of answering, I think I'll just show them this video.
@ea1power I understand what you mean but let me explain my point again. Biases are (as I see it) the reason for most decisions we make in life. Hopefully, we make more good decisions than bad or “stupid” ones. So while you can say having an anchoring bias like ‘The mountain goats are good etc’ is stupid, you probably wouldn’t say having a bias against people who kill others is stupid. -> Some biases are good and others are bad. I didn’t try to deny that humans can be/are very stupid at times.
@chibillama24 Google says: There are 47 countries on the African continent, including the disputed territory of Western Sahara. However, the islands off the coast are also usually listed as African, bringing the total to 53. The island nations are Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Madagascar, the Comoros, the Seychelles, and Mauritius. Each is an independent nation.
I know that I am an engineer is when thinking about bias my mind turns to setting circuits so that transistors are forced to be in saturation or at least on. I am not so stupid that I don't know what bias really is but it makes me think about the correlation of circuit biasing and psychological bias. It also makes me compare my own personal biases with the biases that other may have influenced or accidentally set because our minds work in mysterious ways.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann is a really good introduction to this subject. It's not the quickest read out there, but it's very interesting.
The reason people take their lottery winnings in one lump sum payment is mostly due to the rule of 72 or taking the number 72 and dividing it by the interest you can earn. 72/6=12 years to double your money at 6%. Time to collect all of the money at a taxed rate=20 years. Therefore any accountant worth his salt will tell you to take all the money NOW! This doesn't include the inflation rates or a lot of other things. Take the money and run! Hide! Turn off your phone! Leave everyone.
I think getting the smaller lump sum is better because in the 20 years it takes to receive the money we could have gained just as much in bank interest. That is depending on which bank you use.
I know that this is completely random, but I couldn't help giggling to myself as I watched this. Why? Because bias, not only is it needed it is also very helpful. More specifically, bias tape. I know this because I was sewing a strip of bias tape onto a bodice when this video started. (I'm work my way through watching all the Vlogbrothers videos from the beginning.) Hank & John, keep up the good work! :D
A couple of you have mentioned the possible benefits of taking the lump sum and investing it, arguing that you would wind up with more money than you would with annuities. This is only true if a) you don't spend any of it and b)you don't invest the annuities as you receive them. Both of those are silly assumptions, if you're actually comparing the future value of each option. If you invest the annuities as you receive them there's no huge difference between the two options, except risk.
My seamstress brain keeps thinking "bias: the direction of a piece of woven fabric at 45 degrees to its warp and weft threads." This is my favorite kind of bias.
@Theodanus cognitive dissonance is not seeking out reinforcing beliefs; it is the cognitive state which can motivate us to seek out reinforcing beliefs (or change our behaviour).
@bkershaccount My agnostic vs. atheist comment was also in regards to your initial statement that seemed like one coming from not knowing the definitions. I've heard it multiple times, always coming from people who don't know that "agnostics" are actually, to quote Stephen Colbert "atheists without balls". The next sentence is typically "to be truly neutral, scientists must be agnostics". You're the first I see who knows the difference AND STILL makes such kind of a comment (minus the last bit).
The process of "eliminating" bias is not exactly linear like that, where a + b =/= c. There are more variables involved into making pretty much anything work, and creation theory is an example of said complicated topic. It is more-or-less impossible to know what is actually true, so science makes approximations based on inferences, and said approximations usually work, so they are considered true. The idea of action -> result is kind of complicated, and is something a bit complicated to put in
My bias is the best type of bias. Everyone else's bias is too biased.
this is perfection
Please, take my like! xD
Jsidhu762 So much is right about this.
my bias is jin
no? ok.
+Jsidhu762 I think your bias isn't biased enough.
Who is here to stop John changing the the top google result for his name?
Me!
+
Bookjunkie me lmao
Me four
I didn't mean to, but I guess I am😂
lol who's here in 2018? And who is stoked that these guys are still awesome?
Levi Hildebrand im surprised because Hank mentioned a Gucci purse and Gucci memes are BLOWING UP right now
lol tru tru
i'm here....
I !
Only just. 6 days left.
Yes this is Christmas Day.
IT BACKFIRED, JOHN. THIS AUTOPLAYED AFTER YOUR VIDEO D:
Leighann Elizabeth
Hahahahha indeed
One would think after all these years of being on TH-cam John would have figured out the algorithm but guess not.
For those wondering, it's 39. He said bias 39 times. Though one of those was a "biased" and another was "biases". So if you don't count those, it's 37.
I love that people have avoided liking this comment for years to keep it at 39
I want to like this but I refuse to undo the 39 so I'm commenting instead
@@Gracequestionmark Haha it's gone now
Hank isn't racist.. so did he buy that Gucci purse, or does he watch Jersey Shore?
I'm going for the purse man
It's gotta be the purse!
I'm pretty sure it's the purse...
Treefrog Johnson I read this right when he said it
Treefrog Johnson both?
I saw the title of this video in the "suggested" area and I was prepared to be furious... and then I saw it was by vlogbrothers and all was well again.
oh my god. this video has helped me. i'm currently dating a guy, and there's this one thing that slightly bothers me about him, and i kinda regret asking him out. this made me realize that it's just a bias i have, and that i need to look past that. thank you.
that guy is blessed and owes Hank Green some major gratitude. Good for him. And you, too, of course.
"How did it go?" - a curious stranger from the future :D
More curious future strangers
+
+
Who is here after seeing John green
Answering questions about john green...
while wearing green!
Holy crap Hank is 31 in this video. He looks like he's 22.
I love that I learn things when I watch your videos, it makes me feel like I can delay actual work just that much longer. They are like perfect, bite size, guilt free, procrastination cookies.
Confirmation bias... the essence of political debates... ugh, that statement is a form of confirmation bias to my already held opinion of politics.
Is he though? The only reason I watched this video is because he referred to it in another video. He definitely knows what he's doing when it comes to marketing.
I am completely biased about Harry Potter. That is my deciding factor about every person. The first thing I ask anyone when I meet them is, "Do you like Harry Potter?" If the answer is no, I will probably harbor extreme distain for that person for the rest of my life. I can't help it.
Me too
I don't see this as a problem
I don't like harry potter
Me neither, and I could write a list of why I don't like it that is as long as the seven books themselves.
While I do like Harry Potter and absolutely loved it as a child and even though it will probably always have that positive nostalgia factor going for it, I also realize that it is not perfect, I'd even say far from it, and I think it is "objectively" probably not a great book series. Maybe good, but not great. That doesn't stop me from really liking it a lot, though.
I love when the algorithm is like, yeah you need that 9 year old video in your life right now. And I mean they're not wrong
47. I got curious, so I looked it up. 47 countries.
Lindsey Miller No. There are 54 to 56 depending on how you count.
PirateTHESteam1 54 to 58. But it's such a subjective number that it's pretty useless trying to find out. I mean it changes all the time and most sources aren't even sure if certain countries count as countries. Plus Some people count the islands around it as being part of Africa.
Ampz14 54 to 90 depending on your definition of country. I just made that up to increase that second number for fun.
+TheGlassesPredicament Hm I guessed around 35 while listening to the video.
linds I googled it and it said 54, it might've changed?
Great with a video about biases. Stupid John's newest video sent me here.
Bias doesn't sound like a word anymore xD
I cannot express who much love I have for every single vlogbrothers video. Pure genius! THANK YOU HANK AND JOHN for being awesome.
I just watched the latest John Green video about this video is the first video you see when you google him, and this video was first in recommendations...
Nice one TH-cam!
My anchor bias is science. If you're scientifically illiterate or, even worse, distrusting of science, I'm not going to be a fan of you. And I certainly won't want to date you. Maybe that's terrible of me, but I can't really help it.
Kind of curious about what you mean. If you mean somebody who disagrees with science as an institution and just won't accept that scientific methods work at all? Yeah, I get where you're coming from. But, I mean, the whole point of science is to use evidence to challenge commonly-held beliefs until the final result is that all evidence currently available matches the scientific theory on the subject. So if somebody has a good argument against something that's commonly held to be true by scientists everywhere, I feel like that shouldn't be a relationship killer.
HeliosKitty
Yeah... but that's not what your dealing with when you're talking to an anti-vaxxer or a naturalist that thinks all engineered medication is poison or a climate change denier or your hippy artsy friend who thinks mental disorder is a lie and that meds are the men working to rob you of your soul.
How do you guys feel about social sciences and the fact that they call themselves science without meeting the scientific methodology? Does their inability to predict outcomes like other sciences affect your opinion?
This is and always will be the best John Green titled video on the internet!
John Green sent me here in April of 2018.
I just Googled "How many countries are in Africa" and I got the results 47, 55, and 61. Those sites must have spun the wheel beforehand. :)
Time to watch the heck out of this video so that it stays as the first video that appears when one searches for John on Google.
Here from John's latest video... it was the first in my recommended list hahaha
My mom got me a subscription to Scientific American for Christmas this year!
And THIS is why you can't ever turn a religious person atheist.....
When has he ever claimed to want to? Atheists (typically) don't care.... that's just one of the many perks of being one, in my opinion.
Skull Voorhees What I mean is, because religious people hold a very strong bias towards their particular religion and hold onto that so firmly, they disregard any scientific evidence (however strong it may be) that may suggest their religion is wrong in some way.
Or an atheist into a religious person
The Business Cat What I'm telling you is that atheists hold on to their disbelief so strongly that the ignore all science and reason and even go as far as saying we are bias when in reality it is scientifically impossible for there not to be a god orsome higher level being that is spaceless and timeless.
Drama_Llama_5000 Isn't it those who follow religion that are the ones who ignore science and reason? Aren't they the ones who hold onto their beliefs so strongly that they ignore new theories (such as evolution) and instead believe books that are thousands of years old?
Fun fact about confirmation bias: everything everyone says in an internet argument is apparently an example of confirmation bias
I have so much affection for this dude
Nope, this one is still the top result!
I kinda thought it was common knowledge that there are 54 countries in Africa. Or I at least thought people looked at maps enough to know that there's way more than 15.
Hank, can I please steal your brain?
Dang, he pushes up his glasses sooooooo many times! Bless Hank!
I thought that spinning wheel experiment was silly, until I found myself thinking there were around 60-ish countries in Africa merely because I just heard the number 65 twice.
With the wheel-spin-thingy (around 2:00), maybe they thought the questions changed based on what number the contestants land on. For example, someone who landed on 50 would guess close to 50 because they thought something like "Well, if I landed on 31, they'd probably ask a question about Baskin and Robbins."
I think it has more to do with "subconcious suggestion" (I don't know the correct term and my google searches were unsuccesful), but its basically what "psychics" or mentalists do. They will say certain things that may seem irrelevant, but, as Hank said, they stick with you. So a mentalist might say a few passing comments containing the number 14, and then minutes later ask you to think of a eandom number. Your brain, being as efficient (lazy) as it is will take the shortest possible path to "generate" a number, and so will default to the last number it thought about, 14. There are articles and videos on this, where you can see a guy, either through repetition or intonation, literally suggesting their predictions. And it has happened to me. A few days ago I had to remember that a sheet of paper had 23 lines, then hours later when I suddenly needed a random number, you can guess what was the first thing to come to mind. And I am sure that I used the number 14 in my mentalist example because I had just seen something with that number.
deox I'm pretty sure that's what Derren Brown uses to create what people think is hypnotism/mind-reading
This is one of these effects that has been replicated many, many times in different contexts, so it's not issue of the specific question. We actually generally don't call this a bias, we usually refer to it as the anchoring and adjustment heuristic-- the idea is that people like to make decisions by starting with a concrete anchor, and then will adjust away from that anchor if they know the anchor is inaccurate. However, people tend not to adjust far enough away from the anchor. So people can know that the number from the wheel is incorrect-- you might know that 15 is way too small a number-- but you would fail to adjust far enough away from 15 to make up for the influence of your starting point.
Can we really say that anything is unbiased? Lets take science for example, we look at the universe and make theories and laws on what we can perceive or understand, but that may not be what things actually are. This is what annoys me about when they talk about things like the 'Goldilocks zones' where exo-planets have the right set of conditions for life to inhabit. But we are taking this habitable environment from what we know and experience. Just because life on this planet has a certain set of needs that must be satisfied, doesn't mean that all life that could ever possibly exists needs the same conditions in any way. A biased way of thinking is the only way of thinking for us, because to expand our minds above the realms of what we know would be to much, imagine trying to think about every possibility that could ever be about space, which we cannot see or comprehend. The fact that we cannot comprehend such things shows that we all must be, in some way, very very biased.
Unbias is wen u take both parts of arguments in to account.
I've always thought this as well!
I've always thought this as well!
+Rebecca Davies well, it isn't that scientists think there is no life other than the type we know of, it's that they don't know what it is like and so can't search for it.
you seem to think that everyone thinking about extraterrestrial life have a massive blindspot bias, where in fact this is just your ''blindspot bias' blindspot bias.'
+Rebecca Davies The biggest problem with this is people always assume that bias always means something bad and talk about it as if it is always a terrible thing, when it's actually a natural human behavior and essential in many ways. Bias is bad when it's overdone, but you can't ever be completely without it. He tried in the video to convey that bias isn't always bad, but he didn't do a great job as a lot of people still don't really get it. We cant be perfect, we're humans. We act certain ways and do certain things and people should learn to just accept that as a part of life. So many strive too hard to be completely unbiased viewpoint where they can always be in the moral right, but that's impossible to achieve. Like he said, we're all stupid idiots, we need to learn to accept this.
I have an anchoring bias on apple
I have authority bias on them....thanks Dad
terrible bias to have, try to cure it
Hank, how can you talk about biases without even mentioning Daniel Kahneman (and Amos Tversky)?
I feel like I'm back to one of his Psychology Crash Course videos. Yay!
I have a bias, and his name is Dokyeom.
Why are a couple of hank's videos in 720p60?
Science strives to eliminate biases, but valuing being bias-free is itself a bias. The idea that we should elimate our biases is a bias toward value-freeness. No one, even scientists, can detach themselves from their own subjective experiences. Everything requires interpretation.
Okay so as a budding writer, thinking about the biases of my characters is actually kind of a fascinating exercise. Try it, it's actually pretty cool to do.
I, for example, have a character named Miranda. Her anchor bias is music. If you can't appreciate music and you don't intrinsically love it, she's not gonna be a fan of yours. Her best friend's anchor bias (and mine) is logic. Every facet of it. Fallacies, arguments, debates, every side of logic is her (and my) bread and butter.
If there's anyone else with characters that you figured out a bias for, I'd be really interested to see that.
If Gucci had a purse that only cost $600, I would totally buy one.
251 people are countries in Africa.
Jeremy Hoffman what?
253
Kind of like my Stalin bias, no matter what evil thing I learn about him, I just can not call him evil.
I'll admit that I had read that as "Satan" instead of as "Stalin"
I can't hate him bc of that sick 'stash. Look at him, kinda reminds me of a mexican mariachi.
How? I am open to you statments.
Ok
Breeze Ark too soon
Actually there is a good reason to take the lump sum over the annuity. Hyper-inflation anyone?
Yeh. And also I don't really find it all that stupid for a person to acknowledge that they might be dead in 5 years. Or just not to care about having more money because it's still a lot of money.
Yeah, every financial analysis I have seen of this question has recommended the lump sum.
You can invest that Lump sum tomorrow, but you can only invest one payment at a time if you select the other.
I watched this video because I was in a very bad mood and had just written a blog post about how human being are all idiots. and. This is perhaps the best justification.
I definitely suffer from this. Typically my bias revolves around intolerance. I see a hot girl, then suddenly she says something derogatory about someone or a group and it's like a switch has been flipped.
Stats class!!! wooooooo! No Bias!
ey, you hurt my feelings ;(
I cri everytim ;(
Well said hank, well said
But if we ourselves can't judge whether we are less bias than others since that's a bias in itself, how do we check this? Especially that when someone says that we are very bias and we feel we're not? I personally believe I'm fairly aware of my biases. Even when I make a judgmental decision based on bias alone I do sometimes think that I'm stupid because of that, although mostly it takes time for me to realize it. But yeah, that's the thing. How do we check it.
That's why is it essential to have someone that you can trust (mum, sibling, friend.. Etc) to talk to so when you blindly bias they can show you the other side of the matter
Actually, many financial experts suggest that lottery winners accept a smaller lump sum instead of installments.
The value of the lump sum increases substantially when parked in a stable investment. Take the S&P 500 index fund for example. Were you to invest in the S&P 500 over the same time period as installments (say, 25 years) and it were to maintain it's historically annualized return of 10%, your return would be approximately 983% (1.1^25=10.83 x your original investment).
The real return would likely be smaller as you would likely spend some of the winnings over the years, but the point stands that accepting as little as 1/5 of the winnings now could very well be worth more than the entire winnings over 25 annual installments.
The best part about the vlogbrothers is that they're funny and you learn stuff. You learn a LOT of stuff.
I adore biases and fallacies. They're so fascinating!! I wish I could just study them forever.
This is one of those videos that lives in my head rent free.
Up to a point a few years ago I thought that I could consider things from an unbiased point of view because I was aware of bias. That continued until I actually got a little smarter (reading can help with that. It certainly helped me) and realised that by assuming I'm not biased I was actually being far more biased than the majority of other people. I was an idiot back then, I'm still one now but at least I'm not quite as ignorant of it. Btw thanks for the video.
So Hank, I was reading Discover Magazine and they had a little blurb about your 2D glasses....and I smiled really big :D
I'm writing an essay on this topic, actually, and this really helped me focus. Who knew procrastinating could actually help me write my paper?
I'm giving a thumb up only for Hank's...cuteness
I can’t help but noticing the innuyasha poster on the door!
I agree. It may sound cynical; but our individual levels of ignorance and shortcomings are what make us human instead of robotic. Emotion itself is a psychological effect about increasing bias in your mind toward a particular attitude. But it's also what makes life worth living.
@AuntEon And other people do because the think they can get better returns on the cash than the over time payment amount represents, or because the initial lump sump would allow something they want.
But that isn't actually hyperbolic discounting, that's just standard exponential discounting. Hyperbolic discounting when you take the $1 option when given the choice of "$1 today, or $5 next week", but take the $5 option when given the choice of "$1 in 52 weeks, or $5 in a 53 weeks".
Funny thing- that's the reason i started watching Vlogbrothers. Well- that poster, and the video about the zombie Apocalypse..
The fact that the video stopped to buffer right after Hank says "You are a stupid ___" made my day.
"Everyone's stupid" has been my personal motto for 15 years. Unfortunately, people think I mean "everyone's stupid but me".
@fdesouchecom 1) he's not talking about 'me me me', he's talking about John Green and bias, 2) the vlogbrothers have been editing using jump cuts since they started in 2007, so they're not 'copying everybody else', and also 3) jump cuts are there because they have a 4 minute limit on their videos.
I just noticed Hank has the X-Wing series on his shelf...Hank has just gotten exponentially more awesome
The example of the Hyperbolic Discounting bias in terms of winning the lottery and choosing the lump sum over annuity is a little more understandable if you're a 90 year old person who realizes that (if you live in a state that doesn't sanction beneficiaries to lottery winnings) if you die before all of the winnings are paid out through annuity, then the remaining sum goes back to the state.
Haha I click the video to defend him and to say thats not John in the thumbnail, but then I realized you made this video.
I freaking Love these guys, just learned some new things at the click of a button.
Wow!!!!! Hank Danger...Look at the bookshelf placed in the video.😀
So I work in aviation. The MRO I work at is in contract with a customer who recently went bankrupt. This was already worrisome for various obvious reasons, but then I learned that right before the filed bankruptcy the CEO of that customer gave himself a pay raise to the tune of $500k/year. This is relevant to the small sum in a short time versus a large sum over a large time argument you made, because that moron may have just had a hand in ruining his company.
So I watched this yesterday, only to find out that today my class was going over this material. In hindsight, I knew it all along. ;)
Is...is that a Hedwigs Theme poster? That is one of the most beautiful things I have seen.
A really common bias is also the one when you really like someone, you tend to overrate their good qualities and think their bad qualities are funny or cute or something you can change. Like when girls fall for bad guys.
First, Shermer was just on the Colbert Report promoting this same book.
Second: I'm a Decision Science major at Carnegie Mellon University. Whenever I tell someone this, only one person outside my family has ever NOT then asked, "what's decision science?" I used to say it's a mix of economics and psychology and cognitive science that studies human heuristics and biases, which it is... but now, instead of answering, I think I'll just show them this video.
This is a good explanation of why I believe in Original Sin not merely as doctrine of faith, but as scientific fact.
this video helped me with my media essay... i love you.
@ea1power I understand what you mean but let me explain my point again. Biases are (as I see it) the reason for most decisions we make in life. Hopefully, we make more good decisions than bad or “stupid” ones. So while you can say having an anchoring bias like ‘The mountain goats are good etc’ is stupid, you probably wouldn’t say having a bias against people who kill others is stupid. -> Some biases are good and others are bad. I didn’t try to deny that humans can be/are very stupid at times.
@chibillama24 Google says: There are 47 countries on the African continent, including the disputed territory of Western Sahara. However, the islands off the coast are also usually listed as African, bringing the total to 53. The island nations are Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Madagascar, the Comoros, the Seychelles, and Mauritius. Each is an independent nation.
The first video I have come across today that doesn't stretch 2 minutes of information over 18 minutes of my time.
I know that I am an engineer is when thinking about bias my mind turns to setting circuits so that transistors are forced to be in saturation or at least on. I am not so stupid that I don't know what bias really is but it makes me think about the correlation of circuit biasing and psychological bias. It also makes me compare my own personal biases with the biases that other may have influenced or accidentally set because our minds work in mysterious ways.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann is a really good introduction to this subject. It's not the quickest read out there, but it's very interesting.
The reason people take their lottery winnings in one lump sum payment is mostly due to the rule of 72 or taking the number 72 and dividing it by the interest you can earn. 72/6=12 years to double your money at 6%. Time to collect all of the money at a taxed rate=20 years. Therefore any accountant worth his salt will tell you to take all the money NOW! This doesn't include the inflation rates or a lot of other things. Take the money and run! Hide! Turn off your phone! Leave everyone.
I think getting the smaller lump sum is better because in the 20 years it takes to receive the money we could have gained just as much in bank interest. That is depending on which bank you use.
Another related book is "How We Know What Isn't So" by Thomas Gilovich. The subtitle is "The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life."
I know that this is completely random, but I couldn't help giggling to myself as I watched this. Why? Because bias, not only is it needed it is also very helpful. More specifically, bias tape. I know this because I was sewing a strip of bias tape onto a bodice when this video started. (I'm work my way through watching all the Vlogbrothers videos from the beginning.)
Hank & John, keep up the good work! :D
“We are all stupid idiots” -2021 in a nut shell
Take a shot everytime Hank says bias
I don't have the slightest idea why my algorithm presented this to me in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty four but I'm glad it did
A couple of you have mentioned the possible benefits of taking the lump sum and investing it, arguing that you would wind up with more money than you would with annuities. This is only true if a) you don't spend any of it and b)you don't invest the annuities as you receive them. Both of those are silly assumptions, if you're actually comparing the future value of each option. If you invest the annuities as you receive them there's no huge difference between the two options, except risk.
My seamstress brain keeps thinking "bias: the direction of a piece of woven fabric at 45 degrees to its warp and weft threads." This is my favorite kind of bias.
@Theodanus cognitive dissonance is not seeking out reinforcing beliefs; it is the cognitive state which can motivate us to seek out reinforcing beliefs (or change our behaviour).
@bkershaccount My agnostic vs. atheist comment was also in regards to your initial statement that seemed like one coming from not knowing the definitions. I've heard it multiple times, always coming from people who don't know that "agnostics" are actually, to quote Stephen Colbert "atheists without balls". The next sentence is typically "to be truly neutral, scientists must be agnostics". You're the first I see who knows the difference AND STILL makes such kind of a comment (minus the last bit).
$600 dollars for a Gucci purse... I wish they were that cheap. 😂😂
The process of "eliminating" bias is not exactly linear like that, where a + b =/= c. There are more variables involved into making pretty much anything work, and creation theory is an example of said complicated topic. It is more-or-less impossible to know what is actually true, so science makes approximations based on inferences, and said approximations usually work, so they are considered true. The idea of action -> result is kind of complicated, and is something a bit complicated to put in