Re: wishful thinking, I’ve personally seen this before, where people explicitly reject reason on an important topic; I knew a rabbi in Minnesota who insisted the Israeli-Palestinian peace process will succeed, simply because “it must succeed.” Usually people only explicitly reject reason on “one thought too many” topics like “I would never even think about betraying my friends”, but the wishful-thinking topics such as your nuclear-war example don’t seem to fit into this mold.
Anyone know what the research says on this? I know people faced with death will shift their values, but to what degree and in what directions do they shift their estimated probability of deaths and disasters when the disaster involves them or people they care about? And is this just part of a more general wishful-thinking bias? (Not that I know what the research says about wishful thinking, either.)
Conjecture: a New Yorker is more likely to see D.C. as the likely first target for a terrorist nuclear bomb, compared with a D.C. resident.
Re: wishful thinking, I’ve personally seen this before, where people explicitly reject reason on an important topic; I knew a rabbi in Minnesota who insisted the Israeli-Palestinian peace process will succeed, simply because “it must succeed.” Usually people only explicitly reject reason on “one thought too many” topics like “I would never even think about betraying my friends”, but the wishful-thinking topics such as your nuclear-war example don’t seem to fit into this mold.
Anyone know what the research says on this? I know people faced with death will shift their values, but to what degree and in what directions do they shift their estimated probability of deaths and disasters when the disaster involves them or people they care about? And is this just part of a more general wishful-thinking bias? (Not that I know what the research says about wishful thinking, either.)
Conjecture: a New Yorker is more likely to see D.C. as the likely first target for a terrorist nuclear bomb, compared with a D.C. resident.