I still think this doesn’t always tell you any more useful information than the conscious reasons...a confabulation is not necessarily wrong
OK, so let’s say it tells you that the useful information that you get from your consciousness is only 10% (semi-random number) of relevant information. It’s not that it provides useful information to outweigh the conscious information, it just contextualizes it into being less important, even if it is most of the important information you have. So it should greatly reduce confidence, and affect decisions related to that.
Let’s say out of a group of 20 people you knew well, one was going to construct two teams to compete in an activity, say soccer. If I told you a random member of each team, you could predict which team would be more likely to win, but your confidence would be less than if I told you all the members on each team. This is so even though the information you know (one player per team) does more for you than that you don’t know (the players who are evenly distributed).
Let’s consider the right-side bias you presented. This is a good example because obviously nothing intrinsic to the clothing improves if you place it on someone’s right, and yet people overwhelmingly chose the item on the right (and they got the reason for this wrong). Yet I have questions about the applicability of this to everyday decisions. For example, how much stronger is this specific bias than conscious factors? If instead of being presented with identical items, the items are different, would this bias still be relevant?
It is certainly possible that when presented with nearly identical items, people prefer the one on the right, but when presented with very different items, they all else equal do not. It is also possible there are few such effects and they are swamped by conscious ones. However, I see no evidence the effect is limited to similar items, I think there are many such effects, and an analogy to natural selection is applicable—it hardly matters for a rabbit’s reproductive success whether it is a bit furrier or less furry than other rabbits, a bit bigger or a bit smaller, etc., but with many small effects occurring, the small effects add up.
Is this factor also based on research, or just a hypothetical scenario? Am I missing something obvious? I know of claims that colors affect emotion, but am unaware of claims that current emotions affect color choice
Based on research indicating that they effect emotion, I assume they probably effect choice absent having seen any study on point.
besides attempting to achieve satisfaction?
I was thinking primarily of things broadly categorizable as negative motivation—physical discomfort, emotional fear, self-sabotage to have an excuse for later failure, etc.
Still, I find it necessary to be suspicious of both. I have a relative lack of knowledge in the field of psychology and neuroscience...I need to closely evaluate the available evidence for those statements.
We apparently have very different priors. If basically “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, whereas subconscious processes would not have me conscious of them, I don’t consider my unawareness of them as extraordinary. Being convinced some occur, it is not hard to convince me that it’s likely various specific ones occur.
How would giving more weight when there is evidence for a reason
I’m trying to be meticulous about giving my knowns no more weight than necessary. If I am mapping 100 contiguous acres, and I know 10 acres have gardens, and know nothing about 90 acres, my estimate that the 90 unknown acres all have gardens is far less than 100%. If I am mapping an unknown number of acres, and I know 10 acres have gardens, and know nothing about the rest, my estimate that the unknown acres all have gardens is far less than 100%.
I consider the present search for subconscious influences to be far from exhaustive, and estimate there is much more out there. As is I consider the conscious influences to be pretty low. So regarding them, even if I know a lot more about them than anything else, when I consider the total of why I decided as I did, they are not predominantly important—it’s as if I knew one soccer player on each team, with each team having 5 to 50 players, that being unknown (but the same for each team). My prediction about who would win would be pretty much entirely based on the known player, but my confidence would be low because I know I have only a small proportion of the relevant information.
OK, so let’s say it tells you that the useful information that you get from your consciousness is only 10% (semi-random number) of relevant information. It’s not that it provides useful information to outweigh the conscious information, it just contextualizes it into being less important, even if it is most of the important information you have. So it should greatly reduce confidence, and affect decisions related to that.
Let’s say out of a group of 20 people you knew well, one was going to construct two teams to compete in an activity, say soccer. If I told you a random member of each team, you could predict which team would be more likely to win, but your confidence would be less than if I told you all the members on each team. This is so even though the information you know (one player per team) does more for you than that you don’t know (the players who are evenly distributed).
It is certainly possible that when presented with nearly identical items, people prefer the one on the right, but when presented with very different items, they all else equal do not. It is also possible there are few such effects and they are swamped by conscious ones. However, I see no evidence the effect is limited to similar items, I think there are many such effects, and an analogy to natural selection is applicable—it hardly matters for a rabbit’s reproductive success whether it is a bit furrier or less furry than other rabbits, a bit bigger or a bit smaller, etc., but with many small effects occurring, the small effects add up.
Based on research indicating that they effect emotion, I assume they probably effect choice absent having seen any study on point.
I was thinking primarily of things broadly categorizable as negative motivation—physical discomfort, emotional fear, self-sabotage to have an excuse for later failure, etc.
We apparently have very different priors. If basically “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, whereas subconscious processes would not have me conscious of them, I don’t consider my unawareness of them as extraordinary. Being convinced some occur, it is not hard to convince me that it’s likely various specific ones occur.
I’m trying to be meticulous about giving my knowns no more weight than necessary. If I am mapping 100 contiguous acres, and I know 10 acres have gardens, and know nothing about 90 acres, my estimate that the 90 unknown acres all have gardens is far less than 100%. If I am mapping an unknown number of acres, and I know 10 acres have gardens, and know nothing about the rest, my estimate that the unknown acres all have gardens is far less than 100%.
I consider the present search for subconscious influences to be far from exhaustive, and estimate there is much more out there. As is I consider the conscious influences to be pretty low. So regarding them, even if I know a lot more about them than anything else, when I consider the total of why I decided as I did, they are not predominantly important—it’s as if I knew one soccer player on each team, with each team having 5 to 50 players, that being unknown (but the same for each team). My prediction about who would win would be pretty much entirely based on the known player, but my confidence would be low because I know I have only a small proportion of the relevant information.