I bet you could train yourself to be good at remembering “I heard negative evidence against X (from whatever source)” properly, especially if X is something you’ve either got existing (properly remembered or summarized) evidence for/exist,or have connected to other claims. In other words, probably part of that effect is that the subjects don’t accurately understand or recall the sentence they read, and they think “that sounds familiar! wasn’t that what I just read from the CDC?”
An inability to remember the strength of some evidence you’ve heard is already crippling. Misremembering the polarity (whether it’s pulling you toward truth or untruth from your prior) is just a particularly bad instance.
What do people with this handicap actually do when they want to properly weigh evidence? Do they write it all down so they can review it (like people find a pros/cons list to be helpful)?
I often remember how some fact or event made me feel at the time. For instance, I’ll remember being moved by a film years later, but perhaps be quite fuzzy on even the broad strokes of the plot. I’d like to exploit this sort of memory in order to represent the direction+strength of evidence—to not remember being excited to read some study, but to remember its value.
Another technique that seems useful for uncertain (but interesting or important) claims that are updated over a long period of time is using fixed nametags (not much more complicated than the title of this excellent post ‘What data generated that thought?’), especially in writing or talking about it.
I bet you could train yourself to be good at remembering “I heard negative evidence against X (from whatever source)” properly, especially if X is something you’ve either got existing (properly remembered or summarized) evidence for/exist,or have connected to other claims. In other words, probably part of that effect is that the subjects don’t accurately understand or recall the sentence they read, and they think “that sounds familiar! wasn’t that what I just read from the CDC?”
An inability to remember the strength of some evidence you’ve heard is already crippling. Misremembering the polarity (whether it’s pulling you toward truth or untruth from your prior) is just a particularly bad instance.
What do people with this handicap actually do when they want to properly weigh evidence? Do they write it all down so they can review it (like people find a pros/cons list to be helpful)?
I often remember how some fact or event made me feel at the time. For instance, I’ll remember being moved by a film years later, but perhaps be quite fuzzy on even the broad strokes of the plot. I’d like to exploit this sort of memory in order to represent the direction+strength of evidence—to not remember being excited to read some study, but to remember its value.
Another technique that seems useful for uncertain (but interesting or important) claims that are updated over a long period of time is using fixed nametags (not much more complicated than the title of this excellent post ‘What data generated that thought?’), especially in writing or talking about it.