How Rational Are You?

At: Columbus Rationality, subgroup of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Co-Founder and President, Intentional Insights

Tenure-Track Professor, The Ohio State University

Author, Find Your Purpose Using Science

Monthly donor to HCCO and long-time member and organizer of Columbus Rationality

Rationality Test!

• 45 seconds per

question

• Don’t cheat, that’s

irrational

Question 1

• Max was the president of his secular student club in college. He is an outspoken teacher in Alabama, defending the theory of evolution against religious parents who push him to teach creationism. Is he more likely to either:– Be a teacher of biology

– Be a teacher of biology and not vote for Trump

Question 2

• If all A’s are C’s, and

all B’s are C’s, then

are all A’s also B’s?

Question 3

• Imagine your favorite

actor endorsing a

toothbrush. Are you

more or less likely to

buy that toothbrush?

Question 4

• You are offered one of

two choices: either

get $50 or 50%

chance of $110

dollars. Which do you

choose?

Question 5

• You are told that a

coin is fair and

observe a coin being

flipped 99 times and it

lands heads every

time. What is your

probability that it will

land heads the 100th

time?

We Are Not Cohesive!

How does our mind work?

System 1, Elephant

• AUTOPILOT

• Subconscious

• Automatic

• Habits

• Fast

• Intuitive

• Emotional

System 2, Rider

• INTENTIONAL

• Conscious

• Mindful

• Attention

• Slow

• Reasoning

• Logical

Cognitive Biases!

Retrain the Elephant and Rider

to win at life!

Now You Can Cheat!

• Talk to a partner

about your results for

5 minutes

• Then, we’ll discuss

the actual answers

Answer to 1

• Look out for the

conjunction fallacy!

All possible Maxes

are teachers of

biology. Only some

will not vote for

Trump.

Answer to 2

• Avoid the undistributed middle term error! Assign the word “human” to letter A, and “ostriches” to letter B. Letter C is “two-legged.” Now it reads, “all humans are two-legged, all ostriches are two-legged.” If all A’s are B’s, then “all humans are ostriches.” Oops!

Answer to 3

• Beware the Halo effect! The Halo effect causes us to perceive one positive characteristic of a person to judge the rest of the person’s characteristics positively, regardless of the actual truth.

Answer to 4

• Loss aversion can

cause us to do quite

irrational things.

Imagine repeating the

exercise 100 times. If

you chose $50 each

time, you would wind

up $500 poorer on

average.

Answer to 5

• If you said 50%, you might be falling into the conformity to authority fallacy. If an authority figure tells you the coin is not loaded, but then you observe it land heads 99 times, it’s time to update your beliefs!

Think and Discuss!

• Think and write by yourself for 5 minutes about how these biases might be negatively impacting your life.

• Then, discuss this topic with other folks around you.

• Write down any additional ideas you get.

Thank You!

• PowerPoint of this presentation: slideshare.net/intentionalinsights

• Free version of my science-based book, Find Your Purpose Using Science: tinyurl.com/fypus2015

• Get in touch with me at gleb@intentionalinsights.org

• Intentional Insights

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