Are We Fooling Ourselves? Heuristics and Logic

I've noticed a few things lately. 

• People are quick to say wise sounding assertions. 
• People are quick to accept wise sounding ideas.

It goes like this. "You know what the problem with our city/state/country/world is? We just need to focus on diet or exercise or education or home affordability or a stronger military or clean energy or space exploration or "real" democracy or strong leadership or less (or more) of something."

Then, a bunch of people (including me) nod our heads in agreement. Why is that?

We are energy conserving machines. Our brains make up 2% of our body weight but use 20% of our metabolic energy. Even with that much of an energy budget, we can't let our brains go limitless. There's too much for our brains to do. Each day we make thousands of decisions. Most of those decisions have to be quick. So we create heuristics or mental shortcuts: "Meatless Monday", "Taco Tuesday", "TGIF", "No pain, no gain", "Trust the process". 

How often do we use heuristics? 90-95% of the time. 

But heuristics fail us. Your partner asks you to buy milk on your way home. You come home empty handed. "Where's the milk?" You reply, "I was hungry and you know they always say, 'Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry'?" This is a ridiculous example, but not too different from the last time a heuristic caused a conflict in my life. Am I the only one? Think about it.

The solution, you think, is good old logical reasoning. You come up with premises and make an argument. 

• "All dogs like to eat. All cats like to eat. Therefore, dogs are cats." 

Oops, that's not logically valid. So let's make another logically valid argument. 

• "All cats are animals. All animals like to swim. Therefore, all cats like to swim". 

Oops again. The premise "all animals like to swim" isn't always true. We need "all" of the premises need to be true.

The problem we have is that few things in life fit nicely into a simple syllogism. There's always an edge case or exception to the rule. Many arguments are really just heuristics dressed up in fancy clothes. They are shortcuts. 

Even Newton's Law, as perfect as it is, fails under relativistic conditions. 

So what do you do? How can you not fool yourself? Read my Intellectual Vision: Four Truths and the Eightfold Path

 “Whatever I say — you can sell it as wisdom. You say whatever — that can be wisdom. You can say ‘what matters is today’ — that’s wisdom. Or you can say ‘what matters is eternity’ — that’s also wisdom. In our ideological universe, the form ‘this is what matters’ is immediately consumed as a piece of wisdom.” -- Slavoj Žižek 

Critical Thinking with AI

 You just finished a session with ChatGPT (or your favorite LLM) and you've never felt more empowered. Not only do you feel like an expert in your new area of inquiry, but AI has affirmed that you are unique/clever/insightful/etc.!

Then you read a headline that says AI is degrading our critical thinking skills. How can that be? Don't you feel more intelligent?

This is how I use AI to help with my critical thinking skills (just some ideas). During (or after a learning session, ask:

• "What are some things that I haven't thought about? Do I have any blind spots?"
• "How might I be wrong in the conclusions I have come to?"
• "What biases do I have that may be preventing me from considering all of the facts?"
• "Is there anything that you (the AI) may be missing or be inaccurate about?"

Basically, challenge yourself and challenge the AI. I use ChatGPT primarily, but I also cross check with Perplexity, Grok, and Gemini. Today, a friend told me that he trusts Claude more certain tasks. I find that each has it's strengths and I'm learning which I can trust more. But I have to be careful that I don't select an AI for a topic because of my own confirmation bias.

Be careful to avoid "paralysis by analysis." What I mean, is that you do a critical review of some information which results in more information. Then you do a critical review of the critical review. Now you feel confused and depressed, as though you can never know the truth. I prefer discovering a limited number of blind spots. This can help your confidence in the sense of widening your understanding without unraveling your mental model.

Of course, you can also ask your preferred AI to help you understand the concepts behind Critical Thinking and even ask it to help you develop Critical Thinking skills.

Example 1 - Healing Back Pain

In 2014, I read the book "Healing Back Pain" by Dr. John Sarno and it helped resolved pain I was experiencing at the time. I've been having shoulder pain for the last 2 years, so I asked ChatGPT, "Can this book help shoulder pain as well as back pain?" It confirmed that it could and I started reading it again. Some red flags were going off about some of Dr. Sarno's claims, so I inquired "Can you provide a critical review of the book Healing Back Pain by John Sarno?" I then asked "Is there a better, more current book related to pain management?" I got several suggestions, and asked follow-up questions. The resulting suggestion was "The Way Out", which I just read. I found it more helpful and I'm trying the things I learned. I still feel there is some validity to Dr. Sarno's claims, but "The Way Out" gives me another way to frame my pain. (NOTE: I just asked for a critical review of "The Way Out" which resulted in me adding the "Be careful..." line above.)