Texas Secular Humanists

Thanks to everyone who we saw tabling earlier today, and we hope you enjoyed our free facts! Each of them was guaranteed to be true, including but not limited to "The city of San Francisco is not a whale", "Pi is numerically larger than 3", and "the maximum road speed in Texas is 85 mph". Stay tuned for a volunteer opportunity with the White Rose Society that we'll be promoting soon.

In recent years the number of terrorist attacks linked with radical Islam have increased in the press, but it's important to remember that belonging to a religion doesn't make someone evil, an extremist, or deserving of attack.

Firebombs and pigs heads thrown into mosques as anti-Muslim attacks increase after Paris shootings Twenty-six mosques around France have been subject to attack by firebombs, gunfire, pig heads, and grenades as Muslims are targeted with violence in the wake of the Paris attacks.

For those of you that participated in the rationality activity this week, I did finally tally the conjunction fallacy results. Congratulations! You're rational!

The conjunction fallacy occurs when probabilities are estimated in a way such that P(A) < P(A∧B). That is, if you estimate the probability that A as being less than the probability that A and also B, you're committing the conjunction fallacy. This often arises when people employ stereotypes to estimate probabilities about people. For example, suppose that Stanley is quiet, keeps to himself, and is really into math. Now think about the following statements about Stanley:

1.) Stanley enjoys watching pro football
2.) Stanley is an accountant and enjoys watching pro football

Statement 1 is more likely than 2, because 1 is contained within 2, but many people will rank 2 as being more probable.

We had a "quiz" that was intended to gauge your ability to estimate probabilities rationally. Okay, really it was just intended to get you thinking about estimating probabilities before I talked about it, but the results are interesting too. It consisted of a series of statements, some of which were contained within the others, and you were supposed to say how much you'd be willing to bet on either $10, $100, or $10000. Here are the average ratios of your answers, for each A, A∧B pair, that is, the average P(A) / P(A∧B) (so > or = does not violate conjunction):

Obama disapproval / Obama achieves nothing and disapproval: 1.2
Rick and Robert argue / Rick and Robert argue with details: 1.33
Coin toss: HTHHH / THTHHH: 1.5
Smoking rates / smoking rates and cigarette tax: 1.2
Get hit by a meteor / get hit by a meteor once in each hand: 2500

All of these are greater than one (good), and nobody answered with a ratio less than one for any of the answers (really good!). I think the whole thing was put together awkwardly, and if I did it again, I'd make some changes. I do not think the questions were ideally phrased to get irrational answers, mainly because I did not employ the stereotypes about people, which tend to get strong results. I avoided this mainly because I wanted to use the betting method to get probabilities, and betting on whether Stanley is into pro football just seemed distractedly strange. Still, based on more careful studies, I expect that if you gave this to the general public you'd get a lot of people answering with ratios less than one.

Anyway, thanks to those of you that participated, and thanks for putting up with my presentation that was a little rough around the edges.

"Second, I think another important message is that people with different religions from your own (if you have a religion) may not be as crazy as you think. Having a credence that (say) the ancestors are alive and watching is very different from having a factual belief that the ancestors are alive and watching. It could be that the former isn't crazy, even if the latter would be. So I think that grasping this psychological distinction could foster a healthier level of understanding and curiosity toward others."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/10/20/357519777/are-factual-and-religious-belief-the-same

Are Factual And Religious Belief The Same? Commentator Tania Lombrozo considers a new paper that may help make sense of the coexistence of seemingly contradictory religious and scientific beliefs.