How to Make Decisions
Issue 22

We welcome your letters, questions and desperate pleas for help in this uncaring world. As always, e-mail WBXylo at Gmail.com.

What you look for, you find

Let’s look at two common and related fallacies. The first is confirmation bias; the second is observational selection. The differences aren’t terribly important for our purposes, so let’s focus on the big picture. Both of these fallacies occur when one actively seeks the evidence they want and ignores the evidence to the contrary. For instance, say that Gary believes his day is better when he wears his lucky socks. But when Gary wears his lucky socks he focuses on all the positive things that happen to him and ignores the negative. If his day is great, he remembers it fondly. If his day is average or lower than average, it is forgotten.

Things such as these demonstrate the need for placebos and double blind trials.

Practical Stuff

Have you ever lost the drawstring to a bag or pair of pants? The trick to fixing it is as simple as a safety pin. By attaching the safety pin to one side of the string, one can easily feed it through the pants or what have you.

Last Week’s Puzzle
What do
Rena Mero,
The Edge (Dave Evans)
Dustin Hoffman
Keith Carradine
Robin Quivers
Donny Most
all have in common?

All share the same Birthday, August 8th.

Puzzle (easy)

A tri-bond sort of thing. What connects these three?

Pen
Baseball
Bottle

Last 5 posts by ML Kennedy

• How to Make Decisions (72) - June 19th, 2007
• How to Make Decisions (71) - June 12th, 2007
• How To Make Decisions (70) - June 5th, 2007
• How to Make Decisions (69) - May 29th, 2007
• How to Make Decisions (68) - May 21st, 2007