Break The Fake

22/02/2024

If you live near Lincoln, NE check this out!

The Sheldon Museum of Art will screen the award-winning documentary “Trust Me,” which explores how media technology influences society and what we can do about it.

21/02/2024

21/02/2024

06/02/2024

Harvard's Steven Pinker offers a simple suggestion for a more rational (and successful) year.

27/01/2024

Follow for great information on critical thinking!

27/01/2024

From

26/01/2024

Thank you !!!

25/01/2024

Follow for great information!

24/01/2024

ANOTHER great graphic to use from !

24/01/2024

🚨 If you feel like big news events are breaking every day, you're not alone. But there are basic steps you can take to ensure you stick to the facts about the most important stories ⤵️

🔗 Download the infographic: https://bit.ly/BreakingNewsNLP

📌 Today's event: How student journalists are filling the gap in local news
- A student-led, virtual panel discussion
- When: 5pm ET
- Where: Online
- Register: https://bit.ly/Jan24NNLW

23/01/2024

As usual, great info from

22/01/2024

Follow for the best information about news literacy!

10/01/2024

PLEASE be vigilant! (free article so all can read)

A wave of elections coincides with state influence operations, a surge of extremism, A.I. advances and a pullback in social media protections.

08/01/2024

Principle 9 of Mental Immune System Care: Don’t cling to your beliefs
Learn more here: https://mentalimmunityproject.org/how-to-build-mental-immunity/ -9

08/01/2024

People who share false info sometimes use the language of critical thinking and media literacy, telling followers to “do your research” in one breath and then to “trust the plan” in the next.

So how can we tell if we’re really thinking critically? https://mediasmarts.ca/teacher-resources/break-fake-critical-thinking-vs-disinformation

08/01/2024

Today's quote comes from Athena Aktipis, who recently joined CIRCE - The Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative's board of directors. Reminder: CIRCE is the nonprofit behind the Mental Immunity Project. We are delighted to welcome Athena to our board and anticipate the significant impact she will undoubtedly make as part of our team.

08/01/2024

🤔 As 2024 begins, take a moment to remember that we all have biases. Understanding your own subjectivity and why you might react certain ways to particular posts will help you avoid falling into traps such as confirmation bias and motivated reasoning.

👀 Here's an infographic to help ⤵️

Download the pdf version 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/CognitiveBiasesNLP

08/01/2024

TODAY’S BIAS: SUNK COST FALLACY

DEFINITION AND EXPLANATION: The sunk cost fallacy describes our tendency to stick with a decision we’ve invested resources into, regardless of the increasing negative consequences of that decision. If you’ve ever wondered why you continue watching a boring movie, or why you proceed through a terribly uninteresting book, it might be because of the sunk cost fallacy. The better we understand the sunk cost fallacy, the more likely we are to catch ourselves committing it and thus the better positioned we are to prevent ourselves from continuing on with a losing course of action.

For many of us, once we’ve invested into something, it can be really difficult to cut our losses, and instead, we end up “throwing good money after bad.” For instance, if you’ve ever tried to bluff your way through a hand of poker, you know just how hard it can be to fold once you’re “pot committed.” However, instead of folding, you up the ante, hoping that an even bigger bluff will prevent an impending loss. But in life, the stakes are much higher than they are in poker.

If the consequences of our actions have a negative impact, the rational thing to do is stop engaging in that action. The problem is, when we’ve spent time, money, or effort pursuing a decision, rather than rationally looking at the negative consequences of continuing to pursue that decision, we tend to look at it from the perspective of “losing” that time, money, or effort. Of course, that time, money, or effort is already gone (they are, after all, sunk costs), and continuing with our commitment is unlikely to bring any of it back. Typically, we commit the sunk cost fallacy because we don’t want to “lose” our investment, even if we wind up more damaged than if we had simply cut our losses. Put another way, it makes no rational sense to continue losing simply because you’ve already lost, especially since you can’t protect an investment you can’t get back anyway.

The sunk cost fallacy can dramatically affect us as individuals, and can hugely impact the course of our lives. For example, we might stay in a relationship that isn’t good for us, or one we no longer want to be in, because of how much we’ve invested into the relationship. We might remain at a job we can’t stand, simply because of how much work we’ve done for the company. We might continue spending money fixing a run-down car, when it would clearly be cheaper to buy a new one. Or we might remain in the same social circle because of how much history we have with the people in it, even though we no longer share the same interests or values.

Additionally, the sunk cost fallacy has a number of systemic effects. Oftentimes, government projects that don’t meet expectations continue receiving funding simply because so much has already been invested into them. Both Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush continued sending soldiers into losing wars, and spent billions of dollars on what they both knew were hopeless causes. Thus, when it comes to fallacious thinking, sometimes lives are literally at stake.

Another pressing danger of the sunk cost fallacy is that it leads to the snowball effect, wherein we try to protect our investments by investing even more. The more we invest into something, the more we feel like we need to commit to it, which means we’ll likely expend more resources pursuing the endeavor.

HOW TO OVERCOME THE SUNK COST FALLACY: Sometimes, when we find ourselves in a hole, the best thing we can do is stop digging. However, in order to do so, we must first recognize that we’re in a hole. Therefore, awareness is our first line of defense against the sunk cost fallacy. If you find yourself focused on prior losses rather than current or future costs, you can use this awareness as a signal to don your skeptical spectacles and think critically about your situation.

In addition, we should also carefully consider whether the investment we’re trying to protect is actually recoverable, or if it truly is just a sunken cost. Therefore, it’s good practice to ask yourself, “If there’s no way to get back what I’ve already put into something, am I better off investing further, or is cutting my losses the better option?”

Lastly, we should try to recognize the difference between making a decision that’s based on our emotions, and making a decision that’s based on reason. Emotions are both powerful and important drivers of our decision-making, and, like it or not, we are emotionally tied to the investments we make. Therefore, since decisions that are based on emotions are not always in our best interest, thinking critically about our investments becomes especially important.

MORE ON THIS AND OTHER BIASES: thinkingispower.com/guide-to-the-most-common-cognitive-biases-and-heuristics/ -sunk-cost-fallacy

Thanks to Jon Guy from Think Straight for writing this post!

08/01/2024

Repost of great info from• As the saying goes, “You are what you eat.” This doesn’t just apply to food; our digital diet influences what we think, feel, do, and say. The habits we create around media consumption have the power to shape the world that we live in, and we believe those are habits worth examining. Here are five questions to explore as you think about your goals heading into 2024.