

Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down" - robg
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/financebrain.html
Article here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004957
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zupatol
I noticed a similar effect on my opinion about movies and books. I am
extremely influenced by what I hear, to the point that a movie that I love
when I see it for the first time is completely spoilt the second time if I
heard a disparaging comment by someone I respect. The same thing almost made
me stop listening to music. I've heard so many bad things about Houellebecq
that I know there is no point in even trying to read his books.

This sounds like I can be easily influenced, but it may also be that I am more
conscious of these effects because I find it very important to judge things by
myself.

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whatusername
With some movies though - I'll go in with a negative expectation - and come
out very pleasantly surprised!

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sam_in_nyc
Here's a summary of the "experiment":

    
    
      * hook 24 college students to brain-scanner-majigs.
      * given them an economic problem.. the better they do, the more they get rewarded
      * have some of them do it on their own.
      * have some of them receive advice from someone who is said to be an expert of economics.
    

The results? Guess what! Different parts of your brain are active when you do
something yourself, and when you receive advice. Oh, and also, people tend to
follow advice from experts. Here's the amazing scientific breakthrough the
research suggests: maybe we can one day make brain-scanners that tell you when
you're receiving expert advice or making the decision yourself. Wow! I'd pay
$0 for such a thing, because I don't need one: I know when I'm choosing to
take a short-cut by following expert advice, and when I'm deciding myself.

Following expert advise isn't a bad thing. Think for yourselves what it means
to follow expert advice -- to me it's what allows the human race to advance at
such a rapid pace. You ask someone with experience, so that you don't have to
experience/learn it all yourself. It's the same concept as paying a business
to do something that would be inefficient for your own business to do, or
figure out how to do. If someone suggests using a company that in the past has
had good results, and you use them, and they fail... would you say that your
brain was _shut off_ during the decision to use them? No... they just let you
down. Plain and simple. But what if someone took brain scans while you made
the decision process?? Well, in that case, you could write an article about it
in Wired, it seems.

This is sensationalized science... and in this case is especially ironic,
since people seem to be taking the article headline at face value.

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h34t
This is another reason why I hated undergrad education. You have a bunch of
teachers positioned as "experts," and they ask you to accept counter-intuitive
statements under extreme time pressure and the threat of not passing the
class. The most natural thing to do is turn off your brain and accept what
they tell you, to pass the test.

Even if what you've "learned" is correct, you've disengaged yourself from the
actual process of thinking and learning.

~~~
jibiki
Most of what you learn (in school) is stuff you HAVE to take on faith. Are you
going to empirically verify the concept of covalent bonding? Are you going to
figure out Kreb's cycle from first principles? Will you deduce the results of
the Civil War based on it's causes?

If it was limited to subjects where students could study the evidence and come
to their own conclusions, school would quickly end up being useless...

~~~
eru
We would still have math. Or most of it.

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mahmud
I have noticed that in the people I have been pitching my startup idea to.
Thirty seconds or so and they would "lock up" and stare blankly. It took
several iterations and beta-testing on friends and family until I formulated
my pitch into a 3 minute high-level interactive approach. E.g:

"We all use the web and love it. Oh man, this is my favorite website, I'm
gonna do X and catch up with Y, but look! [problem description here]. [explain
the aggravation caused by the problem. [real numbers about the loss in
productivity or lost sales potential]. [projected growth in my industry, a
quick highlight of what's out there and how we're different and better]." Then
I go into the project description and everyone is delighted at that point.

To engage the people ask them questions. Instead of "we all do X" say "don't
we all do X?". Instead of saying something is a problem for you, say "is it
just me or does X bug the hell out of anybody else? [then look the audience
members individually in the eye]"

Participatory learning is something good teachers and salespeople have known
for a very long time, as far back as Socrates at least.

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robg
Article here:
[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004957)

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snprbob86
Now, they need to conduct this experiment again with a general population
control group and a "successful people" variable group. I'm willing to bet
that successful people think for themselves.

~~~
tokenadult
I was about to reply in a different manner, but let me start by asking you
what you mean by "successful people." What kind of people would be in that
group?

~~~
snprbob86
I put it in quotes to leave it intentionally undefined.

You could run several experiments with differing variable group selection
criteria to find out what kinds of people are more or less easily influenced.
However, in particular, I was thinking of people who are considered to be
strong leaders.

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jksmith
This is one of the issues I was thinking about when I was looking at that
Hunch site. The purest decisions that I make are the ones that have the
additional attribute that I think I know why I'm making them. This seems to
provide the most fertile ground for creativity.

So experts have worked on the Hunch algorithms - how do they codify this issue
of providing solutions without the taint of incestuously created (self-
reinforcing) knowledge? It's a closed environment that discourages the
existence of black swans.

Specific to the Wired piece, many remember the team of math guys who put
together a stock picking app back in the 90's. They thought the algorithms
were nearly foolproof, and built an investment business around their work. Of
course, their effort ultimately crashed spectacularly. An example of shutting
your own brain down from your own work.

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quellhorst
My brain doesn't "shut down". I tend to question everything even ideas that
are widely held by people around me.

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magoghm
Haven't they noticed that people spend all of their formative years in schools
were they are taught to never question authority? After so many years of
"behavioral training" it seems quite normal to me that people's brains shut
down when listening to an expert.

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ams6110
Hmm. To me this illustrates that we should be more skeptical of who we
consider to be "experts" not that we should not seek counsel of those with
subject matter expertise.

Hint, someone with a TV show is probably NOT who you should be listening to.

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rbanffy
I see the implications of this are enormous. The first example that comes to
my mind is criminal prosecution.

The second are software salesman. I have seen a lot of smart people who bought
from Vignette, Oracle, Microsoft... Now they have an excuse...

~~~
a-priori
I don't think this study speaks to anything about criminal persecution. This
study was about the effect of _one_ expert against a person's own judgement.
What you're talking about is the effect of the opinion of two competing
experts (persecution and defence).

My hunch is that having two expert opinions would be similar to having no
expert advice, in terms of fMRI activity.

~~~
rbanffy
Not at all. I am worried about the implications on the study conclusions on
interrogation techniques. The validity of a confession obtained under coercion
can be questioned when you show the effect an "expert" opinion can have on
someone's own capacity to assess his/her situation.

Cops will need to interrogate their suspects inside an fMRI machine...

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s_baar
Why is there a video of Cramer on the side?

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johnm
"Socratic method" FTW!

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c00p3r
There is some old classic paper titled The Programmers Stone. In the first
chapter there is very good description of two different states of the mind -
Packers and Mappers. This study is about packer's brain, because mappers will
try to combine expert's opinion with their own map, alter or update it when
necessary, or even create a model which fills both opinions. The rest of this
Programmers Stone is some kind of nonsense, but this first chapter is a must
read.

~~~
mahmud
Absolutely phenomenal find there c00p3r. The paper in question is <a
href="[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer%27s_Stone">here&...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer%27s_Stone).

Any more pointers on the psychology of programming would be nice, folks (I
know there is google, but I want to crowd-source that searching and vetting
;-)

~~~
MaysonL
Weinberg Psychology of Computer Programming recently published in 25th
anniversary edition:

[http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-
Silver...](http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-Silver-
Anniversary/dp/0932633420)

~~~
c00p3r
The Man-Month is enough! =)

Btw, there is another 33 years old book which is still worth reading -
[http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Magic-About-Language-
Therapy...](http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Magic-About-Language-
Therapy/dp/0831400447/)

~~~
mahmud
I found "abstract NLP", specially their use of Chomsky's work, a bit of a
voodoo. I have worked through Bandler and Grindger with a pencil for months,
and eventually became disenchanted with the faux-science aspects of NLP.

~~~
c00p3r
This book is not about NLP, it is about that language is a key, about gule-
governed behavior and about understanding and modeling of this behaviour.

The great idea is about using linguistic methods to understand and model a
human's mind activities, which are based on language constructions.

NLP itself is just a trend, an attempt to sell these theories to the masses.

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time_management
Someone needs to tell me who the experts are so I can be mindful of this and
prevent it from happening to me.

