Peter Baumann suggests that our biases can get a bad rap, but that they're essential. He sees them as unconscious inclinations that we've developed over time, and most of the time, they reflect actual knowledge we've acquired about how the world works. They set the frameworks within which we live our lives. Our bias toward feeling safe, for example, keeps us (mostly) out of trouble, while a bias towards certain flavors sets us parameters for selecting the dish we'd like to eat at a restaurant. Of course, our biases are only as intelligent as we are, so occasionally they're pretty stupid.
There's a category of not-so-helpful mental habits and inclinations called “cognitive biases." The problem with these biases is that when we incorrectly apply them to decision-making, they prejudice our thought process and keep us from thinking, and deciding, clearly.
Researchers have identified a number of these mind traps. In this video, Baumann zeroes in on confirmation bias, where we ignore any evidence that doesn't support what we've already concluded, and only find things that prove it. He also nominates the uniqueness bias as maybe the most amusing cognitive bias.
Julia Galef has a great method for avoiding another common bias, the commitment effect. It's the one where you keep doing what evidence suggests may not be working anymore because either you don't want to feel your investment up until now has been wasted, or because the behavior has become tied up in who you feel you are. Her tip? Ask yourself what you would do if you were just coming to the problem from the outside.
At Business Insider, Samantha Lee put together a great infographic showing 20 cognitive biases that can get in the way of solid decision-making.
If you make a lot of decisions, this seems like a fantastic tool to have available so you can double-check the integrity of your thought process at those times when it's absolutely critical that your cognitive biases don't prevent you from thinking clearly.
Our hearts beat at a resting rate of 60 to 100 beats per minute. Lots of other things pulse, too. The colors we see and the pitches we hear, for example, are due to the different wave frequencies ("pulses") of light and sound waves.
Now, a study in the journal Geoscience Frontiers finds that Earth itself has a pulse, with one "beat" every 27.5 million years. That's the rate at which major geological events have been occurring as far back as geologists can tell.
A planetary calendar has 10 dates in red
Credit: Jagoush / Adobe Stock
According to lead author and geologist Michael Rampino of New York University's Department of Biology, "Many geologists believe that geological events are random over time. But our study provides statistical evidence for a common cycle, suggesting that these geologic events are correlated and not random."
The new study is not the first time that there's been a suggestion of a planetary geologic cycle, but it's only with recent refinements in radioisotopic dating techniques that there's evidence supporting the theory. The authors of the study collected the latest, best dating for 89 known geologic events over the last 260 million years:
- 29 sea level fluctuations
- 12 marine extinctions
- 9 land-based extinctions
- 10 periods of low ocean oxygenation
- 13 gigantic flood basalt volcanic eruptions
- 8 changes in the rate of seafloor spread
- 8 times there were global pulsations in interplate magmatism
The dates provided the scientists a new timetable of Earth's geologic history.
Tick, tick, boom
Credit: New York University
Putting all the events together, the scientists performed a series of statistical analyses that revealed that events tend to cluster around 10 different dates, with peak activity occurring every 27.5 million years. Between the ten busy periods, the number of events dropped sharply, approaching zero.
Perhaps the most fascinating question that remains unanswered for now is exactly why this is happening. The authors of the study suggest two possibilities:
"The correlations and cyclicity seen in the geologic episodes may be entirely a function of global internal Earth dynamics affecting global tectonics and climate, but similar cycles in the Earth's orbit in the Solar System and in the Galaxy might be pacing these events. Whatever the origins of these cyclical episodes, their occurrences support the case for a largely periodic, coordinated, and intermittently catastrophic geologic record, which is quite different from the views held by most geologists."
Assuming the researchers' calculations are at least roughly correct — the authors note that different statistical formulas may result in further refinement of their conclusions — there's no need to worry that we're about to be thumped by another planetary heartbeat. The last occurred some seven million years ago, meaning the next won't happen for about another 20 million years.
