I'm pretty sure it's wrong, it's a cognitive bias, not fact. The fact is that bad things also happen to good people and good things happen to bad people too. Discussing that is not the purpose of this thread though.

Not really that telling, I'm simply being reasonably uncertain. It's not really fair to then use that uncertainty to undermine my position. If I were unreasonably certain, as in the past, you'd use that too. Be charitable here.

Slippery slope fallacy. Taking my position to an extreme doesn't mean that I support the extreme version of it. I suspect that the JWH is at play in a religious context (how could it not be, theists are human too aren't they?), but that doesn't mean that I think every time something bad happens, or that at every level of something that could be considered bad, that it's in play.

In any case, whether or not someone would 'waltz' into a hospital and act as you describe, or fleetingly wonder what circumstances would mean that it isn't likely to happen to them, are entirely different things. Nice straw man though.

Tawdry tactics Fret, come on.... If I argued like this you would justifiably rip me a new one.

No I'm not and yes it is. What I'm describing is a cognitive bias with a very definite context, it's not 'trying to find reasons why it happened', it's trying to find reasons why it won't happen to us. There's no getting hung up, just a discussion about a specific behaviour in a limited context.

I'm not sure how I could show this given that I have no credibility with you. I thought, as I've said before ITT, that it was a well established and accepted behaviour. If it's not, my question is meaningless and the conversation is over. Either we agree to accept the bias exists, to avoid the regress, and we have the conversation, or we don't and it's over.

Ugh. Just to clear up terminology: Something being a cognitive bias doesn't automatically mean it's "wrong". The Negativity bias, for example, is probably very key to evolutionary success as there is a very distinct and disastrous lower bound for negative experience that we best not reach. Also from a psychological PoV it isn't necessarily wrong: if bad experiences impact my (psychologically) more than good experiences, it's entirely rational to give more attention to negative experiences (in order to avoid them).
In addition, something not being a fact has little to do with being wrong either.

But besides terminology: If I act kindly towards others, in general I get acted kindly back. That seems to be pretty hard to disproove (and if you're honest to yourself, you'll agree that this is true in your daily life just as it is in mine). If you label the first part (acting kindly towards others) as altruistic behavior, Iterative Prisoners Dilemma gives you a non-trivial explanation why this is not automatically a bad strategy. So, in the social sphere, the assumption that good deeds pay off is certainly not a bias that is simply "wrong". An unquestioned transfer of that dynamic to the world at large (diseases, accidents, w/e) would result in errors of judgement, sure. But still - it's an error not because of an incorrect premise but a faulty transfer of dynamics of one sphere to another.

While I agree that this is not what the thread is about, you're making it too easy for yourself if you just read the label on the box, see "bias", and simply conclude that "something in here is objectively wrong".
In this part I wasn't undermining it but simply drawing attention to the fact that you seem to be unsure of its prevalence once it's spelled out in detail. Given that most itt don't seem to hold the views of the spelled-out version (multiple posters have assured you that a dying person doesn't immediately evoke thoughs of "where did he go wrong?" but simply compassion and sorrow), and you yourself don't seem to be convinced of it either, this seemed to be a releveant point.

Just as an aside on argumentation: Here you're assuming that all humans are equally susceptible to the JWH - which is perhaps likely, but not simply evident (I would assume that Aspergers, for example, are not). Also, it's at least conceivable, that some theological argument negates the JWH, such that it would NOT affect theists at all. Concluding from theists humanness to their susceptibility to this or that particular bias is not valid.

The bolded is coming up in the rest of your post again, so I'll sum them together here:

You are simply wrong - or at least are not going from what the wiki-page on the JWH is saying (which seems to be basically all either of us knows about this bias). I'll post it one more time:

You do see that there is nothing in there about rationalizing something to assure myself that it won't happen to me? The JWH - as a hypothesis - is claiming a specific relationship between causes and consequences; that it is done to assuage our worries about looming doom or some such is your interpretation.

Hence:

I accept that the bias exists - I'm simply maintaining that the part on which you seem to build most of your case, namely that we use the JHW (a) to rationalize other peoples fates and (b) in order to assure ourselves that the same fate won't befall us is not part of the hypothesis.
Not sure how you mean that but given that I talk to you, you have credibility.
As for how to show that - well, assuming that we've established that the part about "to assure ourselve that it won't happen to us" is indeed not what the JWH is about but simply your interpretation as to its existence and utilization by us, one way to suggest this link would be to point to human traits that suggest that we constantly habour significant worries about troublesome future events. Perhaps risk aversion would point towards this conclusion, as well as some other cognitive biases such as the Framing effect. Not sure how far you'd get with this, but it'd be a try.

For my 2) above (directionality), you would simply have to suggest/present evidence that at least a significant portion of mankind is indeed capable of going from "If A then B" to "B, hence A". On its surface, it doesn't seem unlikely that one can show that.

After that, you can posit an explanation on how that relates to religious folks in particular.

Sorry, that's my lack of specificity again. I meant two different things there.

1) I'm 'pretty sure' it's wrong that people have somehow deserved or earned something bad happening to them and because of that it's not likely to happen to me. I don't believe in a higher power, or force or karma and I fully accept that some things are just random and it could happen to me.

2) It's a cognitive bias and as such may not apply to everyone in every situation. It's not written in stone to me, it doesn't explain everything, just something to consider as an explanation for some situations.

And yes, I associated the word 'fact' with 'right', I shouldn't have done that. Lazy thinking again.


Hopefully my apparent uncertainty is now explained by what I wrote above. I don't consider the JWH as a blanket explanation or behaviour, just something that might be kicking in.

Separately though, whilst multiple posters may have assured me that they don't do it, they still might. We engage in many behaviours that it surprises us to find out about. Most cognitive biases are unthinking and unrecognised whilst they are going on. I'm sure that there are other biases that they would deny they engage in whilst in fact engaging in them on a regular basis. It's not easily provable nor relevant to the OP so I didn't pursue that.


No, not assuming that 'all' humans are equally susceptible to it, just that it's common enough to have been identified, tested for, and named.

I think it is valid:

P1) Some humans are susceptible to JWH (If you don't agree, we go no further)
P2) Theists are human
C) Some theists may be engaging the JWH

Since the conclusion can't be true while either of the premises are false, it's a valid argument.

Ok, here then are some more definitions that I believe support my interpretation:

If you still feel that the final part of your post is relevant given these definitions, that I haven't fully understood the bias and I'm misapplying it, then I'll address your comments. You don't need to write it all again, just point me back at it. By the way, I meant credibility in terms of knowledge of Psychology although comments like your 'samurai sword' post do make me wonder.

Ok, given your three additional definitions, where in them (and the original one from wiki) do you find: "What I'm describing is a cognitive bias with a very definite context, it's not 'trying to find reasons why it happened', it's trying to find reasons why it won't happen to us." I don't see that at all.

The second part of the first quote said this:

The JWH is people seeking to explain to themselves why that bad thing happened to the other person and why it won't happen to them. The alternative, the fear that the world is unjust and unfair and that bad things happen to good people, is what prompts the rationalization.

Ok, its I sure been beat to death but can one actually state that there is a "just world fallacy" but more like a "just world hypothesis" ? It can then be proven or disproven( so to speak) but in the first case its a statement of fact which cannot be disproved as it does not allow movement from its statement of falsehood.

Is this more apropos in the "best of all possible worlds" augured by Leibniz and denied by Voltaire and Russell and of course, others on stream, yea or nay ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of...ossible_worlds

If you do click on the Wikipedia article please note the statements of Aquinas concerning much of what is debated through many threads.

Voltaire mocked the above in his play, "Candide", which actually i had seen and brought to mind what the debate is about. I don't care for Voltaire and actually find him unhumorous,here, and while tweaking the Papal nose.

Right. Conveniently quoting one, and shortest, source. Had you made the effort to look just one step further you'd have found in the next link, that (a) they differentiate between explaining what the JWH is, and how to explain/interpret it and (b) that there are, indeed multiple competing interpretations/explanations:

... which might have alerted you to the fact that in your quote:

only the bolded is actually an example, while the underlined is again an explanation.

Had that alerted you enough to bothered looking in depth at the third source you cited, you'd have found that explanations of the phenomenon in it make no reference at all to your suggestion that the phenomenon is not to be explained as the attempt to simply find reasons for other peoples misfortune but rather specifically to find reason why their misfortune wont befall us.

Rather, they suggest:

In that article, the initial research is also mentioned - again without your suggested explanation:

It concludes with a word of caution:

Had you now turned to wikipedia, you'd have found:

In short, you take the least comprehensive source you can find and take it as pars pro toto for the entire phenomenon. Then you go on for 100 posts insisting that this is what the bias is about. srsly...

Phew!! For awhile there I thought that wall of text was aimed at me.

Nope, at the beginning of the thread I'd never looked at that page. I was going from a book I read about cognitive biases and some random sites I googled back when I read it. When I started the thread, I never expected the JWH to be challenged like this so I chose the wiki page to use as the definition because it was top of the search results.

Everything you quoted seems to support how I'm interpreting the JWH, I'm really at a loss as to why you don't see it.

How do these excerpts from the quotes you listed NOT mean that the result of the bias is that people reassure themselves? That's what the bias does and that's all that I need to take from it to ask the OP question.

Just FYI, this is not a valid argument, and in order for an argument to be valid it must be impossible for both premises to be true and the conclusion false.

Oddly enough, most Christians believe that Christ did nothing bad at all, yet he was mocked, scourged and crucified.

Christ Himself spoke about accidental tragedies, saying that a bunch of people who were killed in a tower that collapsed did not sin any more than those outside the tower that lived.

There is the difference between THE explanation and A explanation. In particular since you stated that the JWH is a congitive bias for a SPECIFIC context and goal:

Your rendering is not supported by the bolded explanations:

Thus, you claimed the JHW is a bias intended to achieve ONE specific result. The Interwebz disagrees.

Now I see the problem. I think.

I'm looking at a cognitive bias in a specific context, that of religion. I'm not saying "that the JWH is a cognitive bias for a SPECIFIC context and goal:"

That's the reason that I haven't been looking at the reverse side of this bias, that people often assume that good things happen to good people, it's not relevant ITT.

Is it invalid because we can simply say 'no theists are engaging in JWH'?

And I got the explanation the wrong way around.

Then I'm pretty much at a loss how you can think this can result in anything but a trainwreck:

You take a cognitive bias that can kick in in a multitude of different contexts (observing a person electroshocked vs. 43yr old dying of cancer vs. earthquake vs. Madoff getting arrested for a ponzi scheme) and is being explained in a number of different ways, and reduce your discussion of it to ONE context and ONE explanation (while not being too clear about it). You don't argue for the validity of that reduction. Furthermore, you simply claim that some specific contexts aren't relevant for your intended topic, again without argument.

Thus, without justifying any of these steps, you chip and chop both the bias, context and explanation to a size you find appropiate and then ask how it relates to religion.

That won't work. Take a bias, understand how it works, gather all proposed explanations, try to find common themes and patterns. Given that comprehensive undestanding of the underlying cognitive mechanisms of the bias, take the context you're interested in (religion) and again find common themes and patterns - this time of contexts and situations in which the bias might be at work. Then try to find correlations and observable differences to non-believers and then hypothesize about the perhaps religious reasons for these differences.

It's probably the cognitive bias of illusory superiority on multiple levels.

I can learn even from a trainwreck.

There's no reduction to argue for. I wouldn't feel a need to support discussing the JWH in a religious context any more than I'd feel a need to justify discussing the how the Confirmation bias may be playing a part in the context of which newspaper people choose to read.

I think that since post one I've been quite clear about how I think the bias works and why I wondered if it plays a part in how theists deal with the specific issue of the problem of evil. Any appearance of chip chopping must be the result of me trying to answer your objections. I'm taking the bias, as it is, there's been no editing.

I think I do

I think I have, that being that bad things happen, theists factor in god, the problem of evil can drive theists away from god, the ones that aren't driven MAY be engaging the JWH. There are of course other reasons why theists may not be driven to atheism by the problem of evil.

You know if anything, I expected more problem with the use of the Problem of evil since it's such a broad ranging and contentious subject.


Given my lack of Psychology qualifications this is never likely to happen. Do you have any? I've been assuming not but have still discussed the bias with you.

I did, see above.

The obvious observable difference is that an atheist doesn't believe in god and therefore can never be allowing JWH to help them sidestep the problem of evil because they don't think that there is one.

The religious reason why the JWH might be playing a part in sidestepping the problem of evil is that religious people believe in god.

+1.

Cognitive biases are fascinating, but given that the literature is still reasonably young I think it's worth approaching it cautiously. For me, the most compelling cognitive biases are those that are 1) very common 2) cause demonstrably false judgements and 3) are directly tied to underlying cognitive structures. The archetypal example, imo, is Base Rate Neglect. E.g:

Only 15% of doctors get this question right. Do have a go at working out or estimating your own answer.


[source]

To my mind, the Just World Hypothesis is qualitatively different from something like Base Rate Neglect. Firstly, the JWH is not (setting aside methodological naturalism) demonstrably false. It is possible, however unlikely, that theism is true. One way to rescue the argument would be to show that the JWH really is a neurological issue. However, it is not clear to me that the JWH reflects any underlying cognitive mechanism rather than being a common but culturally-influenced belief. If this is the case then the OP is on very shaky ground because if the JWH reflects a culturally-transmitted belief rather than a systematic failure of cognition then the OP essentially begs the question. We know that the vast majority of people are theists, and we know that the vast majority of theists believe in a just god. Therefore the existence of the JWH is plausibly just an inevitable (even rational) consequence of theism.

I'd say that if atheists don't exhibit the JWH then it is not really a cognitive bias. But you could remove reference to the JWH and still have an interesting thread imo. It seems perfectly plausible that belief in a just god could provide some cover for the PoE, regardless of whether or not it is a true cognitive bias.

it's funny in that while belief in a just God may provide some cover for the PoE, it's also the cause of the PoE

That's some gentle comedy

Believe it or not, the final part of your post had occurred to me. My feeling is that it isn't and that the Theism is more likely to be a consequence of our cognitive biases. Are you familiar with Dawkins 'moth' argument?

I'm not qualified to argue whether or not JWH is Neurological or culturally transmitted. Does it matter though? Whether neurologial or learned, it may still be a factor in how some Theists reassure themselves when a conflict arises between their belief in a loving, just god, and bad things happening to people.


I didn't mean that Atheists don't exhibit the JWH at all. Fret asked for "observable differences to non-believers", and Atheists not sidestepping the problem of evil because the JWH is in play is an obvious one since they don't believe there's a Problem of Evil. Atheists are no less likely to be susceptible to the bias though.

That is a very general claim and your OP is about the relationship between a specific cognitive bias and specific theistic beliefs. My argument addresses the specifics and explicitly draws distinctions between different cognitive biases. You can't just hand-wave away the criticism by moving to a much broader argument.

Sure, but it doesn't seem relevant to the OP.

It matters because of the structure of your OP. As I noted, you can still have an interesting discussion about the relationship between belief in a just god and the PoE but, if you want to demonstrate that belief in a just god is false due to cognitive bias, the order of causation matters.

Cite?

In order for your argument to be valid the first premise must be a universal statement. For example, your argument is of the same form as this argument:

1) Some mammals may live on land.
2) Whales are mammals.
3) Therefore, some whales may live on land.

Notice here that both premises are true, but the conclusion is false. However, if the first premise said that all mammals live on land, it would be valid.

Urk. I wasn't, the broader argument came up because of your post but it's not related to my OP. It's not even an argument I want to have, which is why I described it as 'my feeling'. No hand waving going on, I was just chatting to you.

It's not, I was responding to your comment. It's a completely different subject to the OP and I'm well aware of that.

At no point have I been trying to prove that belief in god is false. I haven't actually been trying to prove anything, it was a topic for discussion. I'm not sure how you got that impression. I thought the OP was fairly self explanatory.

I can't provide anything, I was basing it on the fact that humans are susceptible to cognitive biases, atheists are human and I have no reason to believe that they are any different in that respect from any other subgrouping. I'd could be completely wrong. I'd rather retract it than try to defend it in any depth so please don't shred this.

Bear in mind that I was correcting your misconception that 'I'd say that if atheists don't exhibit the JWH then it is not really a cognitive bias.' when that's not what I'd said. I said that atheists can't be sidestepping the PoE because of the JWH cognitive bias, because they don't believe in god so there is no PoE for them, in response to Fret asking me for a difference between believers and non-believers.

This is one of those misunderstandings that takes on a life of it's own.

Ok, I wasn't aware of that requirement. I thought a valid argument was simply one where the conclusion can't be false if the premises are true.

Since I can't say that ALL humans are susceptible to the JWH, how about this:

P1) Theists are human
P2) Humans are susceptible to cognitive bias
P3) JWH is a cognitive bias
C) Theists may be susceptible to the JWH.

So now I'm wondering how the JWH might manifest itself in a religious context and it occurred to me that for some theists it might provide an rationale for why an all powerful and loving god allows bad things to happen to people. It might even explain why god does bad things to people. Simply put, they must have done something to deserve it. Now they have reassurance and a motivation to avoid deserving it themselves.

Perhaps it has even deeper roots and the idea of Sin, that there's an invisible force that will punish you for being committing sin, is a byproduct of our tendency to rationalise bad things in the way that the JWH suggests that we're doing.

I get that this is very generalised and full of holes but it's just a thought at this point. I thought that I'd throw it out there to see what people would make of it.