"That got me to thinking about how an odd condition of the human mind is that, while most of us are probably aware that you can't really prove things with anecdotal evidence, yet we're totally swayed by it anyway (and I certainly don't exclude myself from this). After all, statistics are difficult to digest, while anecdotes provide situations that we can totally imagine."
This is actually a really typical reasoning fallacy, that seems to have very little to do with how intelligent people are. We learned about it in cognitive psychology, I can't remember what it was called but it's one of many short-cut heuristics that we use to make decisions because it's easier for our brain to do than actually sorting out the various possibilities and likelihoods. The other one I remember that was very interesting is that people tend to think the conjunction of similar characteristics is more likely than each characteristic individually (ie- it's more likely that someone be a vegetarian and an animal rights activist than just a vegetarian) which is logically impossible (in almost all cases, I guess unless the two things always occurred together), but apparently doesn't sway our minds too much. That is one of the root causes of stereotyping. Cognitive Psyche was an excellent class.
And re:vaccinating, it's a pretty complicated issue. Many things that they vaccinate against are *really* uncommon in this country, so parents are right that you are more likely to have a serious vaccine reaction (and these can include death or permanent disability) than to catch the disease in some instances. Of course the *reason* the illnesses are so uncommon is because of vaccination- so in effect we are asking parents to potentially sacrifice their child for the good of society. I think the American psyche has a hard time with the idea of social responsibilities trumping individual well being. We are going to vaccinate, but on a more spread out schedule, and we are probably going to skip a few things or delay a few that I think are not very important. They vaccinate newborn babies against hepatitis B which is a sexually transmitted disease, just to catch the few babies who might be at risk for maternal-fetal transmission. So I definitely think there is something to be said for making informed decisions about vaccines, while still participating in the social contract that lets us not worry about polio and such.
no subject
This is actually a really typical reasoning fallacy, that seems to have very little to do with how intelligent people are. We learned about it in cognitive psychology, I can't remember what it was called but it's one of many short-cut heuristics that we use to make decisions because it's easier for our brain to do than actually sorting out the various possibilities and likelihoods. The other one I remember that was very interesting is that people tend to think the conjunction of similar characteristics is more likely than each characteristic individually (ie- it's more likely that someone be a vegetarian and an animal rights activist than just a vegetarian) which is logically impossible (in almost all cases, I guess unless the two things always occurred together), but apparently doesn't sway our minds too much. That is one of the root causes of stereotyping. Cognitive Psyche was an excellent class.
And re:vaccinating, it's a pretty complicated issue. Many things that they vaccinate against are *really* uncommon in this country, so parents are right that you are more likely to have a serious vaccine reaction (and these can include death or permanent disability) than to catch the disease in some instances. Of course the *reason* the illnesses are so uncommon is because of vaccination- so in effect we are asking parents to potentially sacrifice their child for the good of society. I think the American psyche has a hard time with the idea of social responsibilities trumping individual well being. We are going to vaccinate, but on a more spread out schedule, and we are probably going to skip a few things or delay a few that I think are not very important. They vaccinate newborn babies against hepatitis B which is a sexually transmitted disease, just to catch the few babies who might be at risk for maternal-fetal transmission. So I definitely think there is something to be said for making informed decisions about vaccines, while still participating in the social contract that lets us not worry about polio and such.