The summer school where Sue Blackmore gave that talk is called Oxford Royale Academy. Yes really – with the e on the end of Royal. Maybe you’re not allowed to call your consumer item “royal” unless you have permission from a royal? So you call it Royale instead? But the trouble is then it sounds like ice cream.

You probably shouldn’t be allowed to call it Oxford either, because it’s misleading, but there you go. My uncle put the Gallup Poll in Princeton to get the appearance of academic credibility. It’s what people do. He called it The American Institute for Public Opinion for the same reason. Templeton puts “Institutes” and “Academies” in Oxford and Cambridge for the same reason. It’s a widespread wheeze. It’s a wonder Oxford and Cambridge aren’t so full of shady “Institutes” there’s no room left for the universities. [Read more…]

Just because you don’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there.*

You don’t see everything there is to see. I don’t, we don’t, everybody don’t.

By the same token, just because you do see something, doesn’t mean it’s all there is to see. (That’s the same thing really.)

Jeffrey Saltzman cites Daniel Kahneman on the subject.

Daniel Kahneman coined the acronym WYSIATI which is an abbreviation for “What you see is all there is”. It is one of the human biases that he explores when he describes how human decision-making is not entirely based on rational thought. [Read more…]