RE: https://mastodon.online/@tomstafford/116041517300854913

As I explain in my post about the #BiasFallacy (https://byrdnick.com/archives/11072/the-bias-fallacy), Tom shows how #bias can be a good thing.

My example of good bias was ignoring irrelevant variables in #science to avoid spurious or misleading correlations.

Tom’s examples are probable better: fire alarms and #signalDetectionTheory. Worth a read!

#cogSci #philSci #decisionScience #psychology

The #BiasFallacy may be as prevalent as it seems: 

By 2017 I had seen so many fallacious objections predicated on "bias" that I ended up labeling them "bias fallacies" (e.g., inferring someone's argument, conclusion, or evidence is wrong from someone's apparent bias): https://byrdnick.com/archives/11072/the-bias-fallacy

In 2023 a paper found that bias fallacies were the most frequent ad hominem attacks in hundreds of paragraphs written by think tanks between 2008 and 2020: https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2023.2245792

#logic #edu #writing