Re: Way OT: Adam Smith and Software Markets

[pmorrison@4lpi.com (Jason)]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message news:<1047485385.47345@master.nyc.kbcfp.com>...
> tmoran@acm.org wrote:
> >    So you don't believe in subliminal suggestion or
>  > other experimental observations? Sheeeesh.
> 
> I'm not aware of any high-quality evidence that exists
> for the efficacy of subliminal suggestion, that's all.
> 
> It's my personal prejudice that most "experimental"
> results in psychology have qustionable statistics,
> questionable reasoning, and questionable conclusions,
> and reveal more about the biases of the experimenters
> than about the subjects.

That's quite a prejudice.

If by "questionable," you mean "should be studied further, examined,
retested" I wholeheartedly agree, and I think most psych professors
would too.  If instead you mean, "should be ignored," welcome to the
world of my grandmother, who "doesn't have any use for" genetics.

If you want a good example of an interesting modern psych experiment,
look up the disinformation effect.  Basically, subjects witness an
event (like a car running a stop sign) and come back a few days later
to take a test on what they saw.  When asked certain questions, like
"was the traffic light red?" they will often respond yes, and then if
asked later "was there a traffic light or a stop sign?" they will
become convinced it was a traffic light after all.

This experiment has been done a number of times and there are lots of
grad students constantly trying to poke holes in it or find new
variables to control.  And, it's pretty interesting in terms of how we
know what we know and how our memories work (and don't work). 
Moreover, it's interesting in terms of how people can be influenced
without their knowledge.