And here is why basing conclusions on anecdotal evidence is fraught with danger. The last page or so of the thread has been a constant application of experimenters bias and fundamental attribution bias.My 1% offering is very generous.
The first is to anecdotally see and note down the sought after behaviour regularly while dismissing and ignoring the compliant behaviour that falls outside of the subjectively sought response.
The second is to presume the fundamental attributes of an external decision as being consistent with the observers own set of beliefs.
Oh and ugh, dont get me started on C0na's basic lack of understanding of the basis of anecdotal evidence.
As far as it goes there will always be loons out there, but as anecdotes show you dont even need any specialised equipment to be a loon. Specific equipment just makes it easier to either hide being a loon, or justify it externally or internally. I think anyone can think of millions of situations where we have noted people being idiots, and conversely if our observer bias wasnt so strong we could probably think of millions of counter-examples where people have been perfectly responsible in the same situations.
I believe that societally one of the reasons that we have such a strong negative observer bias in Australia is that our very ethos and nature is one of a post-enlightnment individualistic culture, where the individual triumphs by default over the collective. Combine this with a strong basis of fundamental attribution error (repeated studies have shown that Australia beats out most other countries in the application of this feature, second perhaps to the US), and suddenly we have a society which values the primacy of the individual at the detrimental expense of the other.
Just look at the papers to see this happening regularly:
Shock horror, someone cant fit a car seat properly, therefore EVERYONE cant fit car seats properly. Quick mandate enforced fitting of car seats.
Do you see the logical inconsistency there.
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