{"id":3730,"date":"2016-01-15T19:37:04","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T01:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3730"},"modified":"2016-01-15T19:41:05","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T01:41:05","slug":"freethought-fridayreads-availability-cascades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2016\/01\/15\/freethought-fridayreads-availability-cascades\/","title":{"rendered":"Freethought Fridayreads \u2013 Availability Cascades"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;re reading Skeptic Ink, so you&#8217;re probably a skeptic, and there is a decent\u00a0chance you are already aware of various way in which\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_FV9499yMJw\" target=\"_blank\">we cannot trust our brains<\/a>. One of these ways is known as the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Availability_heuristic\" target=\"_blank\">availability heuristic<\/a>, a sort of mental shortcut which allows people to roughly estimate the relevance or intensity of various phenomena by assessing the ease with which specific examples spring\u00a0to mind.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.onlyimage.com\/photo\/image-cascade-2320262\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #dddddd\" title=\"Image Cascade\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2016\/01\/image-cascade-300x169-2320262.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cascade via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.OnlyImage.com\" target=\"_blank\">www.OnlyImage.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>What you may not yet know is that humans\u00a0coordinating together in large crowds give rise to the possibility of an <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Availability_cascade\" target=\"_blank\">availability cascade<\/a>, in which this (occasionally useful but statistically\u00a0inaccurate) mental heuristic is harnessed (deliberately or not) to create a socially viral mass delusion.<\/p>\n<p>The original paper by Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein on this surprisingly widespread problem may be <a href=\"https:\/\/econ.duke.edu\/uploads\/assets\/People\/Kuran\/Availability%20cascades.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">found here<\/a>. Those of you familiar with the social phenomenon of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moral_panic\" target=\"_blank\">moral panics<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moral_entrepreneur\" target=\"_blank\">moral entrepreneurs<\/a> will not be terribly surprised by their findings.<\/p>\n<p>Share and enjoy!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;re reading Skeptic Ink, so you&#8217;re probably a skeptic, and there is a decent\u00a0chance you are already aware of various&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friday-reads","category-skepticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}