The Warren Harding Error and Putting Pieces Together

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The Warren Harding Error andPutting Pieces
Together
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The Dark Side of Thin-Slicing

• Rapid cognition can sometimes lead us astray due
  to unconscious prejudices.
• We can make snap judgments that fail to get below
  a surface impression.
• e.g., 80 of IAT takers end up with pro-white
  associations, which means that it takes them
  longer to complete association answers when they
  are required to put good words into the Black
  category than when they are required to link bad
  things with black people (p. 84).
• Of the 50,000 African Americans who have taken
  the Race IAT, half have stronger associations
  with whites than with blacks (p. 85).

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The Dark Side of Thin-Slicing

• Correlation between height and CEOs 14.5 of
  U.S. population is 6 feet or taller, but almost
  60 of the Fortune 500 Companies CEOs are 6 feet
  or taller.
• Only 3.9 of U.S. population is 6 feet 2 inches
  or taller, but almost 33 of all CEOs are only 3
  U.S. presidents have been below-average height.
• Each 2cms is worth 3.5 in income later on in
  life, the study says

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The Dark Side of Thin-Slicing Looking for the
Lay-Down

• Unconscious and unintended prejudices (car
  prices, mortgage rates, taxi cabs, job
  interviews, medical care, etc.) familiarity
  breeds comfort (radio programming)
• Ian Ayres (U. of Chicago) 38 people -- 18 white
  men, 7 white women, 8 black women, 5 black men
• Figure 1 Figure 2

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The Dark Side of Thin-Slicing Predatory Lending

• Nationally, African American applicants are 2.38
  times more likely to be denied a conventional
  mortgage loan than white applicants. Latinos are
  rejected 1.63 times more often than whites.
  Lending disparities remain even when minority
  groups are compared to whites of a similar income
  level. In fact the gap widens at higher income
  levels, with high-income minorities often facing
  steeper denial rates than low-income whites. -
  In the Seattle-Everett area, for instance,
  African Americans earning more than 90,000 per
  year are 1.39 times more likely to be turned down
  for conventional mortgage loans than whites
  earning less than 39,000.

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Comparisons of the Rates of Three Major Surgical
Procedures Performed in Two Periods (1992 through
1994 and 1999 through 2001) among Black Men and
White Men and among Black Women and White Women
per 1,000 Persons Enrolled in Medicare
Jha, A. K. et al. N Engl J Med 2005353683-691
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The Wisdom of Crowds Decentralization

• Decentralization fosters, and is in turn fed by,
  specializationof labor, interest, attention,
  etc.
• Specialization tends to make people more
  productive and efficient
• - Adam Smith and the advantages of
  specialization
• (e.g., pins and focused factories)
• 9/11 decentralization

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The Wisdom of Crowds Decentralization

• The failure of 9/11 was not due primarily to the
  decentralization of the American intelligence
  community, as it was to the lack of any
  aggregating mechanisme.g., stock market, casinos
  or bookmakers, etcthat could tap into the wisdom
  of NSA people, CIA operatives, FBI agents
  (below), and the Pentagon (Able Danger).
• There was, in fact, healthy decentralization but
  no aggregation, and therefore no organization to
  connect the dots. We had the dots.