“What seemed most interesting to me was that when autistic kids don’t attribute agency to dancing triangles or their teddy bears, they are correct. ”

I guess so.
I suppose the solution to this problem is that, when they don’t attribute the agency behind the triangles, they are not correct.
And this would therefore have to be classified as a deficiency, not an attribute.

Of course, those who attribute agency directly to the triangles are living in cloud cuckoo land!

regards,
BillyJoe

It reminded me, if you’ll allow a slight tangent, of the business I’m in. We absolutely depend on Agency Detection in the audience. The definition of animation we use is “to bring to life”, and the main criterion used for “life” is this: Does the audience believe that the character’s actions are the result of a thought process.”

Of course, being *really* convincing takes a high degree of skill, which our animators have.

In that context, are the public and government responses HADD or just a more mundane group of logical fallacies? Of course, maybe this isn’t the best case study given it’s heavy political tension…

Since the Iraq war and WMD’s don’t involve this agency/non-agency interpretation, I don’t see what it has to do with the study. The question was what the Iraq government was doing, and there was no question that they were human beings making decisions and carrying out actions; the only question was what were those actions? UFO’s seem to be a classic example of misattribution of agency, when the alien buffs decide that the lights in the sky must be alien-operated spacecraft. Can this research be extrapolated to all human errors, such as the mistakes leading up the war in Iraq? They seem very different.

The study shows why, when we make a mistake, it is common to say, “I’ve been HADD!” (Sorry, but it’s late, and I’m feeling punchy.)

Or a false negative?

How are cartoon characters not agents?
Is there not intention there?
Not in the actual characters of course, but in the minds of their creators.
Cannot a particular nasty cartoon character give a child nightmares?

What about characters in a book?
Is there not agency there?
Not in the characters but in their author working through his characters?
Cannot these characters affect us in a very deeply meaningful way?

If not, what about the characters in a movie of the book?
Are they not agents?
I guess if you think cartoon characters are not agents, then actors likewise would not not agents either.

(I hope the above does not come off as being too agressive because actually I’m only asking questions here.)

I think this “deficit” is actually one of the major features (in that it provides positive benefits) of the autism spectrum, which I see as a trade-off of a “theory of mind” for a “theory of reality”.

http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2008/10/theory-of-mind-vs-theory-of-reality.html

Communication with language requires a “theory of mind”, which call the cognitive hardware that converts a mental concept into a data stream of language and back. Fundamentally the only things that can be communicated are mental concepts, the first person has a mental concept, converts it to the data stream of language, the data stream is transferred, the second person up-converts the data to mental concepts instantiated in the second persons brain.

To understand how someone is thinking is to be able to instantiate the same mental concepts and the same thinking processes that lead to those mental concepts.

Acquisition of a first language by humans is an interesting process. Children either learn the well-formed language in their environment, or they synthesize a new language, a Creole, from the bits and pieces of the pidgin languages being spoken around them. The compulsion that forces the development of a single mapping of sounds and gestures onto mental concepts as the Creole is formed must be quite profound.

A “theory of mind” can be completely arbitrary. The ToM that is “correct”, is the one shared by everyone else. A “theory of reality” is completely different. It has to correspond to actual reality, so it must be changeable when it is found to be wrong. A ToM can be completely fixed over a lifetime, a ToR can’t be.

I though it was fairly obvious. He was arguing that the justification for the invasion of Iraq was based on false agency detection. I don’t entirely agree; there were other selling points used on the American public, though I think they were mostly bet-hedging and that 911/WMD was the main one.

But unless I’m mistaken, his real point is that it’s probably wrong to “have no beef with 911 truthers or moon landing conspiracists,” because these sorts of things have real consequences.

Now, I think you might argue that they’re victims of their own agency detection and so we shouldn’t criticize…if so, I strongly disagree. From a statistical perspective, any given potential conspiracy theory or bit of pareidolia is likely to attract a decent number of followers, but I would argue that a very large proportion of those potential followers have strong enough critical thinking and skepticism, innate or learned, to check themsleves before embracing the belief if they have a little help from others pointing out the problems. I think public criticsm is necessary for that effect, and I think it helps encourage more learned skepticism in general.

That aside, I also think such people are deserving of direct criticism for the simple sake of their error. Often they should “know better,” and are failing to apply critical thought they normally do elsewhere, out of various personal biases they are capable of recognizing and correcting for.

Of COURSE I know they will often, even usually, fail to learn from the criticism. I do it all the time, catching myself only sometimes. Nor do I expect people to burn bridges with friends, family and acquaintances who won’t budge. We have to make judgement calls. But wherever possible, I think we should find a way to challenge such beliefs, both for the potential direct benefit of the believer as well as the indirect benefit of broader society. Put the truth where it needs to be.