Just perception

[DionysusToast]

Let's say, that you have some people that believe something is a particular way.

How would that cloud their perception?

Check out 2 mins and 45 seconds.

Do you check yourself for similar behaviour at all ? If not - why not ? Immune to it perhaps ?

 

[Shakone]

But what is your point? When it comes to food what you think of that food directly affects how it tastes. Even what it looks like affects the taste- why do you think Michelin star chefs spend so much time on presentation? And it does taste different, to them. Taste is not something objective, it is personal. What tastes good to you, may taste crap to me. What tastes average when I'm full may taste delicious when I'm hungry. Still the same food. It doesn't actually taste the same to her, because she thinks the second one is better. And so it is better.

 

[MrGecko]

But what is your point? When it comes to food what you think of that food directly affects how it tastes. Even what it looks like affects the taste- why do you think Michelin star chefs spend so much time on presentation? And it does taste different, to them. Taste is not something objective, it is personal. What tastes good to you, may taste crap to me. What tastes average when I'm full may taste delicious when I'm hungry. Still the same food. It doesn't actually taste the same to her, because she thinks the second one is better. And so it is better.

I think the general point is that people naturally don't believe what they see, but see what they believe.

 

[Shakone]

But that's too obvious and well known. It would be like me starting a thread showing that the placebo effect works. Everyone knows that. In this case he chose a bad example. What is he trying to get at? I hope it is much more.

 

[timsk]

But that's too obvious and well known. It would be like me starting a thread showing that the placebo effect works. Everyone knows that. In this case he chose a bad example. What is he trying to get at? I hope it is much more.

Well, I think it's very relevant to us as traders, as we believe what we want to believe even when faced with clear evidence to the contrary. For reasons of ego and not wanting to lose fave etc., we kind of lie to ourselves and become convinced our lies are in fact true. However, if we could approach everything with a completely open mind and unbiased view, then we'd learn more from other people and, almost certainly, make more money - or lose less money - as traders. However, it's a tough nut to crack for many of us and certainly for me. I have no doubt I would have failed the banana test miserably!
Tim.

 

[Shakone]

Well I wouldn't dispute that timsk. But again, that is well known. Does anyone not know that human beings have bias? That we look for information that confirms what we believe, and sometimes ignore info that goes against our beliefs. Isn't this all very basic, and not requiring a new thread? If that is all, then it doesn't need a new thread. But hopefully DToast is going to go further, or discuss ways to alter our habits of perception.

In any case, the example given was still a bad one. As the taste actually is different. And our perception or pre-conception makes it different. Which makes it less relevant to traders, because in trading, the markets aren't going to move where I want because I believe they will. But if I take a placebo, my headache might go because I believe it will.

 

[kimo'sabby]

A market is only a value, make of it what you want.

 

[DionysusToast]

Well I wouldn't dispute that timsk. But again, that is well known. Does anyone not know that human beings have bias? That we look for information that confirms what we believe, and sometimes ignore info that goes against our beliefs. Isn't this all very basic, and not requiring a new thread? If that is all, then it doesn't need a new thread. But hopefully DToast is going to go further, or discuss ways to alter our habits of perception.

In any case, the example given was still a bad one. As the taste actually is different. And our perception or pre-conception makes it different. Which makes it less relevant to traders, because in trading, the markets aren't going to move where I want because I believe they will. But if I take a placebo, my headache might go because I believe it will.

OK - not sure if you looked at the part that I picked out - at 2:45 they cut a banana in half. They told a woman one was organic and one was not. She said the 'organic' half tasted more like a banana.

As was said by Mr Gecko "people naturally don't believe what they see, but see what they believe."

Now - this is fine and we could say that as long as she enjoyed that second banana, no harm done.

But wait... the woman actually saw that second banana as having a higher intrinsic value, she would have paid more for that second banana despite it being the same as the first.

We say no harm done but this woman would have knowingly paid more money (and therefore lost money). She would have known that she'd paid more money but never have known she was misdirected to do that.

Also - it is interesting that no-one has said "the show is fake, the woman is a stooge" which is entirely possible. Everyone so far took the video at face value. No-one mentioned the possibility that the woman was an actress or even that the woman was the first of hundreds to fail the test.

So - even when discussing someone else's bias, we miss the fact that we are biased to believe what we see on TV.

 

[Shakone]

Dionysus, I think you are hitting on an excellent topic, but would prefer it to be more trading based and relevant. But anyway, I would say that the second banana was more valuable, despite it 'intrinsically' being the same. The difference was perhaps partly in her perception of the banana. And one gave her more joy. So then that begs the question, what is this intrinsic quality? Does it even exist?

To put it in a more logical sense. We have an initial state (our mood/thoughts/how hungry we are). We apply some process (eating the banana), and we get a result (the taste of the banana). When she had the second banana which was intrinsically the same (according to you), she expected it to be better, and she found the taste better. That means to her it did taste better. Her initial state/mood/expectation was different, and so after applying the process, the result was different. Now us outside of the experiment, may think, 'that's the same banana', but of what value is our perception? Of what value is this intrinsic quality, if it doesn't pan out in experiment? We didn't even taste it. We can assume the banana should taste the same, but we'd be wrong. It didn't.

Now to put things in a trading perspective. Suppose gbpusd is 1.4500. And intraday, I get a setup and I buy it at 1.4500, because I believe it has a higher value. And I make money. Then later in the same day, it is 1.4500 again, and I go short, because I believe it is going down. And again I make money. Intrinsically it was the same value, but it wasn't to me, because of my perception and understanding of the markets. Would I be a fool for both buying and selling two things which had the same intrinsic value on those two trades? Would I be a fool for eating the same banana and saying one mouthful at one particular time tasted better, than another mouthful of the same banana?

 

[DionysusToast]

Shakone - my opinion is that making this about trading would kill the thread.

Take the woman in the video. She was on a raw food diet. Didn't cook a thing - basically all she eats is raw food & veg. She must fart like a trooper (no offence to troopers). She is totally sold on the organic thing.

If you approached her in a discussion about perceptional bias and gave her own bias as an example, what are the chances she'd be open to the discussion ? I'd say they'd be close to nil.

So perhaps - in order to discuss these things, we have to use examples from neutral territory.

 

[Shakone]

Bananas it is then!

 

[montmorencyt2w]

Let's say, that you have some people that believe something is a particular way.

How would that cloud their perception?
[...]
Check out 2 mins and 45 seconds.

That is so cruel!

I know this is about psychology and not food, but it is no surprise to me that people would choose the non-organic. Why? Because modern commercial fruit is selectively bred to be sweeter than it would once have been in the wild. Modern apples are basically sugar and water. We evolved to seek out sweet things when they were rare in the wild, because they were an energy source. Evolution has not caught up with modern food production methods, so we still go for sweet things, when the excess of sweetness which is now available to us is bad for us.

Do you check yourself for similar behaviour at all ? If not - why not ? Immune to it perhaps ?

The banana test was the true psychological test. Yes, we all have preconceptions. I am speculating here, but I assume that we must have evolved this way because in some way it was good behaviour for survival. We learned to pre-judge lions, for example: the b*st*rds will always want to eat you, so we acted accordingly. This can even explain racial stereotypes, when different groups of people spend more time making war on each other than making friends. It was a competition for survival when resources were scarce.

With modern "civilisation", it can obviously catch you out, because we are not living "natural" lives by any stretch of the imagination. So, yes, a good thing to be self-aware of.

EDIT: Agriculture is probably only about 10,000 years old, which is an eye-blink in evolutionary time. Before that, we were hunter-gatherers. Pastoralism was perhaps an intermediate phase. Anthropologists estimate that average health (of survivors) actually went down after agriculture became established, even though population sizes increased dramatically.

 

[Waterfield]

That is so cruel!

I know this is about psychology and not food, but it is no surprise to me that people would choose the non-organic. Why? Because modern commercial fruit is selectively bred to be sweeter than it would once have been in the wild. Modern apples are basically sugar and water. We evolved to seek out sweet things when they were rare in the wild, because they were an energy source. Evolution has not caught up with modern food production methods, so we still go for sweet things, when the excess of sweetness which is now available to us is bad for us.




The banana test was the true psychological test. Yes, we all have preconceptions. I am speculating here, but I assume that we must have evolved this way because in some way it was good behaviour for survival. We learned to pre-judge lions, for example: the b*st*rds will always want to eat you, so we acted accordingly. This can even explain racial stereotypes, when different groups of people spend more time making war on each other than making friends. It was a competition for survival when resources were scarce.

With modern "civilisation", it can obviously catch you out, because we are not living "natural" lives by any stretch of the imagination. So, yes, a good thing to be self-aware of.

EDIT: Agriculture is probably only about 10,000 years old, which is an eye-blink in evolutionary time. Before that, we were hunter-gatherers. Pastoralism was perhaps an intermediate phase. Anthropologists estimate that average health (of survivors) actually went down after agriculture became established, even though population sizes increased dramatically.

/offtopic

There was a thing on iplayer recently, proposing that the most important thing in our evolution has been the cooking of food.

The argument is that it increased our calorie intake which meant we could spend less time hunting/gathering, also it explains the shape transformation from being big gutted to small gutted and small headed to big headed.

/ontopic

A great experiment is with wine tasters. Some of the most well known ones is labelling the expensive one cheap and vice versa and seeing if they noticed and which one they liked better (no surprises here).

Openness is a good thing, so is not being prejudice. However one could argue that in being either/or makes you more easily mislead & a target (for example, not all people wearing tracksuits are neds, not all neds wear tracksuits) etc.

, good thread keep it going.

Phil

Tim - did you mean faith?
Shakone - this thread is 100% better than pointless question threads.

 

[timsk]

Tim - did you mean faith?

Sorry Phil - if this question relates to my earlier post - then I'm afraid I'm not quite with you?!

There was a thing on iplayer recently, proposing that the most important thing in our evolution has been the cooking of food.

The argument is that it increased our calorie intake which meant we could spend less time hunting/gathering, also it explains the shape transformation from being big gutted to small gutted and small headed to big headed.

Yes, I saw that program too and it was very enlightening. If you accept current scientific thinking (and I appreciate that many people - especially 'organics' and those on a raw food diet etc. - don't), then they have 'proved' beyond all reasonable doubt that cooked food is more nutritous and has greater calorific value than uncooked food. There is a direct correlation in the size of the human brain (in evolutionary terms) and the advent of cooking. The only argument (that I can see) in favour of a raw food diet is that it might aid those who want to lose weight.

As an aside, my father battled with cancer during the last eight years of his life and thought that raw food might help him fight the disease. He hardly ate anything cooked for the final two years - with absolutely no positive benefits that I could see. Of course, believers will argue that he would have died a year or more sooner - had he not been on the raw food diet! Anyway, as a result of his experience, I've decided that should the same fate befall me (i.e cancer), I will eat and drink what I like and probably rather more of it than is good for me!
Tim.

 

[montmorencyt2w]

Raw Food etc: fascinating, but let's not derail Toastie's thread any further.
I suggest continuing here:

http://www.trade2win.com/boards/foy...iets-place-holder-discussion.html#post1153904

 

[shadowninja]

The thing is, everyone who is pro-organic food says organic food tastes so much better than "normal" food. The video has people who are pro-organic saying that the non-organic tastes better. That is a revelation, isn't it? That's the point of the video, isn't it?

Amusingly, one of my friends who used a supposedly organic delivery service in SW London found a Tesco receipt for the products in her delivery. I wonder if the "organic" products were just Tesco Value ones as they both look crap.

 

[bevok]

Robert Prechter said it was Inorganic last year . . .

 

[KajolThappar]

This perception video is great

 

[zsawevv212]

differernt people have different taste .maybe for the same thing we have the different opinion you think it is good but i don't think so .
so everyone have his own thought not affected by others especially you when you are trading
it is easier for you to be successful if you have a good ability of perception

 

[Atilla]

There is consistency of expectation and being polite too.

Found the presentation to be some rude foul mouthed know it all stuffing a point down our throat.

There is also deceit and trickery. If you wanted a true survey - one should ask the question;
1. A is better
2. B is better
3. Both the same
4. Both taste yukky

Wonder how many said can't tell the difference?

Wonder how many said about the same?

Who knows? We only see the footage they elect to show.

Foul mouthed motor mouth making some daft point. How clever he is.

Responses likely to be some statistical observation.

Big deal!

My bet is it's sponsored by GM manufacturer in your face?


PS. I grow apples and plums in our garden and I can say from personal experience that organic food doesn't taste very good at all. At least not ones grown in my garden... Apples are too acidic and sour and the plums never quite as juicy as those in the shops.