I thought that the volunteer’s dilemma was the most interesting part of the reading. I had heard about almost every other theory except for this one. Once I read about it, I immediately thought of multiple examples of this within my daily life. The first example that came to mind was interactions with my siblings. If my parents are not home for the day, usually they will leave us a list of things to do like dishes, laundry, taking the dog out, etc. But they do not specify who should do each task, yet they expect that the tasks be done by the time they get home. Usually my siblings and I will look at each other and hope that someone steps up to do it. We usually end up waiting until the last minute because we keep waiting for one of us to do the tasks until someone “takes one for the team” and does it (this usually ends up being my brother, who is the youngest). I never realized that this was a coordination/cooperation problem until reading about the volunteer’s dilemma. From now on, I am going to try and employ some of the answers/solutions in the reading to see if these issues diminish.

This reading also helped me realized that compromise is really inevitable. Sometimes, we just have to accept the “lower utility” value or the option that will not always totally maximize our well being. This is a sacrifice that we made, since we live in a society that is structured around compromise and communication. Furthermore, it can not always be the same person who is making the sacrifice. If one person always acquires the sacrifice, then it damages the credibility of the other people who do not sacrifice. People will be less willing to compromise/communicate with those people and therefore, we will incur more problems down the line. As a result, it is important that we all sacrifice and not free ride in order to maximize our utility in the long run and not just the short run.

On page 581, Flanigan quotes Veatch, who states “There is no reason to believe that a physician or any other expert in only one component of well-being should be able to determine what constitutes the good for another being.”  This is where I started to disagree with Flanigan. I understand and follow his train of thought in laying out how patients should have a right to self medication. But I wondered after reading this quote, why have doctors at all then? If a patient knows what is best for them, then why should we even go to a doctor in the first place and consult another opinion. I agree, patients should have a right to refuse medical advice if they so please. But I do not agree with the idea that “there is no reason to believe that doctors can determine what is best.” This idea seems irrational to me; I do agree with the idea of DIC, but not this quote/train of thought in particular.

I think the best argument for DIC is one of coercion. This is how I justified it best in my head: if the whole point of going to a doctor and seeking medical help is to maximize your well-being, then you should do what will give you the most utility/happiness. Doctors are trained professionals that can help by giving advice and properly diagnosing and treating. However, only you know what will make you the most well off. For example, if surgery is not in your best interest, then you have a right to refuse the surgery. It is wrong for a doctor to coerce one into getting the surgery because the decision to refuse it is not one that provides any level of utility/well-being to the doctor that is greater than the utility/well- being that it brings to the patient. Therefore, “coercion or deceptive inference” (pp 581) is wrong.

On Page 105, the author states that those with “greatest education carry as strong an implicit Black=weapons stereotype as do those with least education.” This result was most shocking to me because it reveals how engrained this belief is within society. It is scary to think that just because you are black, you are more associated with violence than white people. We can see the detrimental affects of this mindset today, with mass incarceration at its highest point and the lack of change associated with this. Furthermore, it is also concerning to see how education does not even affect this. I have learned about stereotypes and structural discrimination in many of my classes. How does education not change these stereotypes and beliefs? What can we do about this?

Furthermore, it was interesting to read about the gender stereotype test. Last year, I took the Harvard Implicit Bias test about women and careers and I scored that I had an implicit bias to associate men with careers. I was shocked by this result, especially since I am a woman who is going to pursue a career and not restrict myself to the home. My results are a direct example of the stereotype threat described on page 111. I underperformed on the test, even though that is not truly how I feel or what I believe. It is interesting to see a personal connection between this idea and me.

I took the implicit bias test associated with gay and straight people. To be honest, I very much dislike these tests. I understand how they are supposed to reveal that is is easier to group one group with good and one group with bad, but I just do not think that that is indicative of my implicit bias. I actually tested that I had a stronger preference for gay people than straight people because I was faster at associating gay people with good than gay people with bad. I have taken a lot of these quizzes and I do see their value in establishing implicit bias. But I do not think that this is the strongest way to determine implicit bias. I want to take more quizzes to see my answers for different sections. I was not surprised with my results but I wonder if that would change for other tests. However, I just do not think that clicking buttons faster should determine my implicit bias. I wonder, what other ways would be better at determining implicit bias? Or is this the most effective?

I found the Mindbug reading very interesting, especially on page 9-10, where the authors discussed retroactive inference and the misinformation effect. I read a famous book called “Picking Cotton” which is about a man who was wrongfully convicted for rape, yet the woman who was raped identified the man in a line up and was certain it was that man who had raped her. It turns out that the police was swaying her (using specific language and gestures) to get her to convict Ronald Cotton, even though he was not the man who raped her. This is a direct example of the misinformation effect; the police were using selective language to try and compel a witness testimony, which ultimately led to Jennifer “relying on mistaken information” (10) as the truth.

Furthermore, the reading goes on to say how detrimental and dangerous this can be for our criminal justice system because the misinformation effect has led to many cases of wrongful conviction. In Ronald’s case, he spent over ten years in prison for a crime he did not commit. I found this section of the reading the most interesting because this book is one of my favorite books and I immediately saw this as a real life example of the misinformation effect. I wonder, how could we try and reduce this problem in the criminal justice system? This seems like a major problem, since not only are these people sent to jail for a crime they did not commit, but then they have to face the challenges when they get out (no voting rights, hard time getting a steady job/home, poverty…) when they did nothing wrong in the first place.

Additionally, one question that I have for the authors is what they would think about the idea of evolutionary mismatch. Evolutionary mismatch is the idea that we still have traits and we still view certain things as advantageous, because they once were advantageous for small scale societies throughout history, when they are not that beneficial/important in a large scale society. For example, why are we scared of spiders (when they pose no harm) and not cars (where your chance of dying is immensely higher than dying from a spider)? On page 19, the authors state that our social world would be unrecognizable to our ancestors. I very much do agree with this statement and what they had to say about it. However, I wonder what the authors would have to say about evolutionary mismatch and how this applies to mindbugs.