Ronson (the journalist/writer of the book) has some good comments on the TED blog for his talk.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
[...]
Is there anything you would have put in the Talk that you didn’t have time for?
In my very last meeting with Robert Hare, I said, “Look, I’m to write about how doing your course turned me a little bit power mad.” And he said, “Well it’s a problem.” And he told me a story about how sometimes he tries to train on Involuntary Civil Commitment. They’re basically institutions in America for people who score high on Robert Hare’s checklist. Once they’re released from prison, they’ll immediately be picked up and taken to one of these places and put there for the rest of their lives. It’s like Tony’s story, with no ending.
Hare said to me, “I’ve tried to teach some of these people who administer the tests, who determine whether these people are going to be stuck in these places for the rest of their lives or not, to look at them. They’re picking their fingernails and they’re twiddling their thumbs and they’re doodling and they’re not listening.”
If I could have made one point stronger in the talk, I would have made that point that with me it doesn’t matter, because I’m not a scientist. I’m a journalist who’s writing as a thoughtful cautionary tale for people. But what I went through, the way I succumbed to confirmation bias, is actually really real, and people’s lives are destroyed by it. I think Robert Hare cares about his checklist and really wants it to be administered properly and it really troubles him that there’s a lot of people out there who don’t administer his test properly. And so I suppose the point I would have made — and I wish I had — is that my story happens every day in the real world in places where it really matters, where people’s lives are destroyed by it.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.