Eliminating Dichotomous Thinking

We're all guilty of dichotomous thinking. Unless you're just really magical. We as a species think in black and white while living in a world where we are surrounded by gray. These things here, these are a blacker gray and those things over there, they're lighter, therefore they are completely different.

I try really hard (and most often fail) to not look at things as black and white. From the debate about using gadgets which I try to resist getting into (I think that all artificial aids -and I put spurs, bits, side reins, and whips in that category too- have a time and a place, a correct way to use them and an incorrect way. There are some I do not use and some I would use only in specific incidents and some I use every day), to the debate about Totilas (he was a well trained horse who dominated the world of dressage for a good reason, there is also a reason why Valegro beat his top score but it doesn't discount that Totilas was an incredible horse), to the debate about classical vs modern dressage (come on, let's just call it dressage, there are many roads that lead to Rome, some are more scenic to certain people than others).

Me riding Rico in draw reins the first month I had him,
I rode in them nearly every day for a good year. 
He was not ruined by them, clearly. 

It's in our nature to categorize things. Look at the old notebooks trying to classify humans (I refuse to put that on my blog, holy shit) into subspecies from years and years ago, how freakishly racist. We're beyond that now. Ummmm.

No, we still classify everything (which includes stereotyping, no one is immune), even if we're a little more politically correct about it now. We have a whole system of classifying animals, plants, chemicals, and more. We classify books, television shows, art, music. We classify people by gender, by sexual orientation, by race, by education level, by major, by career, by preferences. We classify horses, riders, disciplines, professional vs amateur, jumper vs hunter, eventer vs dressage.

Every single thing in our lives fits into a category. And it's because we're fucking lazy. Well, to put it politely, we are cognitive misers. We like to throw things into categories because it allows us to make snap judgments based on category placement. That was essential to us when we were running from lions. No time to be like "hey maybe that lion doesn't share all of the properties of the other lions that I've ran into who want to murder me, maybe I will wait to see whether he is a ni-" and then you're dead and you don't pass on your genes.

Rico goes straight into the weird category

So through classification comes judgment. We judge things based on the categories we put them in. We put Totilas in the bad dressage category. Discounting anything good he did- his piaffe, his pirouettes, his incredible accuracy. We put draw reins or side reins or spurs in the bad artificial aid category, discounting the horses that have improved with the addition of these aids into their training program. We decide that a vet, a trainer, a farrier, is terrible at their job and discount any success they have. Oh well Trainer A only has successful clients because she makes them buy expensive horses (I've been guilty of saying this haha). Oh Farrier B only keeps horses sound who would be sound if you chopped off their feet and replaced them with clown shoes.

We take our opinions and turn them into fact, gathering evidence for those "facts" and completely rejecting anything proving them wrong. In fact, something that proves our opinions wrong often lead to us doubling down on our opinions (their horse improved with draw reins? Yeah right, their rider is probably delusional or stupid or both and I should distance myself from her crazy). A person who has one really important idea that we disagree with, we tend to automatically disagree with everything else they say simply because we put that person into the stupid category (US political parties anyone?). It's in our very nature and it's hard to ignore.

I find it all so goddamn interesting.

It's a challenge to even think of an example of when we have been thinking dichotomously because it's so natural. It's also very natural for us to defend our thinking. For myself, I find it most prevalent in my breed biases. I've had experiences with some breeds in the past that lead me to make assumptions about those breeds for the future. It's something I'm working on and the more varied experiences I have with a certain breed, the more that stereotype breaks down. This is related to ingroup vs outgroup stuff as well, but then we're drifting further away from horses.

Ponies

But to step even further away from ponies, the dichotomous nature of p-values is something that has been the tiniest bit controversial in research. In research, to find whether a change or difference is significant, we use a p-value, which is a dichotomous value to give you a "yes there is" or "no there isn't." Either it's above .05/.01/.001 and you're shit out of luck, or it's below those values and you're happy that you can actually publish (don't get me started on non-significant research not being published, this is a real problem). However, the p-value is directly related to the number of participants you get, it has nothing to do with HOW MUCH of an effect you have. So you can kind of trick the system with more participants if you think you're going to have a small effect size.

This is the reason why effect sizes > p-values. Although let's not get all dichotomous again. This is the reason why you should examine both before drawing conclusions.


Ummm ponies. Yes. Rico was tortured by small children on Saturday, TC moved on Sunday, and L and I met a disco horse last night. More on all of that later when I have more than zero hours to write blog posts.