Talk:Wishful thinking

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Under the "See Also" heading, someone has stated that "The historicity of religious figures is a field that may be conducive to some wishful thinking [SIC](compare the Historicity of Jesus Christ)." The meaning is somewhat unclear and no specific example is given. It seems like little more than a pot-shot taken by someone with a personal agenda of discrediting religion. Which is fine, but it serves no purpose in furthering the reader's understanding of wishful thinking except to nebulously link the fallacy with belief in the Hitsoricity of Christ. Many other, specific examples of Wishful Thinking are already present. I am striking the comment in order to eschew private agendas, whether they be pro- or anti- religious.

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Hume summed up wishful thinking as the temptation to derive an "is" from an "ought".

A good example is the notion of the afterlife as providing an opporunity for divine justice to be served (ie by rewarding the good and punishing the evil) as we can plainly see that such justice rarely operates in life. That is, there OUGHT to be an afterlife - therefore there IS one. Or the Marxist belief that a workers' revolution is inevitable. Well, Marxists may think there OUGHT to be a revolt of the working class against their bourgeois oppresors - but we're still waiting for it. Exile 22:34, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

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I am not perfectly happy with the some of the examples. I do believe Chamberlaine hoped that his agreement with Hitler would lead to peace, but as far as I know, he certainly did not believe it would guarantee it. In 1938 the Commonwealth was preparing for war.

The example with Operation Barbarossa makes me wonder if the author is referring to Hitler´s belief that he would win or Stalin's refusal to believe that an attack was imminent as wishful thinking. This needs to be clearified. They are both highly qualified examples. And so are by the way Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour -both the Japanese hope that they could somehow get the Americans to give in and the American refusal to believe that an attack was imminent. -Sensemaker

I quite agree, they are poor examples, so I have removed them.Rubisco (talk) 14:59, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Contents 1 Make Connections to Cognitive Biases Area in Psychology 2 WikiProject class rating 3 Move 4 Religion "Wishful Thinking"

[edit] Make Connections to Cognitive Biases Area in Psychology

I can't do this now, but there is a lot of psych. research and WP articles (of varying quality) that are directly connected to this. "Wishful thinking" is a natural entry point to this research. I am an advocate of keeping ordinary words that link to actual science in WP, not relegating them to Wiktionary unless there is a direct path back from Wiktionary to the depth article. I am attempting this with Habit (psychology), Stream of consciousness, and others. Habit formerly redirected to Habituation, which would have put off almost any normal user. DCDuring 19:50, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:35, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move

[edit] Religion "Wishful Thinking"

LOVE the part that atheism can be analyzed as wishful thinking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.160.174.65 (talk) 00:17, 19 May 2008 (UTC)