Talk:Wishful thinking/Archives/2012

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)

Religious agenda
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.

Afterlife
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)


 * Ah, actually we've already had it a few times in the last century.99.150.201.174 (talk) 17:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Make connections to Cognitive Biases 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)

Move proposal

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

move --Lox (t,c)

Wishful thinking (psychology) → Wishful thinking. Why the (psychology)? This should be moved to wishful thinking with a hat note pointing to wishful thinking (disambiguation). The other entries are just albums and songs etc that I've never heard of, and that shouldn't deny this article the normal name. Richard001 (talk) 04:23, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. It was moved to the current title on December 25, but that move pretty clearly contradicts the Manual of Style: "When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase, much more used than any other (this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings), then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top." I will request that this page be moved back to the original title at requested moves. Terraxos (talk) 16:41, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Support the move back per Terraxos/MoS --Lox (t,c) 15:49, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Support Mcmullen writes (talk) 22:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. As per Richard001. – Axman (☏) 08:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Religion bashing
The section of this article describing wishful thinking as a logical fallacy was updated recently with some religion-bashing that is unsourced and doesn't contribute anything positive to the article. --199.60.112.10 (talk) 21:08, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Bad example?
"Economist Irving Fisher said that "stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau" a few weeks before the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which was followed by the Great Depression."

To me "permanently high plateau" reads as "Will never go higher than it is now." To me, this isn't wishful/positive thinking at all, and a subsequent crash of the stock market does not conflict with this thinking. 74.69.251.170 (talk) 20:00, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * That's an odd reading, one in which I think "ceiling" would be the required metaphor so as to not imply the firm ground that Fisher saw. Regardless in context his meaning is plain and accurately portrayed: "I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher than it is today within a few months." (And so on.) —Mrwojo (talk) 00:17, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Cosmetic tagging change proposed
There is currently a citation box at the article head. However the article itself is fairly well referenced and where it isn't it has meaningful links to other well-referenced wikipedia pages. I propose to put "citation needed" against items that DO need citations, e.g., Donald Lambro's quote. Then remove the ugly box at the head of the article. just a thought. Mediation4u (talk) 16:46, 8 August 2011 (UTC) editing is fun
 * Identified issue with Lambro citation - A notable reference has been added to the Daily Telegraph article. Other paragraphs do have meaningful links to other well-referenced wikipedia pages, and this page has encyclopedically summarised those pages, therefore no futher refs required.  So aesthetically unpleasing Citation Box removed.  Mediation4u (talk) 11:57, 11 August 2011 (UTC) editing is fun

Neutrality
Does anyone think the examples could be made a little less...political? 68.192.134.169 (talk) 19:04, 6 September 2011 (UTC)