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Cognitive bias cheat sheet
- bahjoite 10y agoThis is excellent. It could be improved by adding a very short summary of each bias. This would help the reader to drill-down to a specific bias of interest.
- randcraw 10y agoIf a one-sentence tooltip for each bias were added to the codex graphic fielded on a webpage, and each bias was linked to its own page, that would make the graphic more sensible and accessible. And if each quartile of the codex had a color coded mouse target, you could popup a menu of just that cluster of biases sorted into whatever spectrum makes the most sense.
- igravious 10y agoAnd if "Not Enough Meaning" and "Too Much Information" were no so similar in colour. :( (At least to my eyes)
- kitd 10y agoThough, if the article is to be believed, 'a one-sentence tooltip for each bias' would itself be highly incomplete and therefore subject to all sorts of biases in its interpretation and application ;)
- dredmorbius 10y agoRendering the graph as an SVG with embedded links might work.
- madenine 10y agoGreat article, but what on earth is the point of the huge wheel chart? Its pretty, but I'm not sure what conclusions it helps me draw, other than sorting sources of bias by group/subgroup in a difficult to read manner.
- CPLX 10y agoThe point is to put it on the wall of your office so that when people come in they will understand that you are an expert on human biases and be on notice not to try anything funny.
- chestervonwinch 10y ago> they will understand that you are an expert on human biases unless they correctly identify your hanging of the image (and implied expertise therefrom) as a fallacious appeal to internet-blog-authority!
- jones1618 10y agoI agree. However, the groupings of biases is pretty brilliant and useful.
- fatdog 10y agoWant a poster of this in every meeting room, maybe sans brain picture in favor of Rodin's Thinker sculpture.
- curiousgal 10y agoGranted this might be useful but I believe the ability to recognize these biases and fallacies can only be improved by experience. You can read or memorize what each bias is but you might not be that quick to recognize it in a discussion, it takes practice not just a cheat sheet[0]. 0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
- igravious 10y agoFirst line of article: I’ve spent many years referencing Wikipedia’s list of cognitive biases[0] whenever I have a hunch that a certain type of thinking is an official bias but I can’t recall the name or details. I don't think there's anything the article author mentioned that argues against improvement through experience, critical thinking, and sensitivity to the limitations of the human mind. [0] actually links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
- pomber 10y agoOff topic: I'm developing a resistance for scrolling up. It became common to significantly reduce the size of the view-port every time you go up.
- cm2012 10y agoIn politics, I find gambling is the best way to resolve disputes among friends stemming from cognitive bias. Put a bit of money on various results and someone will be right and someone will be wrong.
- savanaly 10y agoI've heard it said that wagering on real life events (presidential election outcome, climate change, etc) is "a tax on bullshit."
- beefield 10y agoNot sure if this is the original source, but at least the first where I saw this calim: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/11/a-bet-is-a-tax-on-bullshit.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/11/a-b... And another view: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.fi/2013/05/bets-do-not-necessarily-reveal-beliefs.html http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.fi/2013/05/bets-do-not-necess...
- Diederich 10y agoInteresting; can you expand on that?
- cm2012 10y agoSure. For instance, I had a buddy that was sure Bernie would win the NY democratic primary since Bernie had such huge rallies and people were excited. I trusted the polls. We both made small bets on PredictIt - I even bet Clinton would win by at least a 15 point margin, since that's where the polls were. I won, and he now trusts poll aggregates more.
- 0xfeba 10y agoHeh. New meaning to "put your money where you mouth is." Perhaps a corollary.
- nojvek 10y ago"The world is very confusing, and we end up only seeing a tiny sliver of it, but we need to make some sense of it in order to survive. Once the reduced stream of information comes in, we connect the dots, fill in the gaps with stuff we already think we know, and update our mental models of the world." So wonderfully said. I wonder what biases AI will develop in its models
- acomar 10y agoLikely a lot of the same biases... Look at the categorization, these are things any general system of intelligence is going to have to do at some level. Only a system with infinite computational power can afford to be without bias.
- g4nt1 10y agoI even think that this biases could be a base of a good AI. Just code this biases in and your almost good to go!
- not_that_noob 10y agoThis is an artifact of evolution - mental shortcuts enabled faster decision making, and species that got to the conclusion fastest survived. Of course, there is an error rate, but as long as it was small, the faster decision makers won. Logic is simply a way to systematically eliminate these errors in wetware (and ultimately hardware).
- davemel37 10y agoI once heard that our senses primarily function as filters. I.e. our eyes only see by filtering out all sorts of other visual stimuli, our ears hear by filtering out other noises, etc... That means that we are only capturing a "tiny sliver" of whats actually happening around us. If we only keep this small detail in mind we can be sure that lack of evidence is never proof of anything and that any evidence we do see can only be used to find the most probable of competing hypotheses and its diagnosticity should always be considered. (i.e. fever might mean you are sick but has no diagnostic value to what particular ailment you have since its consistent with other possibilities.) Same goes for using bounce rate as a metric for web analysis...its diagnostic value on its own doesnt tell us much, but with other context, like time on site and conversion goal of site (i.e. a phone call conversion will register as a bounce if they dont navihate elsewhere.) It can tell us a lot.
- devy 10y agoThis reminds me of master persuader Scott Adams mentioned about "cognitive dissonance"[1] on some of his recent tweets. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
- sergiotapia 10y agoHis book is really interesting and an easy read. I guess it pays off to write things as simple as possible. https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4 https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-eboo... The one thing to take away from this election is that persuasion trumps everything else. It's scary and crazy!
- CPLX 10y agoAnother thing to take away from this election is that Scott Adams turns out to be somewhat of a moron when discussing the topic of presidential politics. I followed his arguments in the primaries and found them somewhat compelling, the idea that Trump was in better shape than people thought. But he's lately gone of the rails totally and completely. And more to the point of this post, he completely misuses the phrase cognitive dissonance, having apparently defined it to mean something like "a way to tell people who disagree with me they don't know what they're talking about" rather than an actual psychological characteristic.
- MichailP 10y agoLots of Clinton supporters here, with their powerful donwvote clicking :)
- wfeui3 10y agoThis is 'cheat sheet'; short and handy reference for making a quick decision. Full reference is probably a few tons of books. I feel that someone who just uses instinct, will make faster and better decision, even with all the biases and cognitive illusions.
- mamadrood 10y agoAll these cognitives biases actually tell you that your instincts are not working properly, they are biased. Sure it will be faster (your biases, your prejudices will guide your decision), but not necessarily better. If you see a spider, your instinct is to kill it, it's not necessarily the better solution.
- rdiddly 10y agoLooks like the wheel chart has already been added to the Wikipedia page... talk about circularity...
- anton_tarasenko 10y agoTo summarize biases further, in one word: Incompetence. Lab results confirming cognitive biases come from testing small groups of students (up to 200). Among other things, it means: (1) respondents with similar background, so we can't generalize (2) respondents don't care about outcomes, (3) tests are synthetic. Plus publication bias and other standard issues. These results are themselves a sort of confirmation bias. Mistakes in real life happen when we don't know what we're doing. If a person can learn, he'll discover systematic mistakes. But that comes with domain experience, not cognitive science.
- adamweld 10y agoIt's not that simple. Some cognitive biases, especially related to shortcuts in decision making, are more prevalent in smarter people. Here's a good jumping off point: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-people-are-stupid http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-peopl... I highly recommend reading more of Daniel Kahneman's work if you find the above interesting.
- not_that_noob 10y agoGreat find! Doctors are famous for lousy financial decisions, which I think proves the point.
- rublev 10y agoI'm interested in the questionnaire they mention.
- igravious 10y agoLimitation :)
- igravious 10y agoTo respond to myself, Resource-constrained (Are we counting hyphens as one word or two?? :) )
- 10y ago
- idlewords 10y agoI got tired reading this, but had gotten too far not to finish.
- notduncansmith 10y agoIf you had really been tired, you wouldn't have kept reading.
- nekopa 10y agoI'm impressed that he managed to figure this out whilst taking care of a baby. When my son was born, I spent most of the wee hours testing which Star Wars theme I hummed worked best for getting him back to sleep. (By the way, The Imperial March worked best, especially slowed down and rocking him on every 4th beat)
- g4nt1 10y agoNot a Star Wars theme but the one that worked the best for me was Ravel's Bolero.
- nekopa 10y agoI think that tunes with a strong repetitive beat seem to work best over something that is pure melody. Bolero hits on that count.
- sharemywin 10y agoI made my own song up something about ...little baby falls asleep so dad can go back to bed...
- cwingrav 10y agoMy kid loves the Imperial March too for some reason. I thought I was a bad parent. Strange we came to the same conclusion. There must be something to this. /s (n=2)
- mundo 10y agoNow I want to know if anyone else uses the Galaxy Song from _Monty Python's Meaning of Life_.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoNo, you're not a bad parent, your son is just going to grow up to be a Sith Lord.
- hellofunk 10y ago
- zobzu 10y agoI think its a slur of excuses we tell ourselves. We just don't care all that much. It's all about filling your brain with the latest instant fad. People get bored if they don't get their fix of fake news or cat pictures. How would they even spend a few hours doing real research and actually trying to think? Way too hard. The internet only exacerbates these issues. This blog is even a prime example. It's telling you what to think so you don't have to, and it matches the popular bias so its easy to just praise it and move on to the next insta-fad.
- tunap 10y agoIt does appear to be classic conditioning, despite the downvotes. I am concerned for the future of concentration & independent thought as I observe people of all ages around me who cannot stop fiddling with their gadgets... especially unnerving when they are operating 2000+lbs of plastic & steel and drifting into my lane.
- dimman 10y agoQuite funny when hearing yourself think "Yeah this is confirming my own thoughts" and then you stop and think about what you just read.
- RandomInteger4 10y agoConfirmation biasception?
- pkinsky 10y agoThanks for putting this together! As someone interested in cognitive biases, I wonder: how many of these effects have survived the recent replication crisis intact?
- gog 10y agoThis is the third article on the front page that is running on medium.com infrastructure with that annoying banner in the footer. Is that the new standard?
- dredmorbius 10y agoWhich banner are you talking about? The persistent footer w/ SocMed link litter in it? Which I find annoying, frankly.
- gog 10y agoYes, that one. It links to Medium so I think of it as a banner.
- callesgg 10y agoCan one get that graph in a non renderd format. Is it only available as that blury jpg? Looked for myself, but i cant find anything.
- Goladus 10y agoThis is cool, although the real trick is knowing when and how to employ methods that will mitigate the problems caused by cognitive bias to accurately identify and resolve conflicts and facilitate clear decision-making. This is the purpose of courts, the purpose of peer review, the purpose of debate. Generally, it is not necessary to understand every single type of cognitive bias in a nuanced way to mitigate the problems. Indeed, sometimes cognitive biases overlap to the extent that trying to mitigate one, you'll wind up affected by another. What's important is that your behavior and social rules be oriented towards uncovering truth through dialectic methods. Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist, recently posted a terrific video on the the issue viewpoint diversity on college campuses-- specifically, the lack of it. Problems of confirmation bias are exaggerated, especially in social sciences, when there's a lack of viewpoint diversity on campus. When everyone likes the conclusions put forth by a paper, no one is motivated to find the flaws. Thus the flaws are not found, the flawed papers get cited by other papers, and you wind up with a knowledge base that is increasingly divorced from reality. Whether you know the name for that bias or not is less relevant than actually addressing the structural problems.
- the_duck 10y agoCan you share a link to the video?
- pugio 10y agoHe's spoken about it in a number of forums, take your pick: http://righteousmind.com/viewpoint-diversity/ http://righteousmind.com/viewpoint-diversity/ (near the bottom).
- Goladus 10y agoHere's the one I referenced: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/10/21/one-telos-truth-or-social-justice/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/10/21/one-telos-truth-or-so... Telos, incidentally, I consider to be a very fascinating and important concept, though only tangentially relevant to this thread.
- davemel37 10y ago
- bluetwo 10y agoNicely done. I like to refer to it as "short-cut thinking" rather than cognitive bias, because people that might not know the term immediately understand what I'm getting at.
- carsongross 10y agoOne has to make a distinction between dialectic situations, where you are trying to get at the truth, vs. rhetorical situations, where the attempt is to convince others (often not the person you are speaking with) of the truth. For example, trotting out cognitive biases in a rhetorical situation is often very effective, particularly when your opponent is operating in a dialectic mindset. Know thyself, but also know thy situation.
- thaw13579 10y agoI find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing. On one hand, there have been attacks on psychology as a field [1] due to legitimate concerns related to replication. On the other hand, blog posts such as this come up every few days that take the same results for granted and frame them in everyday terms. I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Or does the treatment also depend on the presentation, e.g. in the form of a scientific publication vs. a brain hacking tips or cheatsheet. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12643978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12643978
- bordercases 10y agoThere is a favor towards Kahneman's work, either out of interest or approval. It hits all the HN high notes (oriented around decision-making, thinking, personal effectiveness, reason) while additionally being backed by Kahneman's more-than-typically-rigorous models.
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- taeric 10y agoI actually get the impression that most of the articles that are "liked" by HN are somewhat grass roots. Take this one. It is a "hacker" that is spending time to try to improve biases held. It is somewhat ironic, to me, that I am basically accusing us of having an anti-intellectual bend. However, it is not unique to psychology. There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science.
- kybernetikos 10y agoI think the same is true with philosophy too. Hackers often seem to have an anti authority preference and are more likely to respect the plucky diy-er than the member of the establishment that has paid their dues. Other fields are by default assumed to be obfuscationary rather than hard or deep.
- hairy_man674 10y agoRelated to biases are fallacies in argument as illustrated (in a less serious but instructive manner) here: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/9 http://existentialcomics.com/comic/9
- gcb0 10y agoit talks about suken cost falacy but links to the entry on actual sunken cost, which at most has an argument about fixed vs recurring sunken costs.
- inanutshellus 10y agoThe article starts off by complaining about the wikipedia article, but as I was reading his post I kept thinking "But this is exactly what was in the Wikipedia infographic!" .... aaand then I realize the infographic is a side-effect of his blog post! A little ah-hah moment for me. :)
- jmorrison 10y agoI highly recommend "Charlie Munger On the Psychology of Human Misjudgement." PDF transcription here http://www.rbcpa.com/mungerspeech_june_95.pdf http://www.rbcpa.com/mungerspeech_june_95.pdf Explains a lot (he says, during Presidential Election season in the US)
- PaulHoule 10y agoMy suspicion is that cognitive biases have a lot of what it means to be human. In particular I think the "language instinct" is a derangement of the ability to reason about uncertainty in a consistent way that makes language learning possible.
- dredmorbius 10y agoI'm fascinated by the graph Manoogian created. Does anyone know what specific tools were used to create it, or which could be used to create similar ontologies? https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*71TzKnr7bzXU_l_pU6DCNA.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*71TzKnr7bzXU_l_pU... I'm working with a largish ontology of my own I'd like to present to 2-3 and possibly more levels of depth. GraphViz isn't cutting it. (I'd asked Manoogian himself, he vaguely pointed at some R graphics tools, which was as far as I've gotten.)
- tonystubblebine 10y agoHurray Buster! Cool to see this article doing so well!
- mrcactu5 10y agothere are so many cognitive bias we see them on the street, in popular music, homeless people, university professors, alcoholics, politicians... everyone exhibits more than a few of these. So many in fact, I just look at the list overwhelmed and curl in bed and suck my thumb
- ensiferum 10y agoI learned a long time ago already not to trust my memory. For example I'm trying to find a piece of text in a book, or a specific story in a newspaper my memory might give me a clue, which would be something like "it's on that page next to that "red thing" or "there's a story on the opposite page about xyz". I never trust this anymore it's a wild goose chase. A good thing to think about how biased your brain is, is to think of that time when you were witnessing that wonderful sunset and you decided to take a photo. Later you look at the photo and it doesn't look at all like you remember. Why? Because it's your brain playing tricks on you. You have a built in image filter in your brain that adjusts the image and your memory of it whereas the camera sees it "objectively." Once you become aware of all the cognitive biases you just get tired of listening to people talk (about anything really), when it's full of logical holes and anecdotes. In fact it becomes painful especially when listening to some electoral candidate / politician talk about stuff that might actually matter. sigh
- lor3nzo 10y ago20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions http://i.imgur.com/czyJsjO.png http://i.imgur.com/czyJsjO.png
- the_other 10y agoI like that "anchoring bias" only has one example.
- DINKDINK 10y ago>We notice flaws in others more easily than flaws in ourselves. Yes, before you see this entire article as a list of quirks that compromise how other people think, realize that you are also subject to these biases. I found this section was written very pourly. /s ;]
- zoom6628 10y agoUseful resource to review. There is always time to think about how we think. I know from experience that always underestimate by 30% the time it takes to do things - being it gardening or coding. I measure it to find out. Cognitive bias is something that we all need to be aware of. Just give yourself a 30sec "CB Check" before any decision and see what happens.
- dfsegoat 10y agoThis exact title/link has been posted a number of times (>5) in the past 1-2 months [1]. I'd be interested to know which cognitive bias is at work when the instance of the post today gets 480+ points -- but no instances of this post (same title, same url) in the past 1 month garnered more than 26 pts. I am both new to HN, and legitimately curious. Perhaps the content of the site was improved dramatically? edit: clarity. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=cognitive%20bias%20cheat%20sheet&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=cognitive%20bias%20cheat%20she...
- danieltillett 10y agoHow can any list of cognitive biases be complete without the end-of-history illusion [1]. Given the number of young people I see with tattoos it would have to be the most common illusion. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion
- sudoelefant 10y agoIs there a dataset somewhere with sentences/paragraphs labeled with cognitive biases? The idea of a machine learning program auto labeling college essays with faulty deductive logic is enticing. Then run the system backward to generate logically sound arguments like the yahoo Nsfw detector post recently.
- peterwwillis 10y agoAnd of course the biggest cognitive bias: that knowing about cognitive biases will make you less of a monkey in a baseball cap. Just remember that at all times you are probably wrong, and you'll do okay.
- l0ner 10y agoFor those interested in the topic, there's a really good book (also available as audiobook) that covers this in some depth, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.
- 4h53n 10y ago4.3 "We reduce events and lists to their key elements." I liked how this one relates to cheat sheet itself.
- known 10y agoInsulate yourself from Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), Sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others)