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As someone who is probably guilty of ignoring most psychology articles due to doubts about psychology research, I think this article is an interesting step forw

As someone who is probably guilty of ignoring most psychology articles due to doubts about psychology research, I think this article is an interesting step forward for popular psychology. This categorization of biases is something I can use both for myself and when I try to help others. This article is unlikely to lead to debates about research methods and statistics because it's very high level and presents few opinions. Incidentally, I noticed these cognitive biases probably apply equally well to strong AI (artificial intelligence). No matter how powerful an AI is, it's always going to lack some information, it will take time to calculate things, it will lack experience, and it will not have enough memory capacity to remember every detail. Strong AI will probably have to learn to use cognitive biases.

throwaway729 10y ago
> This article is unlikely to lead to debates about research methods and statistics because it's very high level and presents few opinions. Huh? The article is entirely opinion. Every single thing that's in bold text is a testable hypothesis presented as pure fact. Even the selection of "problems" is pure and problematic conjecture (are these actually the most important problems? Are these actually problems at all? Would addressing these problems improve our decision making?). There'll be no debate about research methods because there's no scientific research here. What's presented in this article might be based on observation, but it's definitely not based on scientific testing (or, to the extent it is, that evidence isn't presented). There's nothing wrong with an article like this, per se. But shrugging off psychology research (much of which explores and attempts to rigorously test the conjectures made in this article), while also accepting this article's statements at face value, is a bit ridiculous. It amounts to "philosophy I agree with is not problematic, but science I agree with should be harshly critiqued"
- hathawsh 10y ago
  I can see your viewpoint. I see the article as a suggested categorization of a complex subject, where that suggested categorization is an opinion of what's useful. You're right, that's an opinion. I've read many textbooks that were also opinion in the same sense.

throwaway729 10y ago

> This article is unlikely to lead to debates about research methods and statistics because it's very high level and presents few opinions. Huh? The article is entirely opinion. Every single thing that's in bold text is a testable hypothesis presented as pure fact. Even the selection of "problems" is pure and problematic conjecture (are these actually the most important problems? Are these actually problems at all? Would addressing these problems improve our decision making?). There'll be no debate about research methods because there's no scientific research here. What's presented in this article might be based on observation, but it's definitely not based on scientific testing (or, to the extent it is, that evidence isn't presented). There's nothing wrong with an article like this, per se. But shrugging off psychology research (much of which explores and attempts to rigorously test the conjectures made in this article), while also accepting this article's statements at face value, is a bit ridiculous. It amounts to "philosophy I agree with is not problematic, but science I agree with should be harshly critiqued"

hathawsh 10y ago
I can see your viewpoint. I see the article as a suggested categorization of a complex subject, where that suggested categorization is an opinion of what's useful. You're right, that's an opinion. I've read many textbooks that were also opinion in the same sense.