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My Cognitive Bias – A cognitive bias explained every time you open a new tab
- polymerase 8y agoAuthor uses I/we but I couldn't find a name anywhere on the page.
- Insanity 8y agoAuthor and his wife apperantly. Did not notice a name either
- dredmorbius 8y agoNonattribution bias ;-)
- mycognitivebias 8y agoHey, That's intentional. My wife and I worked on this together over a couple of weekends hence the use of I/we. We built this so that we can work on a little project together and not for recognition. We're pretty private and we'd be quite happy if no one knew our names but I'm sure that with a few google searches, you'd be able to find out who we are. Since we don't collect any data apart from page views/loads, we think that's fair but I'd love to hear your thoughts if you disagree. Thanks
- voidhorse 8y agoFirst off, it's a neat idea and it extrapolates well to other domains. I'd love to have "random x definition" when I open a new tab--would ensure I at least get some learning done while procrastinating on the web. On a less positive note, and tangentially related: I'm kind of sick of the whole "bias" obsession. It's everyone's go-to counterargument these days, and it's a shallow, poorly developed one. It's like everyone's lost critical reasoning skills, which require delicate attention to the particular strategies and propositions deployed in a given argument, and found these set of stock biases to use instead. In fact it's impossible to purge an argument or line of thinking of all so-called biases (though these don't actually exist in arguments, they are deduced from arguments)--if it were, it wouldn't be an argument or thought. The goal of catching our own mistakes is an admirable one, and I'm not advocating people stop doing that--I just think it too frequently bleeds into trying to find so-called biases in arguments (whether written or verbal). In fact, this is more or less a fool's errand. What people are actually trying to point out in arguments are logical fallacies which are traits of the argument. Biases contrarily occur at the individual level and are operational flaws, they only occur during the thought process, and it's only meaningful to talk about them in these terms (that is, as they manifest in the ongoing practices of a person)--they are not properties of a line of thought's encoding (the written or spoken argument). Fallacies or viewpoints expressed in an argument may hint at the biases of the author, but it's a non-sequitur to start talking about them (when critiquing an argument), as the only way one could actually confirm this is by observing the author at work in daily life. To say, such an such an author is biased, is useless. It doesn't contribute meaningfully to a critique of the argument, and it would need to be verified through observation of the author. Demonstrating to someone that they have developed/fall prey to particular bias frequently and working to rectify that one-on-one is a totally different story, or trying to catch biases operating in yourself is a totally different story. Edit: I suppose you could say I'm biased against biases. A joke that illustrates my point.
- celrod 8y agoI really liked the article/blog post "Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People"[1]. I think many people are hurt by their own knowledge of biases: they weaponize this knowledge in arguments, to try and discredit others, rather than using it to reach better conclusions themselves. If you get the former without the latter, all that means is you're better at defending the positions you happened to reach: you're just as likely to reach wrong conclusions, but are now less likely to correct them. You shot yourself in the foot. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to spot biases in other people's arguments that you disagree with, than it is in any arguments you do disagree with. If you want to get better at critical reasoning skills, I think it's a lot more productive to start with Bayes' rule. Learning 100 ways to not build a light bulb may help, but getting just 1 correct blue print would help a whole lot more. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AdYdLP2sRqPMoe8fb/knowing-about-biases-can-hurt-people https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AdYdLP2sRqPMoe8fb/knowing-ab...
- mycognitivebias 8y agoVery interesting. I wasn't aware of this. Thanks for sharing.
- solipsism 8y agoI just think it too frequently bleeds into trying to find so-called biases in arguments (whether written or verbal) If you're sick of it, that implies it's all over the place, but I for one have no idea what you're talking about. Who focuses on cognitive biases in arguments? The blog post says nothing about arguments.
- everdev 8y ago> Who focuses on cognitive biases in arguments? In poorly written news articles and most social media arguments, there's a trend of identifying the person you disagree with by a catgory like rich / poor, white / black, radical left / radical right, etc. before arguing the point. The insinuation is that your identity reveals your biases and your biases invalidate your argument. Of course, trying to stop a debate by telling someone they're biased can backfire: https://youtu.be/VSHyAwErdFM https://youtu.be/VSHyAwErdFM
- jedberg 8y agoI see a lot of plugins to customize the new tab page, but at least the way I use the browser, I usually never spend more than a second on that page. Do people actually look at what's on the new tab page? I literally hit Ctl-T and then start typing a URL or hit a bookmark in the bookmark bar. I don't even know what's on the blank tab.
- maroonblazer 8y agoWhat content populates your new tabs? For me, it's different on different browsers. One displays Google's home page. Another shows some amalgamation of "news". I don't spend more than a second on the former. The latter can distract me for many seconds.
- mirimir 8y ago> What content populates your new tabs? Riseup searx
- alexanderdmitri 8y agoI like the developer excuses chrome plugin. There have been quite a few times I've opened a new tab while working with someone and the excuse basically matches what was just being said.
- WalterGR 8y agoDo people actually look at what's on the new tab page? Now? No. Every browser I use is configured to show about:blank as the new tab page. If I had an extension showing me cognitive biases, or Emacs tips? Maybe. Hard to say without trying it out.
- jamesrom 8y agoA little while ago, I set up a Repetitions (repetitionsapp.com) deck with a list of cognitive biases pulled from Wikipedia. It's not foolproof, but being aware of cognitive bias means you can do more to minimize bias in your every day life.
- WalterGR 8y ago> repetitionsapp.com Anki seems to be the go-to spaced repetition program here. Have you tried it? What attracted you to repetitionsapp? (I don’t use either, but I’m looking for a good one...)
- skinnymuch 8y agoI’m interested in hearing about this too.
- city41 8y agoIs it possible to see a listing of all the biases somewhere? Ah found it, once you install the extension it has this link at the bottom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
- ravenstine 8y agoBiases sure get a bad rap. The human brain is a bias machine, yet we only ever make lists of the biases we think are bad. (Which is a bias itself!)
- b3n 8y agoIs this the list used? The article claims that his "wife diligently did all the research and compiled the list of cognitive biases".
- mycognitivebias 8y agoHey, Yes, that's the list we used and most definitions are from wikipedia. Some wikipedia entrances weren't too clear so she looked for other reputable sources instead. Granted, this isn't ground breaking research, but rather curation. I'd say her effort still counts. Also, we are very open about not being experts, but just very interested in the subject. I think it would be unfair if we'd start to push uninformed opinions. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you disagree.
- snek 8y agoSeems like the authors of this extension have a bias towards chrome.
- mirimir 8y agoYeah. But it does have ~60% share.[0] Chrome 61.05% Safari 12.99% IE 10.92% Firefox 7.02% Other 8.03% 0) https://malcolm.cloudflare.com/ https://malcolm.cloudflare.com/
- PudgePacket 8y agoChrome and Firefox have the same extension format, it's probably only 10 minutes to get it on Firefox too! https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Porting_a_Google_Chrome_extension https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
- mirimir 8y agoGood point.
- prashnts 8y agoNot only that, but Firefox has amazing tooling such as `web-ext` cli, where you can just execute `web-ext sign` and it'll generate the `.xpi` format, run it through automated test, and give you signed versions you can distribute from wherever you want. They even have a polyfill to make the Promise based API that firefox uses compatible to Callback style APIS in Chrome.
- mycognitivebias 8y agoThanks for sharing this. Bookmarked and weekend sorted :)
- mycognitivebias 8y agoTouché. I've had a few messages asking for Firefox and Safari versions and we'll work on them as soon as we can.
- mirimir 8y agoIt'd be cool if the extension could pick a bias, based on a URL being browsed, and then display as a pop-up or whatever.
- kgdinesh 8y agoIf one's aware of all the cognitive biases, does it really make his/her life better?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 8y agoYou can't expect a good answer: anyone who has invested their time into learning them all is surely biased :D
- gcb0 8y agocognitive bias #6385: install random browser extensions* from sites, instead of expecting the site to actually show the content * or browser tool bar. ha! you're all those suckers from the 90s, today.
- jgimenez 8y agoQuick suggestion: maybe you could add one example in your website or even a screenshot, to show what it looks like
- mycognitivebias 8y agoThanks. That's a good point. I'll have to add something