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Guide to cognitive biases
- nrjames 5y agoSimilar sites that are a good reference: https://yourbias.is https://yourbias.is https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com
- wombatmobile 5y agoWhy are there so many of these cognitive biases? Can we infer they persist widely because they confer some benefit?
- jampekka 5y agoI think it's mostly because they are quite ad-hoc and superficial. It's often not even clear what is the normative behavior that the bias is deviation of, or whether that normative behavior is somehow better than the "biased" one. It's a weird scene.
- calny 5y agoI found Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow persuasive on this question. I don’t have a psych or neuro degree, but Crudely speaking and possibly butchering it: the mind reflects two types of thinking, which Kahneman terms System 1 (fast) and System 2 (slow). System 1 is closer to instinct and helps us respond quickly in, for example, fight or flight situations. System 2 requires significant mental effort to more thoroughly analyze things like complex math problems. It’s easier to coast on System 1 thinking. The book provides examples and much better and more in depth explanations. There was a replication controversy about some of it, but still very worth reading I think.
- wombatmobile 5y agoFair enough. I’ve read Kahnemann’s book, and hadn’t considered how to integrate it with TFA. The sheer number of cognitive biases presented in TFA, and the overlap of the categorisations had me bamboozled. But yeah, if these are System 1 staples then I can imagine how they might have made do for regular people for a long time. Some biases and prejudices affirm survival in a less civilised setting eg prehistoric tribes that compete for land and food with neighbouring tribes. So perhaps it is the compact of civilisation that opens up the vistas for System 2 thinking to yield benefits.
- scns 5y agoCheck out this one on a large screen: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitiv... While still bamboozling, it brings some order and visual overview (in a beatiful way IMO), plus links for further study. All credit for posting it belongs to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28168269
- wombatmobile 5y agoExcellent. This diagram provides context and accessibility to the subject matter that was missing from TFA. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
- queuebert 5y agoThinking there's a reason for it is probably a bias, too.
- rtkwe 5y agoThey don't have to have an individual benefit (or even be an intentional thing), evolution isn't great at perfecting things it deals very well in just good enough and doesn't really have a great mechanism to deal with small issues with small effects to reproductive strength. See the recurrent laryngeal nerve for a pretty simple example of it. [0] It has little/no downside to reproductive ability so there's no reason to 'fix' it evolutionarily speaking. For the vast majority of our time evolving the biggest issue was spotting a stalking predator or hidden danger before it could hurt us or spotting food better than other chimps/homo */lizards (at various points on the evolutionary history). For that quick efficient pattern matching is what you need not solid reasoning about large groups so that's what we've got. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve
- deltasixeight 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m26jz1YyIk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m26jz1YyIk8 The short but very very accurate documentary above (2 min) explains why. Basically, evolution does not reward survival of the "smartest" or survival of the person with "less cognitive biases."
- hsn915 5y agoThey are only a problem if you trying to use your cognitive power to prove mathematical theorems or discover natural physical laws. Which are not things that our brains are designed for. In all other situations, they are working as expected. e.g. risk avoidance is very important because one single mistake in risk assessment (underestimating a real threat) can wipe you out.
- glial 5y agoThis is an active area of research in the cognitive science world. First, 'bias' is defined with respect to an ideal rational actor with perfect information and infinite computing power. The reasons for this are mostly historical (rational animal, Homo economicus, etc), but it also serves as a useful baseline 'ideal observer' model to compare human behavior against. In the 1950s, Herbert Simon coined the term 'bounded rationality' to describe rationality within a set of computational bounds. For example, if we have finite working memory and limited computing time, but were still trying to make optimal decisions within those bounds, what behavior would we see? In this case, decision making turns from unconstrained to constrained optimization. What may LOOK like a 'bias', with its connotation of sub-optimality, may actually be optimal behavior given constraints. More recently, people like Gerd Gigerenzer suggested that human decision making is largely composed of heuristics and tricks that enable 'fast and frugal' responses to scenarios. They don't need to be perfect, just good enough - and 'cheap' enough with respect to time that they are worth developing. This is probably true to a certain extent, but to me it's scientifically unsatisfying, as there is no general principle (except for 'cognitive miserliness') to explain behavior - and specifically, there is no longer a way to specify 'normative' or expected behavior in any given situation. More recently still, there is a trend to revive Simon's perspective under the name 'Resource Rationality'. Tom Griffiths is one of the active researchers in this field. The idea is the similar to Simon's - we have limited 'cognitive resources' and strive to be rational. Griffiths and others have attempted to show that many behaviors that are traditionally called 'cognitive biases' are actually predicted if we are behaving optimally but with constrained cognitive resources. From the resource rationality perspective, a cognitive bias is a way that a solution to unconstrained optimization differs from a solution to a corresponding constrained optimization problem. Roughly speaking, any combination of limitation on (memory, computation, time, energy, information) will produce a 'bias', and different scenarios we encounter push up against these boundaries in different ways, leading to a plethora of 'biases'.
- acituan 5y ago> a cognitive bias is a way that a solution to unconstrained optimization differs from a solution to a corresponding constrained optimization problem That is a narrow and incorrect definition IMHO. Two resource constrained solutions can also differ wildly in their rationality (or reality approximation if you will) and there is no resource unconstrained general intelligence in the universe so we wouldn’t even really know what that normativity looks like. Biases are more of a classification of errors specific to our cognitive machinery; framing errors, recall errors, precision errors, proportionality errors, inference errors etc wrt the best we could have done with it.
- eivarv 5y agoMy own speculation basically boils down to: Human minds are primarily meaning-seeking machines, to such a large extent that we even create meaning where there is none (apophenia). Take pareidolia, for instance – it's likely been more evolutionary advantageous to see faces where there are none (and thus flee tot often), as opposed to not seeing faces where there are faces (and thus be eaten). And in evolutionary terms, not everything that exists has some benefit. Some features just haven't been subject to evolutionary pressures; Not selected for, just not selected against. Vestigial features are prime examples of this.
- xondono 5y agoBecause discovering a “new bias”, like discovering new market failures, is an instant path to book authorship and possibly the nobel. A lot of them could frankly be considered versions of the same bias, or combinations of some of them. Others are not bias at all, just a result of bad thinking.
- Traster 5y agoI think the most obvious answer to this is that understanding the world perfectly is impossible (for an individiual human in a finite lifespan), and so in reality we use a whole slew of hacks and simplifications. Things fall to the ground at about 9.8m/s. Is that true? No. Is it helpful to assume it's true, sure. And so it's extra-ordinarily easy to therefore find conditions where these simplifications don't hold. We optimize for survival and reproduction. Anchoring[1] is a great example - as long as no one knows about anchoring, anchoring is a great technique for negotiation, in fact there are studies that show some form of anchoring is optimal. It's far more optimal to use these cognitive biases than to invent new algorithms for life- because most of these are incredibly difficult problems- what is maybe more surprising is how effective our cognitive biases are and how they've propogated, isn't it more crazy that we're all fairly good at applying these intuitive rules of thumb? [1]: Setting an initial price in order to later favourably negotiate a price.
- wombatmobile 5y agoIs there somewhere a guide for preventing and/or overcoming these cognitive biases?
- optimalsolver 5y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Rationality-AI-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkowsky-ebook/dp/B00ULP6EW2 https://www.amazon.com/Rationality-AI-Zombies-Eliezer-Yudkow...
- metta2uall 5y agoFor those who prefer video there's Julia Galef's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz-RZblnhjXK_krP1jDybeQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz-RZblnhjXK_krP1jDybeQ She is a co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality & host of the Rationally Speaking podcast.
- kords 5y agoI like this book: "The Art of Thinking Clearly" by Rolf Dobelli. It has some tips on how to avoid some of them. https://www.amazon.com/Art-Thinking-Clearly-Rolf-Dobelli/dp/0062219693 https://www.amazon.com/Art-Thinking-Clearly-Rolf-Dobelli/dp/...
- dionidium 5y agoHonesty and a willingness to accept that you're just as biased as anyone else can get you pretty far. A reasonable enough test might be: do you believe anything to be true that you wish weren't true? If every explanation you adopt for every social ill, every natural phenomenon, every historical event neatly fits a model that generates no discomfort, do you think it's more likely that the world really is that way or that you're privileging particular explanations?
- mistermann 5y ago> Honesty and a willingness to accept that you're just as biased as anyone else can get you pretty far. I am very confident that there is a phenomena whereby someone can do this, but that in doing so their mind is in a certain "mode" of some kind (abstract, for starters), but when the mind is in a different mode (discussion or arguing about object level ideas, culture war topics tend to work best), the knowledge that they formerly had becomes inaccessible, often even if reminded of it. My armchair theory is that this plays a part in it (but there are surely other things going on): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory
- db_admin 5y agoWhile i do not see the immediate use for me personally beyond being an interesting read, i must confess that this is a great domain name.
- queuebert 5y agohttps://en.shortcogs.com/bias/blind-spot-bias https://en.shortcogs.com/bias/blind-spot-bias (Just kidding.)
- sumtechguy 5y agoBias is a good way to look at news sources and someone trying to sell you something. Many of these use your bias against you to fool you and/or manipulate you into something. Either buying something or thinking something. Knowing what your bias is and which ones you fall into help you cope and guard yourself against them.
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y agoApex Fallacy is not listed again: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Apex%20Fallacy https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Apex%20Falla...
- rtkwe 5y agoI think that's better a better fit for a logical fallacy chart than a cognitive bias list.
- necheffa 5y agoI wouldn't exactly call the urban dictionary a reliable source. Doing a DuckDuckGo for "apex fallacy" turns up a bunch of incel and mgtow sites. Is this even a _real_ fallacy?
- leereeves 5y agoThe first result I see on DDG for "apex fallacy" is RationalWiki, which is a left-wing site. The definition there is "when someone evaluates a group based on the performance of best group members, not a representative sample of the group members." I can see why that's not included in most lists of fallacies. It's just a specific example of cherry picking, a well known fallacy that is already included in the lists.
- dane-pgp 5y agoIt also most likely occurs when the speaker identifies with the group whose performance they are over-estimating, and imagines that a similar level of performance can be imputed to them. Such cases are likely the result of the ingroup half of the Ultimate Attribution Error, where positive characteristics are seen as inherent properties of members of the ingroup, but exceptional when displayed by members of the outgroup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error
- mopierotti 5y agoThis is my first time seeing this one mentioned, but I'm curious, what makes something a "real" fallacy? It seems like it's a real mistake that people make. I guess one could categorize it as a more specific case of misunderstanding a distribution of values. (In the same vein as mean vs median, outlier skewing, assuming unimodal vs bimodal distribution, etc.)
- dougSF70 5y agoAs Richard Feynman said: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. Most cognitive biases are effective ways of fooling your self.
- hairofadog 5y agoThis is what I take from it. As mentioned upthread, so many people see lists like this and think it's a way to prove other people wrong; when I look down the list I think, yep, gotta be careful to avoid that one. Yep, that one is a minefield for me specifically. It takes a lot of work to think critically, and the hardest work is thinking critically about the things that align with your biases. It's amazing how many people can see it in other people but not themselves.
- InternetPerson 5y agoYou can also view these as tools. Like, these are the rules of thumb that the brain lazily relies on. So if you’re pitching something, maybe try slipping a couple of these biases in there... (just don't make it too obvious!)
- dougSF70 5y agoSeeing it in others and not yourself is the ultimate confirmation bias.
- eloeffler 5y agoThere is also a very poster-suited svg over at wikipedia that categorizes cognitive biases: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitiv... (There are also hyperlinks to the corresponding wikipedia pages)
- djoldman 5y ago> Cognitive biases refer to the identifiable and indexable errors that are found in our judgment in a predictable and systematic way. Ok. Clicking through to the first one: > The Barnum effect is a cognitive bias that induces an individual to accept a vague description of personality traits as applying specifically to themselves. Then they give an example story of something reading like a horoscope. The story could reasonably describe a large swath of people so I fail to understand how this is an "error" on the part of someone thinking that it describes them.
- cainxinth 5y agoThe key word is ‘specifically.’
- djoldman 5y agoI think this makes sense if specifically meant "only" but it doesn't. It means "exact": Specifically: in a way that is exact and clear; precisely. The story can specifically refer to multiple people. There is no definite error here as I see it.
- dane-pgp 5y agoThe word "specifically" can also be used as an antonym of "generally", meaning "by most people, or to most people".[0] If a story applies to most people, but someone reading the story doesn't consider that possibility, then they have made a small error. [0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/generally https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/generall...
- throwaway98797 5y agoWhat’s the use of this really? Many of these are used as ammunition for arguments vs. clarifing reasoning.
- tomcooks 5y agoGetting closer to the truth, that's why greek philosophers created logic and focused part of their studies on it. Using shields (against self-sabotaging traps) as ammo to destroy others is very dumb, but yes it happens.
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- npteljes 5y agoWhat's the use of knowledge of optical illusions? So that you know that "seeing is believing" is not 100% dependable. Also you just listed their "use" in your very comment. People build upon these to convince others, and if you would like to be less manipulated, then they are useful to know.
- projektfu 5y agoIt’s useful when evaluating your own actions and reasoning, especially when you might have a vested interest in the result. From evaluating investment opportunities to understanding the state of science in an area, being aware of cognitive biases can help you get to the real truth.
- disease 5y agoPardon my cynicism, but you could use these as a guide for drawing money from people that are predisposed towards having many strong cognitive biases. There seems to be a near limitless number of people with money suffering from extreme social isolation in addition to narcissistic personality disorder. These people have little interest in reality and will happily give you their money if you play into these biases.
- AlbertCory 5y agoBingo. These (the authors) are people with no ideas of their own, but they still need funding. So they "classify" other people's ideas and make some nice graphics. Read "Thinking Fast and Slow" (which, to their credit, they do list as a resource) and skip the rest of their grant seeking.
- Uehreka 5y agoWhen I see someone on Facebook/Twitter link to a site like this to demonstrate that the person they’re arguing with is “doing a fallacy”, I just accuse them of Appeal To Authority. I feel like these kinds of sites are often just used to shut someone down by saying that they’re doing something wrong, without actually going through the work of following through with why the “fallacy” makes their argument weak. Also, in my experience fallacies/biases are often more indicative of a weak argument than a wrong one.
- bradrn 5y agoWell, if you really want to go this route, you can beat them at their own game and accuse them of Arguing From Fallacy. (A nice illustration: https://theupturnedmicroscope.com/comic/logical-fallacies-arguing-from-fallacy/ https://theupturnedmicroscope.com/comic/logical-fallacies-ar...) That being said, I do think it’s important to avoid fallacious reasoning — it helps in making arguments clearer. As mentioned above, just because someone uses a fallacy doesn’t mean their conclusion is wrong, but it does mean that you can prove their argument wrong. (And any reply should ideally be phrased in these terms: ‘your argument has problem X’ is easier to respond to than ‘your argument has fallacy Y’.) Furthermore it means they are thinking less clearly than they perhaps should be.
- netr0ute 5y agoThe Fallacy Fallacy doesn't actually do anything because it is covered by itself and creates a loop.
- entropicdrifter 5y agoI'd say the bigger problem is that it's roughly equivalent to saying, "Just because my argument is bad doesn't mean I'm wrong." I mean, yes, that's true, but you have yet to prove yourself correct, so why should anyone change their mind?
- ElFitz 5y agoAnd that’s how you get a stack overflow. Always remember your exit condition when doing recursion, folks!
- phtrivier 5y agoThe page dedicated to COVID-19 [1] is probably the most depressing thing I read today (and I read twitter.) Also, among the generaly sane page, there is this bit: > Conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic are plentiful and varied. One of them suggests that the authorities declared a health emergency in order to force the population to accept a vaccine that they do not need, in order to promote the economic domination of the pharmaceutical industry. Several types of information can be presented in support of this theory, such as proposals for alternative treatments to COVID-19, some data taken out of context from vaccine approval protocols, or annual death rates from seasonal influenza. > While this information may hold some veracity, it is not sufficient to support the conspiracy theory put forward when compared to scientific studies carried out by both the pharmaceutical industry and public health authorities. Hardly playing the Devil's advocate, this is the crux of the problem : once you're sincerely convinced that scientists are wrong (which is bound to happen faced with novelly) and governement are lying to you (which is bound to happen because governements are full of politicians), isn't it _rational_ not to believe scientists, and not to trust governements ? So the rules of the game for scientists are to never ever be wrong, and governments to never ever lie. But of course, it's not the case, and the "right" thing is to believe scientists because they're right "in general", and to trust politicians "to a degree". But how is advocating that not falling in "appeal to authority" ? Etc, etc, etc... At least I'm having those brain farts in a quiet office with a cat on my nap and two jabs in my arms, instead of in a ICU :/ ... [1] https://en.shortcogs.com/biais-covid https://en.shortcogs.com/biais-covid
- glial 5y ago> once you're sincerely convinced that scientists are wrong ... and governement are lying to you This is the crux. How did those beliefs form? I would argue that in many cases, it wasn't a dispassionate weighing of evidence and calculation of probabilities. If not that, then what? We might also ask - in whose interest is it that citizens don't believe scientists or the government?
- phtrivier 5y ago> scientists are wrong Every medical scandal (For example, in the French Antilles, the scandal around "chlordecone", a pesticide, is supposed to be fueling anti-vaccine fear today.) Earlier uncertainties about masks, vaccinne efficiency, vaccines from different countries, possible early treatments, etc... Even though the "consensus" settles quickly, the dust of the discussion remains in the air for very long. Media is playing a part here, ironicaly because "not blindly trusting the authority" and "presenting a balanced view of facts" is good for ratings. > ... and governement are lying to you Do we really need to test this hypothesis :) ? Of course it is a generalization that "all governments are lying all the time". But it is such an easy one to make...
- ad8e 5y agoThis website is merely ok. Summary: 5/5 in science communication; educators and scientists should learn from its brilliant innovations. 2/5 in psychology, with deep knowledge but severe errors and misunderstandings. Here's a full list of every page I saw (no selection bias!) and my evaluations. Anchoring heuristic: this category is not accurate. Anchoring takes two forms: as a priming effect, or as insufficient adjustment from a starting point. Instead, this category lists "Confirmation bias, Echo chamber, Effort justification bias, Escalation of commitment bias, Hindsight bias, Illusion of transparency, Self-fulfilling prophecy". None of these relate to anchoring either directly or through mechanisms. The omission of anchoring, a major effect, is glaring. Automation bias: the effect as described in the article is not even correct. There is an automation bias, but there is also the opposite anti-automation bias, where humans unfairly disregard the opinions of machines in some contexts, such as algorithmic recipe recommendations. Their CDS example is poorly chosen and barely illustrates the subject. There is a better example from the literature, where humans accept the results of a blatantly wrong calculator over their own estimates. In addition, automation bias is frequently justified even when compared to human "rational" thinking, as summarized in Thinking, Fast and Slow, Ch 21. I recall this quote from Gelman: "Duncan notes that many common sayings contradict each other. For example, The early bird catches the worm, but The early worm is eaten by the bird." This page on automation bias is no better than one of two contradictory sayings. I like the three meters, of literature, impact, and replication. Their existence is a well-thought and marvelous insight on science communication. It's a giant improvement over resources from 10 years ago, when such meters were barely considered by psychologists, much less communicators. I like that they cited references to research papers. I like that they describe how the experiments measure the effect. These are major advantages over comparable websites. Representativeness heuristic: this category is not accurate. Base rate and conjunction fit. The rest do not. Base rate neglect: the explanation is quite bad. Kahneman's theory is much more careful and requires huge contortion in "just-so" stories to fit experiments, about how statistical base rates are not always statistical. (I believe his contortions are correct.) But this page doesn't even attempt to describe what qualifies as a "base rate". The Trump example is a loose fit and the test example is so vague as to be meaningless. The examples in the literature, with criminal identification and test positivity rates, have better writing. Conjunction fallacy: don't pick that famous Linda example if you have to explain all its linguistic caveats. Your explanations are not convincing, just assertions which the reader can't tell the truth of. (And there are better explanations, like replication under single evaluation vs joint evaluation, or replications with clarifying language, which are not given.) Nevertheless, this page is broadly correct. It is over-specific, focusing on the direct violation of conjunction rather than the representativeness process that underlies the probability estimation, but perhaps the specificity is justified if one wants to hew to the literature. About->Our team: oh my god, the authors are psychology PhD students. I think psychology needs more academic interest from students, so that graduate programs can have stricter filtering. This website does not give hope that psychology will cast off its bad reputation soon.