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List of cognitive biases
- mehwoot 13y agoI don't know why you'd link to wikipedia for this- I often see instances where wikipedia has incorrect information.
- kgarten 13y agoI don't know why you write a hacker news comment for this- I often see instances where hacker news has incorrect information. Your comment is pretty irrelevant, if you cannot find errors in the current page. Yes Wikipedia is not accurate for some things, yet what's wrong with the article posted? Also, although I might sound like a hypocrite, if you find something wrong on wikipedia go ahead and change it.
- alok-g 13y agoIn fact, the grandparent comment is an example of one of the biases listed there. :-)
- jasonwocky 13y agoI'm guessing that was the point.
- Theodores 13y agoPersonally I see this list as not necessarily complete. For instance, as I see it, the term 'moral hazard' is as valid as 'gambler's fallacy' as a cognitive bias, however, I would not dare to edit the page and add it in. Another example is 'wilful ignorance' - this is when trying to think about something is so mind-blowing that the mind just goes blank. Despite the name of the term this is not 'wilful' - it is subconscious. It might kick in when the world goes to war or something serious like that. This is not the same as the 'Ostrich Effect' - this is conscious ignorance, e.g. if someone asks me about what shoes they should buy next and I really cannot be bothered to think about it then I make a conscious decision to be ignorant.
- baddox 13y agoI'm confused. I would have sworn that the comment was jokingly demonstrating a cognitive bias.
- mehwoot 13y agoYeah, my joke was maybe too subtle.
- bcoates 13y agoSkimming the list and the cites, the page seems to be combining topics from a mishmash of different domains (mixing unconscious decision biases, rhetorical fallacies, misunderstandings of statistics, heuristics, and perception/memory effects), and heavily leaning on primary rather than secondary sources. It's certainly a list of Wikipedia pages, and the pages might be good ones, but treating the list itself as even a tentative fact about the world is probably a mistake.
- mehwoot 13y agoIt was a joke.
- jostmey 13y agoI am so glad to see this list! Although we are intelligent beings, we emerged from the wilderness, molded by eons of Natural Selection. It is naive to think that our intellect is pure, that it has somehow emerged uncolored by our origins. More likely, our minds are highly biased and carefully calibrated toward protecting our own individual survival. This is a list of what makes us humans. Someday humanity might create artificial forms of intelligence, but it will no more resemble our own intelligence than a plane resembles a bird. This is a list of all the mental quirks that define us.
- maaku 13y agoHeuristics & Biases is a great book with more detail: http://www.amazon.com/Heuristics-Biases-Psychology-Intuitive-Judgment/dp/0521796792 http://www.amazon.com/Heuristics-Biases-Psychology-Intuitive...
- akama 13y agoThe google effect is a very interesting one that I have noticed happening to myself. It is interesting to know that it is happening to other people.
- alok-g 13y agoWhile it is a memory bias in the sense that having a better memory is better than depending on Google, in practice I know that I have limited memory and so am better of remembering those things that are hard to find via Google [1]. I frequently don't remember other peoples phone numbers anymore for example because my phone remembers them, AND, I believe I am using this newly available memory elsewhere. Like with all other finite resources, I think it is about the production-possibility frontier [2] with memory as opposed to a bias. [1] One day interviewers will understand this and will stop asking questions that are just one Google/StackOverflow search away. :-) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production%E2%80%93possibility_frontier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production%E2%80%93possibility_...
- sb23 13y agoI work on an IT Helpdesk, and I fear that if my clients figure this out, I may be kicked out the door :/
- alok-g 13y agoI am guessing you are saying that you are often dependent on Google for solving clients problems. If so, I think that is highly appreciated rather. Of many IT help-desk professionals I have encountered (while working for big companies), only two would actually spend time researching the problem at hand. Others would just propose an OS reinstall or hardware replacement.
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoI wonder if a "cognitive bias bias" exists, where a rational solution is discounted in favor of a more inferior one due to falsely attributing your initial solution as a cognitive bias, even though it is perfectly appropriate for the situation at hand?
- alok-g 13y agoI am not sure, but I think an illogical argument can be just illogical without being a bias. It is possible to reject the initial solution due to some bias (which may be any of the number of them), but it may also be possible to be just wrong at rejecting it.
- rookieljw 13y agoAgree, have you watched Japanese Soup “Legal High 2” ? To win the lawsuit, the lawyer doesn't case too much...
- baddox 13y agoIt's a similar idea to the argument from fallacy, wherein a conclusion is believed to be false because its argument contains a fallacy.
- zacharypinter 13y agoThere was a great post on lesswrong.com about this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_peo...
- alok-g 13y agoVery interesting. I have always wondered if teaching people about cognitive biases can help them avoid them. On the very least, I am convinced that this may not be as easy as I was thinking. Some relevant excerpts from the cited article: >> If you're irrational to start with, having more knowledge can hurt you. >> I've seen people severely messed up by their own knowledge of biases. >> You can think of people who fit this description, right? This makes sense now. If the brain behind is close to a random baseline in interpreting statements, how can you feed more statements (about interpreting) to expect a positive outcome. A question still remains: Would it help to teach people of these biases when they are kids.
- lhgaghl 13y agoI thought I was reading a list of typical programmer thought patterns.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tokipin 13y agoi heard about a book that discusses the various ways in which our brains fool ourselves. i've never actually seen it though. anyone have a clue what book it might be?
- proctor 13y agocould it be "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
- samweinberg 13y agoIt might be "You Are Not So Smart" by David McRaney.
- lhnz 13y agoThe bias here is the belief that bias is a bad word.
- valtron 13y agoThat's because biases are, by their definition, not correct.
- naiyt 13y agoActually, I don't think that's true. As a noun: > prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. As a verb: > cause to feel or show inclination or prejudice for or against someone or something. Biases may often be lead to incorrect assumptions about things, but I'm fairly certain that a bias doesn't have to be incorrect by it's very nature. Say that someone I love is on trial for some sort of crime. My natural bias would be to believe that they are innocent (unless I absolutely knew otherwise). Just because I'm biased towards their innocence doesn't automatically mean they are guilty. Perhaps I misunderstood you though.
- pickleport 13y agoAddressing both you and the parent, I think it's more that bias implies a resistance to any other perspective. So it's bad after all, but not because it's wrong per se, but because the biased person isn't open considering to whether it's right or wrong in the first place.
- epsylon 13y agoOnly if you know you don't take them into account. Mathematically speaking, you can have a perfectly unbiased output from a biased input, if you know the bias model and account for it.
- lhnz 13y agoNot true. There are upsides and downsides my friend and these biases are adapted to evolution where heuristics thrive.
- sitkack 13y ago
- geekfactor 13y agoMuch prior HN discussion on this article. https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22list+of+cognitive+biases%22&start=0 https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22lis... I guess the duplicate URL checker has a time-out period?
- nothiggs 13y agoI'm a bit skeptical regarding the weight of these biases on everyday life. Looking at all these biases, and the fact that no one is actually free of them (except perhaps some enlightened few) would suggest that we're all making choices which most of the time are based on assumptions that have little anchoring in reality. If this were so, shouldn't there have been total chaos here on earth?
- ori_b 13y agoAs heuristics, for familiar cases, these cognitive biases are acceptable; Why would you expect chaos from that, instead of expecting suboptimal results? And yes, we definitely see suboptimal results.
- nothiggs 13y agoI guess it depends to how detached from reality the average choice is when affected by these biases, and obviously it's not worse than suboptimal as you said, otherwise we would not be getting anywhere. I guess just viewing that large number of biases made me feel like we're lucky to get through the day, let alone make progress as a civilisation :)
- Houshalter 13y agoMaybe our world is in total chaos compared to some hypothetical Earth where everyone is perfectly rational. We are just used to it.
- nkg 13y agoI would like to find the same kind of list about scientific experiments. What would the list be ? Analogy, elimination...
- goo 13y agoIf you like learning about cognitive biases (I certainly do!), may I recommend spending some time with some of the articles on lesswrong.com -- I find that for me, sometimes reading online distracts me from work, so I have all of Eliezer's work in e-book format which I read via kindle. Here it is: http://lesswrong.com/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/72m/an_epub_of_eliezers_blog_posts/
- naiyt 13y agoI sure am glad I don't suffer from any of these cognitive biases. I'm much better than the average person at identifying and squashing them in myself. Dunning-Kruger in particular!
- acheron 13y agoEverywhere I look I see people falling for confirmation bias. Just as I suspected.
- jebblue 13y agoReads like a list of how human beings are. Was there news somewhere in there?
- zxcvvcxz 13y agoRelating to entrepreneurship, the ambiguity effect seems particularly dangerous. There is no such thing as having perfect information. In fact, the more you know, the less opportunity and upside you can have in a venture. Why? Because the unknown equates to risk, and risk correlates with reward. Not knowing enough is one of the major excuses to avoid starting a venture. Acting optimally on imperfect and limited information, on the other hand, is an entrepreneurial trait.
- heydenberk 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect
- krrishd 13y agoBarney Stinson had pointed out the cheerleader effect before, I never thought that it could actually be a thing...
- kosei 13y agoI won't believe it until it has a more formal name. "Organizational Attraction Bias", perhaps. :)
- krrishd 13y agoYeah, I feel like half the biases listed are actually phenomenon that are quite noticeable, just referred to with more casual terminology. Of course, statisticians wouldn't want to work with arguable terms so they have to "jargon-ify" the words a bit.
- Imagenuity 13y agoOr in reverse, perhaps Isolation Minimization Bias.
- arunabh 13y agoRelevant : Thou shalt not commit logical fallacy !! https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/
- lemming 13y agoA really interesting article on how this relates to being an engineer is http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engi.... At the time I read it I found it really interesting how few of the skills he talks about are technical - they're all "soft" skills. He has a section on cognitive biases and how they affect development.
- mrcactu5 13y agomany of these are natural defense mechanisms. if we acknowledged to ourselves or to each other how shitty certain experiences are, how we treat each other / get treated... isn't not even clear there would be an outlet anyway. the good news is: if we don't like what we hear, we can choose one of these many distortions to make the story fit our needs.
- albedo 13y agoCheck out the Center for Applied Rationality (http://rationality.org/ http://rationality.org/) for workshops on overcoming cognitive biases, building habits, achieving your goals, making better decisions, etc. It's a non-profit that my friends are running.