26 Reasons What You Think is Right is Wrong
26 cognitive biases to which yosefblog is immune.
Update: wikipedia has more complete list (of course it does!)
26 cognitive biases to which yosefblog is immune.
Update: wikipedia has more complete list (of course it does!)
May 29th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
the list is (ob)noxious, as the items themselves are each so problematical (most in a unique way). “the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.” so non-action-instrumental curiosity is now a cognitive bias? “the tendency for people to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains.” i suppose you could call risk averse preference a type of bias, but clearly not the same type as, “the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot.” at least i’m not suffering from the status quo bias, as i wish this list were no more. the supercilious compiler would do better to return to the basics and review the importance of well posited differentia.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
okay, so bias #2, “the tendency not to compensate for one’s own cognitive biases,” is particularly egregious. this has a rough equivalence to saying that people aren’t aware of / don’t correct for their biases… so cognitive bias #2 is (at the end of the day) that people have and suffer ill effects of cognitive biases. thanks for the stellar psychological insight, assholes.
May 31st, 2007 at 6:37 pm
I’m particularly interested in the seeming bias behind the definition of “outcome bias “. What does that mean, “the quality of the decision at the time it was made”? The definition itself is clearly biased toward an assumption of objective morality/ethics that can be determined in a vacuum. Why wouldn’t judging an action based on its natural consequences be one accurate measure of its worth? I think that main problem is that, while some of the “biases” describe a flat out faulty cognitive procedure, others just describe a procedure that might be incomplete in itself, but isn’t “wrong” per se. And at any rate, anyone who reads this list, having confirmation bias, will either dismiss or herald it as their preconceptions dictate. Unless they happen to be free of Blind-spot bias.