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Cognitive bias cheat sheet

betterhumans.coach.me

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Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#81

Post by triangleman »

thaw13579 wrote: post #65

I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing. On one hand, there have been attacks on psychology as a field [1] due to legitimate concerns related to replication. On the other hand, blog posts such as this come up every few days that take the same results for granted and frame them in everyday terms. I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Or does t…

Notice how this particular article is devoted to skepticism generally, rather than promoting a particular hypothesis.

It should be heartening that most science topics here are treated with this kind of Feynmanian attitude, always willing to accept contradictory evidence, always reluctant to draw strong conclusions.

Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#82

Post by hathawsh »

thaw13579 wrote: post #65

I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing. On one hand, there have been attacks on psychology as a field [1] due to legitimate concerns related to replication. On the other hand, blog posts such as this come up every few days that take the same results for granted and frame them in everyday terms. I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Or does t…

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.

Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#84

Post by Goladus »

carsongross wrote: post #63
Goladus wrote: post #45

This is cool, although the real trick is knowing when and how to employ methods that will mitigate the problems caused by cognitive bias to accurately identify and resolve conflicts and facilitate clear decision-making. This is the purpose of courts, the purpose of peer review, the purpose of debate. Generally, it is not necessary to understand every single type of cognitive bias in a nuanced way to mitigate the prob…

This is the purpose of courts, the purpose of peer review, the purpose of debate. Ideally. But keep in mind: not for everyone, and it would be in the interests of those primarily concerned with power and manipulation to convince those concerned with truth and the greater good that this is the case.

I'd agree, in fact I'd say that in many cases finding the truth is not the first priority of most individual participants in those systems. That's why they're systems, and that's why concepts like integrity are so important and why the commitment to truth, honesty, and sincerity must be constantly reinforced.

Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#85

Post by PaulHoule »

My suspicion is that cognitive biases have a lot of what it means to be human. In particular I think the "language instinct" is a derangement of the ability to reason about uncertainty in a consistent way that makes language learning possible.

Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#86

Post by throwaway729 »

hathawsh wrote: post #82
thaw13579 wrote: post #65

I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing. On one hand, there have been attacks on psychology as a field [1] due to legitimate concerns related to replication. On the other hand, blog posts such as this come up every few days that take the same results for granted and frame them in everyday terms. I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Or does t…

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 opin…

> 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"

Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#87

Post by Goladus »

davemel37 wrote: post #58
Goladus wrote: post #45

This is cool, although the real trick is knowing when and how to employ methods that will mitigate the problems caused by cognitive bias to accurately identify and resolve conflicts and facilitate clear decision-making. This is the purpose of courts, the purpose of peer review, the purpose of debate. Generally, it is not necessary to understand every single type of cognitive bias in a nuanced way to mitigate the prob…

I would agree. For me, the most important thing to know is that there are biases that could be impacting me and to always leave room for a) a competing viewpoint can be sincerely held and possibly correct over the viewpoint I am convinced of, and b) to always ask myself if there is a self interested reason I want the belief I hold to be true. Many biases cannot be overcome even with knowing about them... but acceptin…

but accepting that it's possible I'm wrong and that the crazy guy on the other side is both sincere in his competing belief and possibly correct, allows me to evolve and learn and ultimately get along with more people.

As often as not you're both right but simply have different or conflicting priorities

Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#88

Post by beefield »

savanaly wrote: post #13
cm2012 wrote: post #9

In politics, I find gambling is the best way to resolve disputes among friends stemming from cognitive bias. Put a bit of money on various results and someone will be right and someone will be wrong.

I've heard it said that wagering on real life events (presidential election outcome, climate change, etc) is "a tax on bullshit."

Not sure if this is the original source, but at least the first where I saw this calim:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/11/a-b...

And another view:

http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.fi/2013/05/bets-do-not-necess...

Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#89

Post by kybernetikos »

taeric wrote: post #72
thaw13579 wrote: post #65

I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing. On one hand, there have been attacks on psychology as a field [1] due to legitimate concerns related to replication. On the other hand, blog posts such as this come up every few days that take the same results for granted and frame them in everyday terms. I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Or does t…

I actually get the impression that most of the articles that are "liked" by HN are somewhat grass roots. Take this one. It is a "hacker" that is spending time to try to improve biases held. It is somewhat ironic, to me, that I am basically accusing us of having an anti-intellectual bend. However, it is not unique to psychology. There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science.

I think the same is true with philosophy too.

Hackers often seem to have an anti authority preference and are more likely to respect the plucky diy-er than the member of the establishment that has paid their dues. Other fields are by default assumed to be obfuscationary rather than hard or deep.

Re: Cognitive bias cheat sheet

#90

Post by dredmorbius »

gog wrote: post #35

This is the third article on the front page that is running on medium.com infrastructure with that annoying banner in the footer. Is that the new standard?

Which banner are you talking about? The persistent footer w/ SocMed link litter in it? Which I find annoying, frankly.
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