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Guide to cognitive biases

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Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#71

Post by lhorie »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #58
lhorie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing about them is supposed to be an introspection tool to help you make better arguments/philosophies. For example, I've seen some ex-christians who decided to turn atheists by learning more about cognitive biases, and then realizing that some of their former religious arguments were circular reasoning or appeal to authority or whatever. There is a bit of a dunning-kruger effect to be sure: accusing other of cogn…

I’ve become disillusioned with knowledge in general. A lot of what i know turns out to be wrong or disproven. I do just as well acting emotionally and impulsively as i do when i think logically. Not to mention following what everyone is doing is fine most of the time. Starting to feel that knowledge is a trap. Only way out is to not play. Only exception is for basic math/physica that I can grok.

The mantra I follow is "strong opinions held weakly" (meaning, strive to be as well-informed as I can, but be willing to change my mind to even the polar opposite of my current view in light of new evidence)

IMHO, the key is in realizing that your ego has a tendency to gets tangled with the notion of being right. It's a lot easier to "let go" if you internalize the idea that your worth/identity is not the same thing as your beliefs and that a lot of what you think you "know" is actually not factual knowledge, but merely interpretation or inference of previous experiences.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#72

Post by eivarv »

teachrdan wrote: post #64
Uehreka wrote: post #18

When 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…

It's a bit funny because Appeal to Authority isn't a fallacy. The actual fallacy is Appeal to Incorrect / False Authority: "An appeal to false authority is a fallacious argument that relies on the statements of a false authority figure, who is framed as a credible authority on the topic being discussed." https://effectiviology.com/false-authority/#:~:text=An%20app... .

Does it actually matter?

An argument doesn't get any more or less fallacious based on who believes in it (the authority, in this case) – that's not an argument in itself.

It might be reasonable (a useful heuristic) to lean to the side of the expert, but the fact that an expert believes something doesn't in itself make the conclusion correct.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#73

Post by dane-pgp »

leereeves wrote: post #25
necheffa wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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?

The 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.

It 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

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#74

Post by denton-scratch »

npteljes wrote: post #34
magila wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME cognitive bias has become a popular talking point among the left which is used to dismiss those who disagree with them. I.e. if you don't buy into identity politics and other "woke" views it's because you are succumbing to cognitive biases.

These biases are also played out as deliberate argument tactics, and they work really well, especially on those who can't detect it. Basically each of them is also guide how to be more persuasive, if you don't care about playing dirty.

Correct.

Politicians deploy fallacious arguments all the time. Inserting fallacious arguments into speeches in such a way that they aren't obvious is part of basic political speechwriting.

The task facing a politician is to build a cohesive coalition out of a bunch of people who don't really share much. Many of them couldn't distinguish a fallacy from an obscene act. Political speech is persuasive speech, and accurate reasoning is rarely persuasive.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#75

Post by teachrdan »

eivarv wrote: post #72
teachrdan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit funny because Appeal to Authority isn't a fallacy. The actual fallacy is Appeal to Incorrect / False Authority: "An appeal to false authority is a fallacious argument that relies on the statements of a false authority figure, who is framed as a credible authority on the topic being discussed." https://effectiviology.com/false-authority/#:~:text=An%20app... .

Does it actually matter? An argument doesn't get any more or less fallacious based on who believes in it (the authority, in this case) – that's not an argument in itself. It might be reasonable (a useful heuristic) to lean to the side of the expert, but the fact that an expert believes something doesn't in itself make the conclusion correct.

To the contrary, if someone is a correct authority, their statements have more weight on their domain of expertise. While all of us on HN are very clever and could think of a number of exceptions, I would trust a climate scientist as a legitimate authority on climate change over a religious leader or a PR person.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#76

Post by dane-pgp »

glial wrote: post #40
phtrivier wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

> Media is playing a part here, ironicaly because "not blindly trusting the authority" and "presenting a balanced view of facts" is good for ratings Yes, this is part of it. Of course scientists are wrong sometimes, but it's in someone's interest to stoke general distrust.

Suppose you are the ruler of a country which views geopolitics as a zero-sum game, because your goals are incompatible with those of other nations. It is therefore in your interest to cause other governments to be distracted with internal mistrust and divisions and health crises, so that there isn't a strong unified position to take action on the world stage.

As a test of this theory, look at which countries have this sudden mistrust of authority, and which country(s) they would refuse to buy a vaccine from; then look at countries which don't have this problem and consider whose vaccine they buy.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#77

Post by mopierotti »

necheffa wrote: post #15
nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: post #7

Apex Fallacy is not listed again: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Apex%20Falla...

I 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?

This 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.)

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#78

Post by glial »

acituan wrote: post #52
glial wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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 'bounde…

> 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 k…

Yes it's narrow. I was trying to summarize the 'resource rationality' approach, and there are certainly other legitimate accounts of cognitive bias. My interpretation of that work is that it's a project to convert the list of cognitive biases from a classification of errors to a general generative principle.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#79

Post by entropicdrifter »

netr0ute wrote: post #43
bradrn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 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-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…

The Fallacy Fallacy doesn't actually do anything because it is covered by itself and creates a loop.

I'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?

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#80

Post by xondono »

wombatmobile wrote: post #3

Why are there so many of these cognitive biases? Can we infer they persist widely because they confer some benefit?

Because 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.

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