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Guide to cognitive biases

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Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#91

Post by nostromo »

tomcatfish wrote: post #87
nostromo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The actual fallacy ... according to linguistics researcher with a website. He sounds like as much a false authority on philosophy as anyone else.

The point the parent was making is that citing authority isn't a bad thing to do. Citing authorities in _a different field_ often is, though. (Citing a doctor on the common cold is not a fallacy, but citing a doctor on global economics is)

And in doing so they cited a linguist about philosophy.

And it doesn’t matter anyway - thankfully we use science now and not philosophy to determine truth.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#92

Post by hairofadog »

dougSF70 wrote: post #8

As 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.

This 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.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#93

Post by InternetPerson »

hairofadog wrote: post #92
dougSF70 wrote: post #8

As 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.

This 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 p…

You 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!)

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#94

Post by ohhhhhh »

glial wrote: post #31
phtrivier wrote: post #28

The 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 economi…

> 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?

There's more than enough evidence that the government is lying to you. Past and present.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#95

Post by dougSF70 »

hairofadog wrote: post #92
dougSF70 wrote: post #8

As 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.

This 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 p…

Seeing it in others and not yourself is the ultimate confirmation bias.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#96

Post by damagednoob »

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 also tends to derail the conversation and you end up arguing about fallacy definitions instead of the actual point.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#97

Post by overboard2 »

mistermann wrote: post #59
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…

> just because someone uses a fallacy doesn’t mean their conclusion is wrong, but it does mean that you can prove their argument wrong. One way this can go wrong is if the two people are thinking at different levels of abstraction or dimensionality (variables), especially when one or both participants don't understand what that means (which seems to be "most" people in the general public).

What do you mean?

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#98

Post by Traster »

wombatmobile wrote: post #3

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

I 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.

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#99

Post by gauravjain13 »

bradrn wrote: post #26
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…

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…

Yes, exactly this. It’s useful to understand biases: cognitive diversions from the truth.

Echoing OP’s sentiment: How one uses/weaponizes such knowledge depends on one’s goals: to win petty ego battles in debate or seek the truth?

Re: Guide to cognitive biases

#100

Post by clairity »

projektfu wrote: post #42
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.

That’s funny. I consider myself “left” but find these dismissive charges of bias deployed a lot by libertarian debaters.

left-right is a false dichotomy invented to simplify politics (by literally dichotomizing it), so you’ve already lost by thinking in those terms (as has @magila in the parent comment) or any other 1-d axis like liberal-libertarian.
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