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Comment by buybackoff | Hacker News Reader

I was a big fan of cognitive psychology and biases and tried to read as much books as possible on the subject. Even had a mind-map on finished and TODO books (https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/buybackoff/8746464/10862/108... upper-right corner).

I think the best practical material on the subject is Charlie Munger talks. Particularly his talk "On the psychology of human misjudgement" (https://buffettmungerwisdom.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/mung...) and "Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger", which is an edited collectoin of his many talks.

My main conclusion from reading all the books/talks is that you could only be aware of the existence of the biases, but cannot realize which one(s) is(are) at play now in your brain and cannot "fix" a bias with any cognitive effort. So "sleeping on"/delaying an important decision is the best practical way I have found to mitigate the always present pervasive biases.

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There are efforts to train biases out of your system. A long time ago I did such a training from a renowned scholar online (he made a simple web page). I forgot how it was called, but I remember one clear thing that I use in every day life.

When you estimate something, never ever estimate a single value. Always estimate within a range. He showed in his training that, for me, I would come to more sane averages/point estimates. It helped me. Unfortunately, that's simply anecdata.

In any case, when you google on "debias training" or something similar, you will see that many efforts are underway.

IIRC the book "How to measure anything" contains some advice like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118539273/

The author also offers webinars, so maybe it was from him: https://www.howtomeasureanything.com

I think it was from a pretty prominent researcher that had a .edu site, but I couldn't find it and I really tried.

In Epistemology and Psychology of Human Judgment [1] the authors recommend a similar approach:

1) Make a point estimate 2) Imagine that you're wrong (what direction are you wrong?) 3) Make a second point estimate 4) Average the two

Excellent advice from an excellent book!

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Epistemology-Psychology-Judgment-Mich...

Why you think you couldn't realize which ones are at play now in your brain? Humans generally are capable of this "reality check" (fancy word: metacognition). Not saying it's easy, but from readings on the topic, and my experience, it's possible, isn't it?

You can compensate for these biases, but noticing them in the act is different.

Familiarity means you will notice some containers in the store before others. At that point bias has already occurred before conscious thought.

Kahneman writes that biases are mostly caused by slow brain and old system such as amygdala which are before the slow brain, and it's extremely hard for the slow modern brain to control the fast one and override its signals. It's like biases are in BIOS not in an executing program.

It's possible to feel that my current thinking is not perfectly rational and not emotionally detached. But even when having that feeling I cannot just pick e.g. "I'm having biases 1, 7, 14 and 19 from the list and I have to do that and that to overcome them...". Better to go to sleep, run 10K, go to a bar, etc. when there are hints that the brain in a state that is not perfect for decision making. Somehow in the background the rational analysis never ends, and when one reaches a clear, calm, and emotionally detached state of mind the best decision is usually already obvious.

It's "hard" as I wrote, but it's possible. You actually do it yourself on a daily basis, every time you don't act purely on your "animal brain" instincts but override them with your "human brain". This is almost the same.

There is a catch that the system that you use to override a biased system is also biased, or even catch-22 - because it's the same system.

In the early part of his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" Kahneman essentially says the book will help one identify the biases in other people but we're somewhat helpless to see them within ourselves.

For anyone who hasn't read this book, it's worthwhile if only to humble oneself into realizing we're rarely as rational as we'd like to think.

Ubrelated, but can I ask what mind mapping software you used?

Mindjet's MindManager. But it's rather expensive and I stopped using the mind map concept at all. Either because other tools are so bad in comparison with this one or because PowerPoint+Excel do the job (visualization + keeping lists of things) better.

I’ve been wanting to use a basic one to keep track of silly things. Like movies I want to watch, movies I want to rewatch, or the music i need to sync to my phone, YouTube links of interesting things that have stood out to me. Just things that don’t belong in a app with lists and also not include these things into my notes app. Maybe it’s a silly approach. Just an idea I’ve been vacillating with.

I use Freeplane + a private git repo to 'store it in the cloud'.

I don't mindmap sensitive data yet, if I would, then the private git repo would be on a Raspberry Pi.

Thanks. I’ll take a look. I was hoping it was a standalone application.

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