Cognitive biases | Hacker News Reader

Cognitive biases

io9.com

66 pointsgcheong21 comments

I can't upvote this as much as it deserves. The comments posted before this one point out the delicate issue in learning about biases in human thinking: it's a lot easier to notice the other guy's biases than my own. I'm glad that quite a few Hacker News participants like to share articles about systematic flaws in human thinking. Over time, with practice, that can help us disagree

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

more constructively in comment threads here, and avoid the "worst argument in the world"

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ee7/cleaning_up_the_worst_argument_e...

as we argue with one another.

Here is an alphabetical list of cognitive biases. There seem to be more than 170, including a 'Google effect'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Daniel Kahneman (prominent psychologist, 2002 Nobel in Economics) helped develop "reference class forecasting" to avoid poor project management decisions on novel or unusual projects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_class_forecasting

I must say I have mixed feelings about these biases.

One thing I've noticed is that they are used as counter-arguments. "OH, you're saying that because you're biased." Could we say that some people are biased toward seeing biases everywhere?

Even if you've rationalized an opinion of yours in its entirety, as deep as it's humanely and currently possible, you can still be subject to, say, "wishful thinking".

Say you hold a belief about something that is not yet verified to be true of false. It's a belief. It's not knowledge because you can't justify its truth value yet. A skeptic philosopher might hold that you will never justify it entirely. But that's a different story.

However, some people will just trow a "bias" at you for the simple reason they think you wish it to be true, not that you believe and think it to be true.

It is better as a tool for self-introspection than a tool of accusation. Thinking in terms of probabilities is good for the not verified stuff.

Reminds me of Eliezer Yudkowsky's comment that "I've seen people severely messed up by their own knowledge of biases. They have more ammunition with which to argue against anything they don't like."

Well if people can use these biases against the things they don't like - then the things they don't like aren't backed up with data, or they aren't reasoned correctly or they are argued fallaciously. Having a deep knowledge of cognitive biases, logical fallacies and the improper use of statistics destroys the vast majority of hypotheses that are stated on a daily basis.

This is not because we don't like these things. No, it's because most people are full of shit.

See if you can see all examples of biases, fallacious arguments and poor reasoning in my above rant!

I've used a fair few. But only because I know all of them. Knowledge allows me to see through people whilst making myself opaque to others. Yes this can be abused. However this is only true to the extent that most things are already bullshit - using these techniques can only change what bullshit people believe.

However these techniques don't effect what is true or not - they merely help find it.

The problem Eliezer tried to highlight is that sloppy thinkers and/or people with no desire to understand the truth of a given matter will tend to look carefully for biases in arguments they don't like, while not applying the same scrutiny to the arguments supporting their position. To some extent, it's problem common to all of us - we tend to be more sceptical about things we don't agree with than with the ones we like. But some people exhibit this very strongly and they will surely hurt themselves more, the more ammunition they have.

I highly recommend checking out the articles on http://lesswrong.com/, which is a whole online community devoted to understanding and overcoming cognitive biases.

I highly recommend this book for anybody interested in this

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

If you like this stuff, I can't recommend Thinking Fast and Slow enough

I'd recommend the first 200+/- pages. Afterwards it just keeps repeating.

I came here to say this. Look at my comment stream and you'll see me post the Amazon link probably once a month, haha!

I believe that knowledge of cognitive biases is useful for identifying flaws in one's own thinking, but I can't say I've seen it used very productively in argument. Especially for the type who is more of the "learn it and sling it" fact-thrower with more knowledge than understanding. It becomes harder to talk to those people because they're convinced they have your psyche all figured out, no matter what logic you employ.

This reeks of survivorship and hindsight bias.

It's a shame to see the driving/flying statistic trotted out again. My absolute chance of dying in a car crash as opposed to a plane crash is irrelevant when deciding which to take - as an individual I'm far more likely to die of drowning than of acid burns, but I'd still rather go swimming in plain old H2O. Neglecting the base rate is itself a common probabilistic fallacy.

In fact the relative risk of flying versus driving depends significantly on the way you choose to assess risk: chance of death per journey, per mile, or per hour. Further, a straightforward mortality assessment does not factor in the risk of nonlethal but debilitating injury. Like all good questions, it's not as simple as it first appears.

The best book on cognitive biases that I have read is Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland.

There are many good Wikipedia pages on this. Start with the lists and drill down to pages for individual items: https://www.google.com/search?q=wikipedia+bias+fallacy

I don't know, choosing the middle option seems like a good thing - get the best possible product for the least possible amount of money...

Do these biases give us any cognitive advantages ? We wouldnt have evolved them unless they gave us some evolutionary benefits.

>We wouldnt have evolved them unless they gave us some evolutionary benefits.

Not necessarily.

Absolutely. For example, the ingroup bias allows a group of related individuals to benefit at the expense of those with whom they are less likely to share genetic material; and the observation bias allows our brain to focus on information that is more likely to be of interest - if I tell you tigers have stripes, you're likely to notice more stripes and maybe spot more tigers.

In general, though, fallacies like this arise because the brain prefers rules that are simple and quick to apply - they may not be optimal in terms of the solution obtained, but they are effective heuristics once cost and time are factored in. It's better to spot a hidden tiger quickly but occasionally get it wrong, than to be the world's greatest tiger spotter given half an hour to think about it. Most probabilistic and decision-making fallacies fall into this bracket - the middle-choice fallacy is actually a pretty good heuristic (as another poster pointed out)- but there are edge cases where it can trick us if we don't think over our decisions rationally when we have the time and freedom to.

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