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from the Gurdjieff-taught-it-is-not-so-easy-to-remember-yourself dept.
A weekly financial newsletter included this link, https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/50-cognitive-biases-to-be-aware-of-so-you-can-be-the-very-best-version-of-you/. A cute graphical "flash card" version of the same list is available at https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-cognitive-biases-in-the-modern-world/ Each "card" includes a short example that I found helpful in understanding the definitions.
Along with the ever-popular Dunning-Kruger Effect, the list had some eye openers for me. Here are the first ten. As a mental exercise, think about how many more you are aware of...before going to either of the links for a peek:
1. Fundamental Attribution Error: We judge others on their personality or fundamental character, but we judge ourselves on the situation.
2. Self-Serving Bias: Our failures are situational, but our successes are our responsibility.
3. In-Group Favoritism: We favor people who are in our in-group as opposed to an out-group.
4. Bandwagon Effect: Ideas, fads, and beliefs grow as more people adopt them.
5. Groupthink: Due to a desire for conformity and harmony in the group, we make irrational decisions, often to minimize conflict.
6. Halo Effect: If you see a person as having a positive trait, that positive impression will spill over into their other traits. (This also works for negative traits.)
7. Moral Luck: Better moral standing happens due to a positive outcome; worse moral standing happens due to a negative outcome.
8. False Consensus: We believe more people agree with us than is actually the case.
9. Curse of Knowledge: Once we know something, we assume everyone else knows it, too.
10. Spotlight Effect: We overestimate how much people are paying attention to our behavior and appearance.
At some level, I suppose this is click-bait--but this bait got me thinking.
(Score: 4, Informative) by theluggage on Sunday February 16 2020, @12:32PM (2 children)
I think TFA has provided a good name for one of the missing options:
Flashcard logic: basing an argument on over-simplistic bullet lists of 'cognitive biases' or 'fallacies' (with a side-order of getting the two confused) and name-checking the effect without looking critically at its application.
Nothing in the list is wrong but there are a lot of unstated assumptions, context issues and potential abuses. Also, its a bit of a mix of "logical fallacies" and descriptions of human tendencies. E.g. to cherry pick (oops!) a few:
"Status Quo Bias" can be abused to support change for the sake of change, or "worse is the new better" which seems to be the current trend in software. If you're proposing change, its your job to prove that it's better than the status quo.
"Sunk Costs Fallacy" - presumes that the past "investments" have been wasted and that completing the project has no additional benefits. E.g. those arrangement fees you sent to the former Nigerian finance minister are probably sunk costs because you know they're just gone. On the other hand, if you spend that last $1m on the bridge that's gone over-budget then you'll have a working bridge worth $$$ to the local economy. Continue paying into that endowment policy for another 10 years until it matures and hopefully makes a gain or cash it in now at a loss because "sunk costs"? You'll just have to do the math - just like in any potential "sunk costs" scenario the devil is the details. Very easy to abuse in order to defend "not invented here" or "new broom" scenarios.
"Gambler’s Fallacy": like all the probability taught in high school, this assumes that the events are truly random and independent - unless you're literally dealing with something like the roll of a "fair" die, future possibilities are mostly affected by past events. Forgetting this has had tragic consequences [wikipedia.org].
"Authority Bias" - as stated presumes that authority is wrong. In the real world, the "authority" is more likely to be experienced or knowledgable, even if there are plenty of notable exceptions! The fallacy is continuing to favour the authority position in the face of stronger evidence to the contrary. If someone tells you that Newton's laws of motion are incorrect, that someone is probably wrong. If they then come up with a pile of experimental evidence about the orbit of Mercury and weird shit happening with interferometers and you still insist that Newton was beyond question then that's "Authority Bias".
"Placebo Effect" - don't knock it. In pretty much any condition, anything that reduces stress or anxiety will at lesat have a palliative effect. The problem is when the effect is used to promote anti-science. If lying down listening to whalesong while someone waves a crystal over you makes you feel better, go with it, just remember that the whale is probably talking more sense than the crystal-waver pattering on about auras. Just listen to your doctor as well (unless they tell you that the answer is more opiates, because the health industry is not immune to a spot of anti-science).
"Bystander Effect": because 21 calls to 911 are always so much more effective than just 20. As opposed to "let me through: I have Dunning-Krueger!"
And so on, with the normal problem being not that the underlying effect or fallacy is wrong, but the one-line summary omits important caveats (which you probably will see if you dig deeper, follow the links etc). With the "fallacies" the problem is often that they are only fallacious when used in an attempt to rebut better argument in a debate with a falsifiable/provable outcome.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday February 22 2020, @01:01PM (1 child)
My doctor occasionally prescribes a placebo, and tells me that it's a placebo, because I believe in the placebo effect and she knows it.
Sometimes a placebo is the most effective treatment. And no side effects!
(Score: 3, Funny) by theluggage on Saturday February 22 2020, @05:44PM
Well, it is the standard against which all other medicines are judged...
However, it's disturbing that you haven't heard of the side effects of placebos - folks these days don't know how to use youtube to learn themselves better factoids! Placebos are well known to cause hypochondria, and some contain sucrose - a highly dangerous and possibly addictive substance which is at the centre of a number of major public health issues (and the synthetic substitutes are even worse!). Liquid placebos often contain dangerous levels of dihydrogen monoxide too, and could kill you if injected directly into your bloodstream with a dirty needle.
/s