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.
Related Stories
Last month, we witnessed the viral sensation of several egregiously bad AI-generated figures published in a peer-reviewed article in Frontiers, a reputable scientific journal. Scientists on social media expressed equal parts shock and ridicule at the images, one of which featured a rat with grotesquely large and bizarre genitals.
As Ars Senior Health Reporter Beth Mole reported, looking closer only revealed more flaws, including the labels "dissilced," "Stemm cells," "iollotte sserotgomar," and "dck." Figure 2 was less graphic but equally mangled, rife with nonsense text and baffling images. Ditto for Figure 3, a collage of small circular images densely annotated with gibberish.
[...] While the proliferation of errors is a valid concern, especially in the early days of AI tools like ChatGPT, two researchers argue in a new perspective published in the journal Nature that AI also poses potential long-term epistemic risks to the practice of science.
Molly Crockett is a psychologist at Princeton University who routinely collaborates with researchers from other disciplines in her research into how people learn and make decisions in social situations. Her co-author, Lisa Messeri, is an anthropologist at Yale University whose research focuses on science and technology studies (STS), analyzing the norms and consequences of scientific and technological communities as they forge new fields of knowledge and invention—like AI.
[...] The paper's tagline is "producing more while understanding less," and that is the central message the pair hopes to convey. "The goal of scientific knowledge is to understand the world and all of its complexity, diversity, and expansiveness," Messeri told Ars. "Our concern is that even though we might be writing more and more papers, because they are constrained by what AI can and can't do, in the end, we're really only asking questions and producing a lot of papers that are within AI's capabilities."
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday February 15 2020, @11:07PM (9 children)
I'll admit to this one - (1) crappy font and colour selections that make articles like this one unreadable to me aren't worth the time bias. At least not my time.
Same as (2) articles that stretch out over 10 separate pages aren't worth my time bias. And (3) articles with mostly ads aren't worth the effort bias.
(4) I like dogs. Some people like ferrets, or iguanas, or snakes. I prefer dogs. And ice cream, lasagna, and chocolate. YMMV. That's okay.
Another personal bias is against (5) articles where the title contradicts the article body bias.
(6) Anything from Goop is shit is another bias.
(7) is one that took a while to develop, but with the EFF sending Microsoft a blank hard drive and saying they want windows 7 source code copied to it and returned to them [fsf.org] they've given me even more reason to believe they're just a bunch of self-serving publicity hounds trying to justify their salaries with cheap stunts that they know won't change anything.
(8) Anything to do with the PinePhone and the hype over a "phone" with no sound that can't make phone calls. You can buy a Linux tablet for less than half the price and sound works.
(9) Stupidity from religious folk, especially sinceresearch continues to show that religious people are dumber [sagepub.com] - hence evangelicals support for Trump.
(10) People who continue to claim without proof that there's no such thing as gender bias and expect me to bother doing all the legwork to prove otherwise when we all know TMB won't accept it no matter what but can't be arsed to find a single study that proves there no such thing.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15 2020, @11:49PM (5 children)
1. Half of EF's comments are right half of the time.
2. 99 bottles of beer on the wall.
3. Take one down and pass it around.
4. 98 bottles of beer on the wall.
5. GOTO 2.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sgleysti on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:36AM (4 children)
I think you're missing a decrement operation. Since I'm not too familiar with basic, here it is in PIC assembler:
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday February 16 2020, @02:23PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Sunday February 16 2020, @02:45PM (1 child)
Aha, right, my mistake. Additionally make the number of bottles a variable and that clinches it, I think.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:47PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @04:17PM
I was using BASIC but couldn't remember the correct operation. I think you could set $X as 99 then have $X=$X-1 or something.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:00AM (1 child)
(11) Barbara Hudson's tranny hormone imbalance puts him into a tard rage daily.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:08AM
(12) Barbara Hudson's daily tard rage confirmed independently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @10:06AM
Thank you for the Religoten study link https://sci-hub.ren/https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0146167219879122 [sci-hub.ren]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by nishi.b on Sunday February 16 2020, @12:45AM (1 child)
A few weeks ago I was looking at a nice circle of biases, with even more elements, but without the examples.
It is available from wikimedia [wikimedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:51AM
that's great, grouped into 'not enough meaning', 'too much information', 'need to act fast', 'what should we remember' is also informative; these categories underly most of the challenges of practical software engineering and development, and to a lesser degree the process of hardware engineering (both electronic and mech).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:36AM (13 children)
Here's the rest of the 50, copy paste didn't get the numbers.
I know I have trouble with this one, in meetings I have to keep listening after I hear something that sounds "right"--
Anchoring: We rely heavily on the first piece of information introduced when making decisions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:56AM (2 children)
The numbers didn't copy because they're fucking images. I don't even...
Also they have one I know I don't have! To whit:
Definitely I don't. Maybe other people have this one?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:47AM
Bias Bias : We become obsessed with biases, we make irrational decisions and have sex with cats.
maybe I just have biasophobia?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 16 2020, @04:12AM
I'm pretty sure other people have that one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Coward, Anonymous on Sunday February 16 2020, @02:30AM (6 children)
Can we just summarize this as humans are fallible?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:09AM (1 child)
Where's the -1 party pooper mod?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Coward, Anonymous on Sunday February 16 2020, @04:07AM
That would count as #3 In-Group Favoritism. Also Naïve Realism, Availability Cascade, Law of Triviality, and possibly IKEA Effect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:04PM
That's like setting your jpeg compression settings to "make the whole picture a shade of gray and call it a day".
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday February 22 2020, @12:55PM (2 children)
Only if we don't want to compensate for bias in order to become more objective.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Coward, Anonymous on Sunday February 23 2020, @08:55AM (1 child)
The errors I catch myself making and also see in others are more basic than some subtle "bias". Correcting for bias is like making declination adjustments to a compass reading. First we need to know which end of the needle points North, and which end points South.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:01AM
Yes. That would be useful!
(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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @08:48AM (2 children)
Law of Triviality (a.k.a 'Bike-Shedding')
Just in the past couple of weeks, the local council launched a public consultation into how to make it 'easier to cycle and walk' between two of the local towns....
With all the social and economic problems this area has, this is what they spend their time and taxpayers money on?, and, I feel I must also point this out, the super geniuses behind this wheeze live outwith the area and are car users to the last fuckwit., indeed, the last cycle any of them sat their fat fozy arses on in their adult lives was in a gym...membership naturally paid for out of our taxes as a perk of the job - I worked for most of a decade in an organisation with contact with the principal actors behind this (not my circus or monkeys..but did occasional related work for them).
Time to build another B Ark.
This mini-rant has been brought to you mainly by the Cognitive biases 'Framing Effect', 'Pessimism Bias', 'Blind Spot Bias', 'Declinism', 'Naïve Cynicism', 'Curse of Knowledge' and 'Confirmation Bias'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @09:06AM (1 child)
Poor people tend to appreciate the presence of sidewalks and bike paths.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @10:45AM
Ah, the point is, they already exist...
The situation here is complex, but in essence we're talking about transport links between town A and town B which have existed in one form or another for a couple of hundred years..there are a number of existing routes outwith the main road.
Now, up until quite recently, the people in town A have had no real need to travel to town B on a regular basis, town A is the primary population centre and the 'seat' of local governance, the town centres are three miles apart. Creeping conurbation over a couple of centuries has meant that if you're not local, you'd not really notice where one town starts and the other finishes, but there are differences.
Thanks to a series of inept , corrupt and frankly bizzare (at least, on the surface..) decisions by the council, the retail infrastructure in town A is, in effect, being run down, whereas in town B, the council is promoting a shiny new shopping complex..part of the reason behind this cycle/walk consultation...remember, three miles town centre to town centre...sure, a six miles round trip, an easy distance to carry a weeks shopping on foot or on a bike, because, other than visiting family or friends, that would be the *only* reason anyone would want to travel from town A to town B, for it is not a pretty place...
Of course, the fact that the council's pension fund financed the construction of said shiny shopping complex has fuck all to do with anything...
Poor people tend to appreciate decent cheap public transport more, I should mention the local bus company is owned by bona fide crooks turned 'legitimate businessmen', it costs me the eqivalent of nearly $5 for a return ticket for a round trip journey of just over 2 miles..our roads and cycle tracks tend to be infested with Mamils [wikipedia.org] and the MTB equivalents of Mamils all on their $500+ bikes, not quite poor people, though the little thugs on their BMX/MTBs might fall into that category.
(Thanks to a case of 'shit happens' I'm currently surviving on the equivalent of $430 per month, so regard myself as financially relatively poor)
Years back, a lot of people cycled locally, these days, not so much, and you rarely see a 'normal' human on a bike.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday February 16 2020, @11:10AM (1 child)
I think I have Dunning-Kruger/Impostor syndrome: I believe that lots of people are far better at over-estimating their abilities than I am.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 16 2020, @06:43PM
Play some go and find out...