#cognitive-biases

Every time I read one of Bill Gates' injunctions against AI, or Elon Musk's warnings against it, I don't feel afraid. After all, as one of my hyper-intelligent friends says, there will always be a physical

Overconfidence To Judgment and The Cognitive Biases Image Source Still another potential judgmental bias, and one that has powerful and regularly negative impacts on our judgments, is the propensity to

It's a beautiful summer's evening and you're sat outside with friends enjoying a few drinks and a chat. You take out your phone and open up a few websites to see what's happening. You go back to the

You're working on a piece of software but keep getting the same error, so you type the error message into Google. The first hit is from StackOverflow.com, which you click, and to your joy discover that

You're walking down a bustling street next to a park. The sun is shining so a lot of people are out making the most of the weather. You notice a man and woman arguing in a doorway. He's forcing himself

The Law of Parsimony, or, Novacula Occami Aristotle, 300s BC: "We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [other things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or

From small to large studies, early or highly sited studies, scientists aren't immune to cognitive biases in their work. Credit: Petr Kratochvil/Public Domain Researchers have been studying how science

Cognitive Bias – Less-is-better effect Here are the four problems that biases help us address, per Buster Benson Reference 1 : What to remember Too much information Not enough meaning Need to Act Fast

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky are the fathers of modern cognitive psychology. In Kahneman's seminal book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" he outlines several cognitive biases that the vast majority

The Benjamin Franklin Effect has recently been proposed as a cognitive bias psychological phenomenon. There is a tendency to continue doing something once we've started doing it. This applies to both positive

The cheerleader effect, or group-attractiveness effect, is a tendency to value appearances based on a comparative assessment with the surroundings. Certain traits will appear more attractive due to the

The bias blind spot is how it's easier to see others engage in cognitive biases, as opposed to seeing it within ourselves. Just as it is when we are thinking of a problem and another perspective can see

Belief is powerful. The belief bias is to give value, weight, strength and importance to an argument, not based on the argument being valid, but based on the conclusion that is already believed to be possible,

Base rate neglect is the tendency to ignore base general information, in favor of specific (new, novel, attention grabbing) information. The base rate neglect is also known as the base rate fallacy. This

The bandwagon effect represents the phenomena of the increasing adoption of beliefs, ideas, fads, trends, fashions, styles, and behaviors as more people accept it. The more something becomes popularized

The backfire effect is the tendency to reject evidence, facts or information that goes against the beliefs we are attached to. Normally we tend to give ourselves and others more credit, that our perceptions

You arrive home late one evening to find a police car and ambulance outside the neighbour's home, the blue and red lights illuminating the street. Your other neighbours are lining the street, gossiping

Automation bias is an over-reliance on automated aids and decision support systems. Trust and complacency develops. Erroneous automated information is favored even when accurate contradictory non-automated

Anthropomorphism and personification is taking qualities, aspects, characteristics, properties and attributes of human consciousness (thoughts, emotions, intentions, behavior) or physical forms (body,

The availability heuristic works like it sounds: whatever is most available is most easily used to make judgments and come to decisions. Judgments are based on memory recall. Recent information is imprinted