Effectiveness beats accuracy

For most of us, what we do with our lives isn’t cosmically significant. But if you can delude yourself a little bit that your Important Projects are going to Change the World, this will probably make you better at what you do, and ultimately help you collect more grubby resources and status and so on.

The term “cognitive biases” is arguably misleading in that it suggests that believing truth would be a kind of default. Arguably, it’s amazing that we manage to believe the truth at all. If you want your beliefs to be accurate, you’re constantly swimming against your own biology and instincts.Broadly speaking, I think we can identify three reasons ... See more