Confirmation Bias: Most people are much better at making up arguments for something they want to believe or against something they don’t want to believe than at finding the truth. This is one reason why academia is based around debates.

Anecdote: its wise not to trust them unless you have checked an original source. All too often the story that you use to represent a situation in miniature was made up by a journalist in 1928 or an opera writer in 1782. See Friedman’s Law of Anecdotes for more details.

Defensiveness: its embarrassing to be wrong in public, so once you have publicly committed to a position its hard to change your mind.

Argumentative Theory of Reason (Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber): You cannot reason someone out of a position which they did not reason themselves in to, yet hearing other views helps you develop your own. If we were always as cautious and unsure as the evidence warrants, little ancient history would be written!

Gell-Mann Amnesia: if someone is wrong about things we know a lot about, we rarely assume that their views on topics we don’t know about are just as wrong.

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the art

Telephone, Game of: as stories are retold or texts are copied they change.

Identity Protection: most neurotypicals identify strongly with groups which they imagine themselves to be members of, and defend those groups against criticism. Those groups make up all kinds of stories about their origins and past actions and teach them as true. History is the science of discovering truth about the past, so it always conflicts wit

Confabulation (Skeptic’s Dictionary): see also Power of Fiction. NB. “children and many adults confabulate when encouraged to talk about things of which they have no knowledge.”

Easiest Person to Fool: its yourself!