mind traps
“In driver’s training we were taught to identify our visual blind spots and eliminate them with the help of mirrors and sensors. In life (...) we need to learn to recognize our cognitive blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly”
from Think Again by Adam Grant
the paradox of choice
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon,” Olive said when I mentioned it at lunch. “My brother just told me about this. You don’t notice something and then you learn the name for it and suddenly it’s everywhere.”
Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon
the fallacy of “we tried that, didn’t work” via dhh:
no logical fallacy provides as much of an obstacle as “we tried that, didn’t work”. The fallacy that past failed attempts dictates the scope of what's possible.
That just because someone, somewhere, one time attempted something similar and failed, nobody else should try. That lowering our
... See moreThe opposite of armchair quarterback syndrome is impostor syndrome, where competence exceeds confidence.
Ovsiankina effect
By delaying the task of fleshing out and firming up the speech, King allowed Jones to benefit from the Zeigarnik effect. In 1927, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik demonstrated that people have a better memory for incomplete than complete tasks. (Page 99)
Zeigarnik effect
About three quarters of students are convinced that revising their answer will hurt their score. Kaplan, the big test-prep company, once warned students to “exercise great caution if you decide to change an answer.4 Experience indicates that many students who change answers change to the wrong answer.” With all due respect to the lessons of
... See morefirst-instinct fallacy