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

baja

Collaboration and reciprocity are natural, and yet in the world we inhabit, competition and the fear of scarcity often block us from seeing these ways of being with one another.

Lynne Twist • The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life

fear of scarcity

the brain is commonly regarded as a thinking machine, but it’s more often the opposite: a machine that tries to circumvent thinking. This is because cognition costs time and calories, which in our evolutionary history were scant resources.

a machine that tries to circumvent thinking

In psychology, the Ovsiankina effect describes the innate human urge to finish tasks we've initiated. This tendency to resume an interrupted action is especially prevalent when the action hasn't yet been achieved.[1] The effect is named after Maria Ovsiankina, who conducted research on this behavior.

Maria Ovsiankina • Ovsiankina effect

Ovsiankina effect

When we fail, we often conceal it, distort it, or deny it. We make the facts fit our self-serving theory rather than adjust the theory to fit the facts. We attribute our failure to factors beyond our control. In our own failures, we overestimate the role of bad luck (“Better luck next time”). We blame the failure on someone else (“She got the job

Ozan Varol • Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

100 Little Ideas

Morgan Housel collabfund.com

Steel Man Technique. Put simply, it’s building the best form of the other side’s argument and then engaging with it. It’s being charitable and patching up the weaknesses in the other side’s proposition so that he can bring the best counter-argument to your point of view.

It’s a simple idea, but incredibly difficult in practice. Most of the time... See more

Louis Chew • The Steel Man Technique: How To Argue Better And Be More Persuasive

Steel Man technique and why it is hard to apply

Occam’s broom is used to describe people’s tendency to sweep relevant facts “under the rug.” No doubt you’ve experienced Occam’s broom in an argument before — when the other person simply refuses to engage with a fact you’ve laid out in favor of your side.

Big Think • 3 Brilliant Critical Thinking Tools Used by Daniel Dennett

Product framing often takes advantage of the brain’s tendencies to take shortcuts when estimating value Example: A steakhouse offers three steaks of escalating value. The brain will often assume the bottom one is too cheap and the top one is too expensive, ultimately taking the shortcut to the middle option.

framing effect

How to free yourself from "hindsight bias”

Josh Kaufman bigthink.com