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

When a core belief is questioned, though, we tend to shut down rather than open up. It’s as if there’s a miniature dictator living inside our heads,8 controlling the flow of facts to our minds, much like Kim Jong-un controls the press in North Korea. The technical term for this in psychology is the totalitarian ego, and its job is to keep out

Adam Grant • Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

totalitarian ego

It is a human trait to organize things into categories. Inventing categories creates an illusion that there is an overriding rationale in the way that the world works.

Andrea Zittel • Andrea Zittel, "These Things I Know for Sure"

Earlier I discussed the bewildering variety of priming effects, in which your thoughts and behavior may be influenced by stimuli to which you pay no attention at all, and even by stimuli of which you are completely unaware. The main moral of priming research is that our thoughts and our behavior are influenced, much more than we know or want, by

Daniel Kahneman • Thinking, Fast and Slow

priming effects

Zero-risk bias is a tendency to prefer the complete elimination of risk in a sub-part over alternatives with greater overall risk reduction.[1] It often manifests in cases where decision makers address problems concerning health, safety, and the environment.[2] Its effect on decision making has been observed in surveys presenting hypothetical... See more

Daniel Crosby • Zero-risk bias

Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".[1] It is named after British economist Charles Goodhart, who is credited with expressing the core idea of the adage in a 1975 article on monetary policy in the United Kingdom:[2]

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse

Charles Goodhart • Goodhart's law

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

dynomight • Effectiveness beats accuracy

If you want your beliefs to be accurate, you’re constantly swimming against your own biology and instincts.

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

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

The problem with armchair quarterback syndrome is that it stands in the way of rethinking. If we’re certain that we know something, we have no reason to look for gaps and flaws in our knowledge—let alone fill or correct them.

Adam Grant • Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

armchair quarterback syndrome