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

The spotlight effect is what happens when we imagine that our lives are performative, or “on display” for others to consume.

Brianna Wiest • The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

spotlight effect

companies have a strong incentive to exploit behavioral biases, including availability, unrealistic optimism, and anchoring.

Richard H. Thaler • Nudge: The Final Edition

anchoring

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

The faster you’re moving the more you’re in fear. The more you’re in fear, the more you’re thinking about yourself. The more you’re thinking about yourself, the less compassion and kindness you have for others.

from this Reel.

and that is why urgency/speed and fear are so great mind control tools, they reduce our cognition to “survival mode” program and nothing more

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

The fundamental problem with an information cascade is that after a certain point it becomes rational for people to stop paying attention to their own knowledge—their private information—and to start looking instead at the actions of others and imitate them. (If everyone has the same likelihood of making the right choice, and everyone before you ha

James Surowiecki • The Wisdom of Crowds

Numerous psychological studies have found that we seek out information that supports our pre-existing views – and avoid information that might contradict them.

This cognitive bias can push people into more extreme ideological positions | BPS

Utility maximization was first developed by utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In microeconomics, the utility maximization problem is the problem consumers face: "How should I spend my money in order to maximize my utility?" It is a type of optimal decision problem. It consists of choosing how much of each available good ... See more

Jonothan Levin • Utility maximization problem