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

Both the physical and the electronic isolation from people we disagree with allow the forces of confirmation bias, groupthink, and tribalism to push us still further apart

Jonathan Haidt • The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

@LearningToan • Tweet

framing effect

“Hope clouds observation.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

Dune Quotes by Frank Herbert

people are extremely bad at discussing the changes or gaps in their consciousness.

Erik Hoel • The egregore passes you by

Our prefrontal cortex — the part of our brain that regulates our thoughts, actions, and emotions — has a ‘novelty bias,’ meaning that its attention is easily hijacked by something new, whether it’s a bird landing on your balcony’s rail to rest (one did just as I was writing this sentence) a text from a friend or a breaking news notification.

How Too Much Information Can Make Us Stupid and Miserable

novelty bias

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.”

Taylor Jenkins Reid • One True Loves

Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon

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