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

Hindsight bias is the tendency, after an outcome is known, to see the outcome as having been inevitable. When we say, “I should have known that would happen,” or, “I should have seen it coming,” we are succumbing to hindsight bias.

Annie Duke • Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

hindsight bias

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

James Surowiecki • The Wisdom of Crowds

Even though it isn’t necessarily true, people equate having choices with having control.

Susan Weinschenk • 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

I am giving you a choice (this or that) so don’t complain, you have control

The fundamental issue is that these are subtle and esoteric arts. These ways of experiencing and interrogating reality depend (almost) wholly upon our mental and emotional orientation to them, so the moment we dismiss it, we pinch off any further experience. The placebo effect, confirmation bias, and the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon are actually the... See more

Sadalsuud • It's Called "Woo" Because It's Fun

“The placebo effect, confirmation bias, and the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon are actually the bottom rungs of genuine mystical/magical experience …” —> hmm.. interesting take, so-called “mind trap” considered as “mind gate”

I sense there is a shift happening where people are realizing that they are channeling an ambitious impulse - the desire to grow and evolve - into dumb goals. Rejecting legible ambitious might be the most ambitious thing you can do.

A shift from legible ambition (my parents can easily brag about me) to illegible ambition (no one, including me

Paul Millerd • Losing Yourself, Ambition, Writing, 40k Books, Surrender | #247

Self-Serving Bias: This is the tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen and to credit ourselves when good things happen. It is based on our lack of development of the three core capacities—locus of control, scope of considering, and source of agency. According to this bias, when I win a poker hand, it is due to my skill at reading

Carol Sanford • No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work

self-serving bias

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

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