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

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

100 Little Ideas

Morgan Housel collabfund.com

Anchors can even influence how you think your life is going. In one experiment, college students were asked two questions: (a) How happy are you? (b) How often are you dating?

Richard H. Thaler • Nudge: The Final Edition

the anchoring effect

My favorite bias is the “I’m not biased”25 bias, in which people believe they’re more objective than others. It turns out that smart people are more likely to fall into this trap.26

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

“If you can’t decide, pretend you’re deciding for a friend.” Solomon’s paradox is a robust finding that we're better at solving other people's problems than our own, because detachment yields objectivity. But research has found that viewing oneself in the 3rd person yields the same detachment and objectivity. So if... See more

the paradox of choice

Publication bias. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the scientific literature is full of positive results. Null or negative results have traditionally been hard to publish and are often relegated to abandoned hard drives, despite the fact that they represent valuable knowledge claims. Research users looking for evidence get a distorted view, which — like... See more

An “Omics” Answer to the Replication Crisis

publication bias

In hindsight bias, people who know the outcome of a situation believe the outcome should have been easy to predict in advance.

Eliezer Yudkowsky • Rationality

hindsight bias

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