Cognitive Bias (or, How We Delude Ourselves Everyday)

A cognitive bias is something that our minds commonly do to distort our own view of reality. Here are the 26 most studied and widely accepted cognitive biases.

1. Bandwagon effect - the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias. Carl Jung pioneered the idea of the collective unconscious which is considered by Jungian psychologists to be responsible for this cognitive bias.
2. Bias blind spot - the tendency not to compensate for one’s own cognitive biases.
3. Choice-supportive bias - the tendency to remember one’s choices as better than they actually were.
4. Confirmation bias - the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.
5. Congruence bias - the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing.
6. Contrast effect - the enhancement or diminishment of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.
7. Déformation professionnelle - the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
8. Disconfirmation bias - the tendency for people to extend critical scrutiny to information which contradicts their prior beliefs and uncritically accept information that is congruent with their prior beliefs.
9. Endowment effect - the tendency for people to value something more as soon as they own it.
10. Focusing effect - prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
11. Hyperbolic discounting - the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.
12. Illusion of control - the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot.
13. Impact bias - the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
14. Information bias - the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
15. Loss aversion - the tendency for people to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains (see also sunk cost effects)
16. Neglect of probability - the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
17. Mere exposure effect - the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
18. Omission bias - The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
19. Outcome bias - the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
20. Planning fallacy - the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
21. Post-purchase rationalization - the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
22. Pseudocertainty effect - the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
23. Selective perception - the tendency for expectations to affect perception.
24. Status quo bias - the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same.
25. Von Restorff effect - the tendency for an item that “stands out like a sore thumb” to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
26. Zero-risk bias - preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

Oh and, by the way, you’ll never be able to truly gauge any of the biases you might be operating under since it’s not possible to accurately observe a system you’re part of.

Now, get out there and delude yourself!

In The End, The Czars Were...

To take a break from the usual format of this blog, I thought I'd post about one of my political pet peeves: the appointing of "czars" in American politics. I just read an article that Supreme Leader G.W. has appointed Army Lt. General Douglas Lute as the "War Czar" to oversee operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is very important to note that G.W. appointed him as "czar", as opposed to forming a committee to study the matter, or placing him as the leader of a special task force mandated with getting answers to tough wartime questions.

The term "czar" has a special place in the lexicon of politics, both corporate and government. Whenever there's a situation that has no fix (or no fix that can be reasonably attained), the powers-that-be appoint a czar to oversee the situation.

For example, in the US government, there are appointed Drug Czars, Immigration Czars, Energy Czars, Education Czars, and a whole bunch of Czar's who oversee areas of policy that are not really meant to be improved, but still need to be shown as something that is being addressed and taken care of. Appointed Czar's usually have no power, very little budget, and are all show, appointed for the purpose of silencing and placating critics. The Czars don't actually have to "fix" anything, since the areas of policy that they're "put in charge of" are literally beyond fixing. They just have to show up to work and fight the good fight; in this way, the powers-that-be can say that they're doing something about the problem, while not actually having to allocate any significant resources to fix anything.

So, when G.W. (or any other government, company or organization) appoints a Czar to make everyone safer (in this case, a "War Czar"), take it with a grain of salt. Czar is code word for "fuck off, critics, you're in the way of higher profit and/or control over our subjects".

Jack Henry

My love affair with chipmunks, squirrels, and other assorted forest rodents never ceases. This is my friend Jack Henry. Say Hi, Jack!

Irony

Like Alanis Morisette would say, "Isn't it ironic...don'tcha think?". Circa 2002.

Toe Update

The surgery is set for mid-June. If you click on the picture above, you'll see a chunk of calcified bone near on the bottom of the jointspace in image 1 (the left-most image). The doc will have to chip all that gunk away, untangle a nerve that's caught in the jointspace, and stitch me back up nice and tight so I can heal straight away.

Toes are very important part of your body, and should be treated with the same respect that you treat, say, your genitals or your throat. Toes are SERIOUS!

Unpopular Logic

I have been called many things in the last few years: agitator, revolutionary, political idealist, dissident, activist, nonconformist, rebel, unorthodox. But one thing Ive never been called is wrong. To be more specific, I'm rarely wrong about historical fact (as in, generally accepted and verifiable facts concerning actual events that have occurred). I am a stickler for providing multiple reliable sources to substantiate any of my claims, and usually stick as close as possible to official sources (especially sources found in the Library of Congress, official records, official histories of the military and intelligence apparatus, etc). Doing so reduces the possibility of being accused of bias by those who are averse to truths that challenge their world view.

This being said, I have said many things that, while true, just seem to piss people the hell off. Sometimes, I bring up activities directly involving the U.S. government (such as all of those terrorist wars in waged in Central America in the 70s and 80s, unwavering support of murderous despots around the world, and countless other atrocities), and people generally think I'm lying. I tell them its all in the official records (which it is, since despite all of its faults, the U.S. is an exceptionally open country most of the time, with impeccable and accessible documentation of its activities available to anyone with the patience to sift through government libraries), and if they're so inclined, they can look these things up for themselves. But no one ever does; people are lazy and like to be told what to believe, and most folks never get past the patrio-fascist groupthink taught in middle school.

I tell you all of this upfront so that you might understand the topic that I'm going to speak to today. One of my most unpopular positions as of late has been to declare that the United States deserves any terrorist attack visited upon it because the citizens of this nation have implicitly asked for it. On its face, this statement is insulting to the point of inanity, but theres truth in them there facts! Read on!

The logic follows:

1. The United States is a Democratic Republic, and all power flows from its citizens.
2. Its citizens elect representatives to perform the tasks of governing.
3. These elected representatives actually believe themselves to be leaders instead of representatives, and many times act in ways that their constituencies wouldnt approve.
4. The citizenry continue to re-elect representatives that take actions that they wouldnt agree with, giving the representative the idea that citizens approve of whatever hes doing, and they he should do more of it.
5. As per #4 above, these things include bombing third world nations, making deals to steal their natural resources, give military support to murderous regimes that provide a stable environment for business, and all kinds of things that Joe Sixpack would be repulsed by.
6. Eventually, all of these terrible things perpetrated by our representatives will begin to really, really piss some people off. They will begin to find ways to exact revenge on the United States. For some reason, U.S. citizens believe whatever their government tells them and does not engage in any kind of rational thought or discussion about the actions their government takes on their behalf, and keep re-electing the same people into office to continue doing whatever it is that they do to screw distant brown people over.
7. Meanwhile, all of those really pissed off people that the U.S. keeps killing and stealing fform organizations to attack the U.S. in any way they can. Seeing as how they are usually from 8^th world nations, they dont have nuclear missiles, well-regulated armies, and other things that a nation might have (incidentally, no nation dare oppose the U.S. militarily, mainly due to the economic power wielded over them by the Americans). So instead, they fly airplanes into skyscrapers, blow up trains, and generally cause all kinds of mayhem.
8. Heres the main theme: the terrorists believe that the citizens of the U.S. are fair game because they keep electing into office representatives that keep doing these terrible things to them. Since the U.S. is a democracy, they reason, the citizens must WANT all of these atrocities committed in their names, and they are ultimately responsible for their own punishment, however it may come. Meanwhile, since the vast majority of U.S. citizens have no idea whats being done in their name, they just think that the terrorists are evil creatures motivate by nothing more than a primal bloodlust and/or an evil religion.
9. Hilarity ensues.