My Cognitive Bias – A cognitive bias explained every time you open a new tab(mycognitivebias.com)
mycognitivebias.com
My Cognitive Bias – A cognitive bias explained every time you open a new tab
https://mycognitivebias.com/
52 comments
I think one of the most interesting things that have come from my study of the decision making literature is that there is a second field that Kahneman respects, that stands opposed to his heuristics and biases (H&B) tradition. The field is called Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM), and it's mostly built around the study of intuition and expertise.
The argument that the H&B camp makes is that heuristics and biases get in the way of proper judgments and decisions because they are shortcuts that our brain makes to conserve resources. The argument that NDM makes is that heuristics are how our brain works, and we should spend more time utilising how it naturally works to make better decisions, instead of fighting it and trying to build intuitions for probability (which are unnatural, and not what our brains are built for).
The disagreement led both of Kahneman (H&B) and Klein (NDM) to write a joint paper: https://www.fs.fed.us/rmrs/sites/default/files/Kahneman2009_... the key takeaway of which is that the H&B approach is best suited for domains where expert performance is bad, and the NDM approach is better suited for domains where expert performance is reliable. The paper describes the conditions of the two domains.
I've written a longer post summarising the findings from NDM at https://commoncog.com/blog/putting-mental-models-to-practice..., which exists as part of a longer series on putting mental models to practice. (Earlier parts cover the foundation of the judgment & decision making field, which is mostly built around the H&B tradition at the moment).
The argument that the H&B camp makes is that heuristics and biases get in the way of proper judgments and decisions because they are shortcuts that our brain makes to conserve resources. The argument that NDM makes is that heuristics are how our brain works, and we should spend more time utilising how it naturally works to make better decisions, instead of fighting it and trying to build intuitions for probability (which are unnatural, and not what our brains are built for).
The disagreement led both of Kahneman (H&B) and Klein (NDM) to write a joint paper: https://www.fs.fed.us/rmrs/sites/default/files/Kahneman2009_... the key takeaway of which is that the H&B approach is best suited for domains where expert performance is bad, and the NDM approach is better suited for domains where expert performance is reliable. The paper describes the conditions of the two domains.
I've written a longer post summarising the findings from NDM at https://commoncog.com/blog/putting-mental-models-to-practice..., which exists as part of a longer series on putting mental models to practice. (Earlier parts cover the foundation of the judgment & decision making field, which is mostly built around the H&B tradition at the moment).
You did a solid job outlining the 2 oppposing sides between heuristics and biases (H&B) and Recognition-primed decision making (RPD) in the blog article you authored and linked to.
I’d like to invert your key takeaway by looking at it a bit differently by framing it in terms of the environment being observed rather than in terms of the expert’s performance.
I’m reminded of this Murray Gell-Mann quote: “Imagine how hard physics would be if electrons could think" which I came across while reading an Economics piece. The writer used the quote to illustrate how much harder Economics as a field is, relative to a field like Physics. I agree with that characterization because, in general, electrons and by extension inanimate objects are not susceptible to behavior change from external stimuli, but humans are. Which is why expertise can be considered reliable when the environment consists of inanimate entities (e.g. astronomers, accountants) or animate but motiveless entities (e.g. livestock judges, grain inspectors).
How reliable an expert performs in an environment largely depends on the level of autonomy enjoyed by the entities that constitute the environment under observation. An expert’s ability to reliably understand an environment correlates inversely with the number of entities that enjoy autonomy in that environment, because it is infeasible to model a real-world environment in your head. What experts do is to mentally model a tiny slice of reality from which to draw inferences from.
Humans are entities that can think and act independently before, during and after an expert has been asked to intervene, which is why Doctors, Nurses and Auditors appear in both columns of reliable and unreliable performance for experts.
(PS: I encountered 2 occurrences of the typo: “Marlie Chunger“)
EDIT: reworded my comment significantly to make my point more clear.
I’d like to invert your key takeaway by looking at it a bit differently by framing it in terms of the environment being observed rather than in terms of the expert’s performance.
I’m reminded of this Murray Gell-Mann quote: “Imagine how hard physics would be if electrons could think" which I came across while reading an Economics piece. The writer used the quote to illustrate how much harder Economics as a field is, relative to a field like Physics. I agree with that characterization because, in general, electrons and by extension inanimate objects are not susceptible to behavior change from external stimuli, but humans are. Which is why expertise can be considered reliable when the environment consists of inanimate entities (e.g. astronomers, accountants) or animate but motiveless entities (e.g. livestock judges, grain inspectors).
How reliable an expert performs in an environment largely depends on the level of autonomy enjoyed by the entities that constitute the environment under observation. An expert’s ability to reliably understand an environment correlates inversely with the number of entities that enjoy autonomy in that environment, because it is infeasible to model a real-world environment in your head. What experts do is to mentally model a tiny slice of reality from which to draw inferences from.
Humans are entities that can think and act independently before, during and after an expert has been asked to intervene, which is why Doctors, Nurses and Auditors appear in both columns of reliable and unreliable performance for experts.
(PS: I encountered 2 occurrences of the typo: “Marlie Chunger“)
EDIT: reworded my comment significantly to make my point more clear.
I’m assuming that you didn’t read the section of the essay where I summarise Shanteau, Kahneman and Klein’s findings? Complexity of systems is one aspect, certainly, but valid and regular causal inferences are by far the dominating factor. Doctors, nurses, and auditors appear on both sides because they belong to fractionated fields of expertise. I have included a definition of ‘fractionated’ (their terminology, not mine) in the essay.
(Also, Marlie Chunger is a fictitious character invented to illustrate some of the ideas in the series.)
(Also, Marlie Chunger is a fictitious character invented to illustrate some of the ideas in the series.)
> I’m assuming that you didn’t read the section of the essay where I summarise Shanteau, Kahneman and Klein’s findings?
I did read your summary in the section titled A Personal Take, unless there is another summary? Link?
(I’m wondering if your blogging tool allows a way to jump directly to sub-sections using anchor-links. This would be a time-saver for long-form essays.)
I did read your summary in the section titled A Personal Take, unless there is another summary? Link?
(I’m wondering if your blogging tool allows a way to jump directly to sub-sections using anchor-links. This would be a time-saver for long-form essays.)
Ahh, my apologies then. Yes, that’s the summary. You’re not the first person to point this out to me, but it turned out that the other reader stopped at ‘A Personal Take’ — which was what I thought happened here!
(I was going to look at the essay again and ask myself if I made a mistake, since everyone seems to stop at that heading. It also meant my structure was badly chosen. And then I saw your reply!)
Then, to address your idea more directly: I can see where you are coming from, but I think Klein and Kahneman’s definition of ‘has reliable causal cues’ + ‘provides opportunities to learn those cues’ are better filters. Klein studies some incredibly high performing individuals — experts who are able to perform well even in very complex environments. So it’s not always true that complexity of environment determines existence of expertise.
(I was going to look at the essay again and ask myself if I made a mistake, since everyone seems to stop at that heading. It also meant my structure was badly chosen. And then I saw your reply!)
Then, to address your idea more directly: I can see where you are coming from, but I think Klein and Kahneman’s definition of ‘has reliable causal cues’ + ‘provides opportunities to learn those cues’ are better filters. Klein studies some incredibly high performing individuals — experts who are able to perform well even in very complex environments. So it’s not always true that complexity of environment determines existence of expertise.
I really liked the article/blog post "Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People"[1]. I think many people are hurt by their own knowledge of biases: they weaponize this knowledge in arguments, to try and discredit others, rather than using it to reach better conclusions themselves.
If you get the former without the latter, all that means is you're better at defending the positions you happened to reach: you're just as likely to reach wrong conclusions, but are now less likely to correct them. You shot yourself in the foot.
Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to spot biases in other people's arguments that you disagree with, than it is in any arguments you do disagree with.
If you want to get better at critical reasoning skills, I think it's a lot more productive to start with Bayes' rule. Learning 100 ways to not build a light bulb may help, but getting just 1 correct blue print would help a whole lot more.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AdYdLP2sRqPMoe8fb/knowing-ab...
If you get the former without the latter, all that means is you're better at defending the positions you happened to reach: you're just as likely to reach wrong conclusions, but are now less likely to correct them. You shot yourself in the foot.
Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to spot biases in other people's arguments that you disagree with, than it is in any arguments you do disagree with.
If you want to get better at critical reasoning skills, I think it's a lot more productive to start with Bayes' rule. Learning 100 ways to not build a light bulb may help, but getting just 1 correct blue print would help a whole lot more.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AdYdLP2sRqPMoe8fb/knowing-ab...
Very interesting. I wasn't aware of this. Thanks for sharing.
Well said. Good communicators know this. They expect to be corrected, dismissed, mocked, mistrusted etc and to ignore it all and bring focus back to their arguments without offending anyone.
Hang around old people who know what they are doing, and observe. Its possible to do it without getting frustrated and without adding to frustrations. Observe their use of language. Observe what they avoid doing and ask why. Hang in there and keep practicing. It pays off.
Hang around old people who know what they are doing, and observe. Its possible to do it without getting frustrated and without adding to frustrations. Observe their use of language. Observe what they avoid doing and ask why. Hang in there and keep practicing. It pays off.
It’s hard, friend. Really hard. Bias exists. Some people will weaponize that fact against you. The same way people will weaponize imposter syndrome or stereotype threat. Basically, most people will weaponize whatever they can against you to gain an edge/ this is human nature. Underneath all the fuck-fuck games though, there is a reality where unconscious bias of all type lives. Like all things, the answer lies somewhere in between the extremely vocal minorities on whatever side.
Well biases are basically meta discussion. And discussion is what we need. If one when discusses point to biases he starts meta discussing which is counter productive to the debate and only newbs would do that.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/08/varieties-of-argumenta...
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/08/varieties-of-argumenta...
I just think it too frequently bleeds into trying to find so-called biases in arguments (whether written or verbal)
If you're sick of it, that implies it's all over the place, but I for one have no idea what you're talking about. Who focuses on cognitive biases in arguments? The blog post says nothing about arguments.
If you're sick of it, that implies it's all over the place, but I for one have no idea what you're talking about. Who focuses on cognitive biases in arguments? The blog post says nothing about arguments.
> Who focuses on cognitive biases in arguments?
In poorly written news articles and most social media arguments, there's a trend of identifying the person you disagree with by a catgory like rich / poor, white / black, radical left / radical right, etc. before arguing the point.
The insinuation is that your identity reveals your biases and your biases invalidate your argument.
Of course, trying to stop a debate by telling someone they're biased can backfire: https://youtu.be/VSHyAwErdFM
In poorly written news articles and most social media arguments, there's a trend of identifying the person you disagree with by a catgory like rich / poor, white / black, radical left / radical right, etc. before arguing the point.
The insinuation is that your identity reveals your biases and your biases invalidate your argument.
Of course, trying to stop a debate by telling someone they're biased can backfire: https://youtu.be/VSHyAwErdFM
hi voidhorse,
Thanks for the feedback and kind words. I'm absolutely considering doing "random x definition". I'll have to think of other subjects that I'm interested in but in the meantime, I'm happy for you to make some suggestions :)
Thanks for the feedback and kind words. I'm absolutely considering doing "random x definition". I'll have to think of other subjects that I'm interested in but in the meantime, I'm happy for you to make some suggestions :)
I see a lot of plugins to customize the new tab page, but at least the way I use the browser, I usually never spend more than a second on that page.
Do people actually look at what's on the new tab page? I literally hit Ctl-T and then start typing a URL or hit a bookmark in the bookmark bar. I don't even know what's on the blank tab.
Do people actually look at what's on the new tab page? I literally hit Ctl-T and then start typing a URL or hit a bookmark in the bookmark bar. I don't even know what's on the blank tab.
I like the developer excuses chrome plugin. There have been quite a few times I've opened a new tab while working with someone and the excuse basically matches what was just being said.
My assumption is that people will use this one for a bit and then install something else. There are just about 200 of them so it shouldn't be long until one sees all of them. However, if one learns about 2 or 3 biases they were not aware of, I'll be happy. The primary goal behind this was to work with my wife on it and we had a great time. The reaction we had from everyone was just amazing and we'll look into building more fun things like this.
I was in no way denegrating your work. Apologies if sounded that way.
I was just trying to see how many people actually look at that page.
I was just trying to see how many people actually look at that page.
No worries. I didn't think you were denigrating our work. If it helps at all, we've had 141k page views since Monday. Granted, that's just how many tabs all the users opened so I can't really tell how many people actually read the definitions.
I'll have to see if there's a way track the link clicks on the Source links and measure that.
Do people actually look at what's on the new tab page?
Now? No. Every browser I use is configured to show about:blank as the new tab page.
If I had an extension showing me cognitive biases, or Emacs tips? Maybe. Hard to say without trying it out.
Now? No. Every browser I use is configured to show about:blank as the new tab page.
If I had an extension showing me cognitive biases, or Emacs tips? Maybe. Hard to say without trying it out.
If you're going for Emacs tips, an Emacs package may be more suitable than a web browser extension.
It was just an example off the top of my head, since I’ve been trying to get into Emacs a bit more.
But while I’m here, I know that Emacs users are fond of telling people how they’re using Emacs incorrectly, but I think this is the first time an Emacs user has told me that a hypothetical example involving an external tool is using it incorrectly.
But while I’m here, I know that Emacs users are fond of telling people how they’re using Emacs incorrectly, but I think this is the first time an Emacs user has told me that a hypothetical example involving an external tool is using it incorrectly.
I think this is a good point. Users get desensitized to this kind of stuff and learn to filter it out/stop noticing over time.
Psychologists or UX designers might have better input into the right mechanism. I personally would guess it requires a more forceful approach. Periodically force change of focus to the tab or popup or whatever while going about normal work. As the user voluntarily installs this, maybe the threshold to be annoyed by it is a little lower and can be taken advantage off.
Psychologists or UX designers might have better input into the right mechanism. I personally would guess it requires a more forceful approach. Periodically force change of focus to the tab or popup or whatever while going about normal work. As the user voluntarily installs this, maybe the threshold to be annoyed by it is a little lower and can be taken advantage off.
What content populates your new tabs?
For me, it's different on different browsers. One displays Google's home page. Another shows some amalgamation of "news". I don't spend more than a second on the former. The latter can distract me for many seconds.
For me, it's different on different browsers. One displays Google's home page. Another shows some amalgamation of "news". I don't spend more than a second on the former. The latter can distract me for many seconds.
> What content populates your new tabs?
Riseup searx
Riseup searx
Seems like the authors of this extension have a bias towards chrome.
Yeah. But it does have ~60% share.[0]
Chrome 61.05%
Safari 12.99%
IE 10.92%
Firefox 7.02%
Other 8.03%
Chrome and Firefox have the same extension format, it's probably only 10 minutes to get it on Firefox too!
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
Not only that, but Firefox has amazing tooling such as `web-ext` cli, where you can just execute `web-ext sign` and it'll generate the `.xpi` format, run it through automated test, and give you signed versions you can distribute from wherever you want. They even have a polyfill to make the Promise based API that firefox uses compatible to Callback style APIS in Chrome.
Thanks for sharing this. Bookmarked and weekend sorted :)
Good point.
Touché. I've had a few messages asking for Firefox and Safari versions and we'll work on them as soon as we can.
How do I get notified when this happens? While that page technically has an RSS feed, I am not hopeful that it is the kind that will update when you update the site.
I'm working on this and I hope it'll be ready within a week or so. I thought it's a 10 minutes job as someone else here said, but I must be much slower than that and I'm still trying to get my head around it. The Extension Compatibility Test for Firefox page seems to freeze when I test my .crx file.
Drop me an email on the Contact page (https://mycognitivebias.com/get-in-touch/) and I'll let you know when it's ready.
Thanks
Author uses I/we but I couldn't find a name anywhere on the page.
Hey,
That's intentional. My wife and I worked on this together over a couple of weekends hence the use of I/we. We built this so that we can work on a little project together and not for recognition. We're pretty private and we'd be quite happy if no one knew our names but I'm sure that with a few google searches, you'd be able to find out who we are.
Since we don't collect any data apart from page views/loads, we think that's fair but I'd love to hear your thoughts if you disagree.
Thanks
Author and his wife apperantly. Did not notice a name either
Nonattribution bias ;-)
Is it possible to see a listing of all the biases somewhere?
Ah found it, once you install the extension it has this link at the bottom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Ah found it, once you install the extension it has this link at the bottom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Biases sure get a bad rap. The human brain is a bias machine, yet we only ever make lists of the biases we think are bad. (Which is a bias itself!)
Is this the list used? The article claims that his "wife diligently did all the research and compiled the list of cognitive biases".
Hey,
Yes, that's the list we used and most definitions are from wikipedia. Some wikipedia entrances weren't too clear so she looked for other reputable sources instead.
Granted, this isn't ground breaking research, but rather curation. I'd say her effort still counts. Also, we are very open about not being experts, but just very interested in the subject. I think it would be unfair if we'd start to push uninformed opinions.
I'd love to hear your thoughts if you disagree.
If one's aware of all the cognitive biases, does it really make his/her life better?
You can't expect a good answer: anyone who has invested their time into learning them all is surely biased :D
[deleted]
A little while ago, I set up a Repetitions (repetitionsapp.com) deck with a list of cognitive biases pulled from Wikipedia.
It's not foolproof, but being aware of cognitive bias means you can do more to minimize bias in your every day life.
It's not foolproof, but being aware of cognitive bias means you can do more to minimize bias in your every day life.
> repetitionsapp.com
Anki seems to be the go-to spaced repetition program here. Have you tried it? What attracted you to repetitionsapp?
(I don’t use either, but I’m looking for a good one...)
Anki seems to be the go-to spaced repetition program here. Have you tried it? What attracted you to repetitionsapp?
(I don’t use either, but I’m looking for a good one...)
I’m interested in hearing about this too.
It'd be cool if the extension could pick a bias, based on a URL being browsed, and then display as a pop-up or whatever.
Quick suggestion: maybe you could add one example in your website or even a screenshot, to show what it looks like
Thanks. That's a good point. I'll have to add something
cognitive bias #6385: install random browser extensions* from sites, instead of expecting the site to actually show the content
* or browser tool bar. ha! you're all those suckers from the 90s, today.
* or browser tool bar. ha! you're all those suckers from the 90s, today.
On a less positive note, and tangentially related:
I'm kind of sick of the whole "bias" obsession. It's everyone's go-to counterargument these days, and it's a shallow, poorly developed one. It's like everyone's lost critical reasoning skills, which require delicate attention to the particular strategies and propositions deployed in a given argument, and found these set of stock biases to use instead. In fact it's impossible to purge an argument or line of thinking of all so-called biases (though these don't actually exist in arguments, they are deduced from arguments)--if it were, it wouldn't be an argument or thought.
The goal of catching our own mistakes is an admirable one, and I'm not advocating people stop doing that--I just think it too frequently bleeds into trying to find so-called biases in arguments (whether written or verbal). In fact, this is more or less a fool's errand. What people are actually trying to point out in arguments are logical fallacies which are traits of the argument. Biases contrarily occur at the individual level and are operational flaws, they only occur during the thought process, and it's only meaningful to talk about them in these terms (that is, as they manifest in the ongoing practices of a person)--they are not properties of a line of thought's encoding (the written or spoken argument). Fallacies or viewpoints expressed in an argument may hint at the biases of the author, but it's a non-sequitur to start talking about them (when critiquing an argument), as the only way one could actually confirm this is by observing the author at work in daily life. To say, such an such an author is biased, is useless. It doesn't contribute meaningfully to a critique of the argument, and it would need to be verified through observation of the author.
Demonstrating to someone that they have developed/fall prey to particular bias frequently and working to rectify that one-on-one is a totally different story, or trying to catch biases operating in yourself is a totally different story.
Edit: I suppose you could say I'm biased against biases. A joke that illustrates my point.