Three cognitive biases that allow bad ideas to scale

Summary

This article in Big Think makes the following points:

• In 1974, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky published an academic paper. The pair essentially launched a new field—the study of cognitive biases.
• With a series of experiments, they uncovered a constellation of hidden weaknesses in human judgment that steer us away from rational decision-making.
• Cognitive biases are hardwired in the brain, making them difficult to change.
• Confirmation bias—which prevents us from seeing possibilities that challenge our assumptions—help to explain why avoidable false positives frequently occur.
• We use mental shortcuts to make quick, gut-level decisions because we have limited brainpower to process a lot of data.
• Over time, our brains have evolved to reduce uncertainty and streamline our responses.

References

Recent Runway Posts related to this topic:

• Cognitive Biases Make Reasoning About Vaccines Difficult | The Runway (airforce.gov.au)  

References from the Web:

• MAY 2021 Daniel Kahneman on ‘noise’ – the flaw in human judgement harder to detect than cognitive bias—The Conversation
• AUG 2021 Have We Been Ignoring the Biggest Flaw in Human Judgment?—Psychology Today

Source Information:

• Article Source: Big Think
• Media Check: Big Think - Media Bias Fact Check (mediabiasfactcheck.com)
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