Avoiding committing Cognitive Biases, not merely identifying them

Via Boing Boing, via The Quantified Self, from the Royal Society of Account Planning:

[A] visual study guide to cognitive biases (defined as "psychological tendencies that cause the human brain to draw incorrect conclusions). It includes descriptions of 19 social biases, 8 memory biases, 42 decision-making biases, and 36 probability / belief biases.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/19/a-visual-study-guide.html
http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/2010/05/a-visual-guide-to-cognitive-bi.php

Very nice to categorize all these cognitive failure modes, but just knowing about these biases does nothing to prevent one from indulging in them.

For example, Ian Plimer called out those who denied evolution, but now practices the most shabby form of global warming denialism, using exactly the same shabby techniques of the creationists he previously battled.

http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/ian-plimer-caught-out-again-co2-is-magic-argument-continues-to-lie-about-volcanoes/

There is the very nice (and surprisingly thin and readable) _The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making_ by Scott Plous.  Very nice feature of the book is that after identifying each bias, Plous gives the research on effective techniques to avoid committing those biases in your own thinking.

http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Judgment-Decision-Making/dp/0070504776

[Edit 06/01/10]

More here:

Steve Easterbrook - Serendipity: Another cognitive bug: Attempting to correct a misperception often reinforces it

I’m fascinated by the cognitive biases that affect people’s perceptions of climate change. I’ve previously written about the Dunning-Kruger effect (the least competent people tend to vastly over-rate their competence), and Kahan and Braman’s studies on social epistemology (people tend to ignore empirical evidence if its conclusions contradict their existing worldview).

...

[F]actual corrections in newspaper articles don’t appear to work for those who are ideologically motivated to hold the misperception, and in two out of the four studies, it actually strengthened the misperception. So, fact-checking on its own is not enough to overcome ideologically-driven beliefs.

Maybe the press handling climate disruption as "he said/she said" is actually doing science a favor by not laying out the scientific case.

Don't start group discussions by sharing initial preferences

Flickr StreetFly JZ
http://www.flickr.com/photos/streetfly_jz/2764158005/

Don't start group discussions by sharing initial preferences

British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/04/dont-start-group-discussions-by-sharing.html

When groups of people get together to make decisions, they often struggle to fulfil their potential. Part of the reason is that they tend to spend more time talking about information that everyone shares rather than learning fresh insights from each other. In a forthcoming paper, Andreas Mojzisch and Stefan Schulz-Hardt have uncovered a new reason groups so often make sub-optimal decisions. The researchers show that when a group of people begin a discussion by sharing their initial preferences, they subsequently devote less attention to the information brought to the table by each member, thus leading the group to fail to reach the optimal decision. The practical implications are clear - if you can, avoid beginning group decision-making sessions with the exchange of members' initial preferences.

I personally don't think groups should meet until they write up their own views in advance. I will strive to focus on the task of "devoting attention to the information brought to the table by each member", maybe the output of the first meeting should be nothing more or less than a summary of all the different viewpoints, and a rough ad-hoc synthesis of all the viewpoints into a whole (however inelegant). And "real" work begins at the SECOND meeting, in a manner where nothing can be swept under the rug, meaning no viewpoint can be discarded.

Un-subscribing to "Overcoming Bias"

Image via Wikipedia

Un-subscribing to "Overcoming Bias". What drove me over the edge was Robin Hanson's agreeing with the "Darwinism"-Nazi link pushed by "Expelled: No Ferris Bueller Allowed", starring Ben Stein. But it was a gradual slide down in quality, and a greater realization what a tiny contribution "Overcoming Bias" was going to have in fulfilling my personal goals and aspirations. What is "Overcoming Bias"? I cannot see it as more than Libertarians and Trans-humanists joining together to help each other in the "Art of Controversy". The point is: we don't want Rationality, we want Human Effectiveness. If there was some way to achieve your highest held goals, requiring you to dispense with all Rationality, dispense with Rationality you should. Imagine a malicious God, omniscient and omnipotent, causing you to stub your toe, or suffer other indignities, every time you attempted a Rational analysis. All evidence suggests that Rationality is a large component of Human Effectiveness. But it is not the whole thing. Like the parable of the two frogs in a bucket of cream. Both are swimming furiously to keep atop and keep from drowning. The first frog surveys the situation, realizes that his swimming will give out eventually, realizes that drowning is inevitable, and gives up and sinks to the bottom to die. The second frog, an irrational optimist, keeps swimming furiously, keeps swimming, keeps, swimming, the cream turns to butter, and the frog is able to hop on top, and hop out of the bucket. Which frog was Rational? Which frog was Effective? You can conflate the two (if it makes you happy to do so), but the distinction remains in reality. OK, we have Human Effectiveness and Rationality. Rationality is a large component of Human Effectiveness. What are the failure modes of Rationality, as practiced by humans or groups of humans? Well, there are a lot. Consider the list of logical fallacies. Consider the examples in the book Predictably Irrational. Consider Robert Cialdini's study of human influence, beneficial and malevolent. Each failure mode has the potential to deprive you of successfully achieving your goals and aspirations.

Image via Wikipedia

So, I don't see the point of studying "bias" outside of the context of:

• a human identifying what they believe to be their highest goals and aspirations

• a human having to accomplish this goals and aspirations with limited resources; the most important of which are time, energy, attention, focus.

• with goals and aspirations identified, and limited resources acknowledged, the human can now proceed acting like a stakeholder: observation of situation; leading to analysis; leading to identifying choices; leading to decision; leading to action; leading to evaluating effectiveness; leading back to observation.

• critical analysis of the soundness and ranking of the goals and aspirations identified earlier. Were some chosen simply from social pressure? Are some simply impossible? Are some harmful?

• We expect goals and aspirations to augmented, to be tossed out, to be raised or lowered in relative importance.

Without this context, judging the value of anything claiming to be "Rationality" is pointless. Is it a tool for helping human achieve goals and aspirations? Does it work? And this is where "Overcoming Bias" leaves me cold. There is absolutely no interest in integrating these tools of rationality into a framework of human achievement of goals and aspirations. But the tools of the art of controversy are constantly leaped to, when there is a chance of harming the relative standing of Libertarianism or Trans-Humanism in the world of ideas and notoriety. It happens too often for an observer to miss it. So, I gain little for the cost of my limited attention.