my question is: What feature or features of our minds are checklists compensating for?
Lack of perspective, which is actually the most serious problem with the way we think, in my opinion. A checklist is a substitute for having the ability to look in all directions at once.
I never liked the name “Overcoming Bias” because the perspective it implied was that the primary flaw in human reasoning occurs at the stage where you’ve got the issue in your hands and you’re weighing it and trying to be objective. On the contrary, I think the most serious errors we make are perspective errors, they’re errors that occur at a much earlier stage, where we’re first noticing the thing and picking it up.
It’s not that people think about things and come to the wrong conclusion, they never think about them at all. This is true even of smart people. There are things of staggering importance right in front of our noses and we don’t even see them.
Lack of perspective, which is actually the most serious problem with the way we think, in my opinion. A checklist is a substitute for having the ability to look in all directions at once.
I never liked the name “Overcoming Bias” because the perspective it implied was that the primary flaw in human reasoning occurs at the stage where you’ve got the issue in your hands and you’re weighing it and trying to be objective. On the contrary, I think the most serious errors we make are perspective errors, they’re errors that occur at a much earlier stage, where we’re first noticing the thing and picking it up.
It’s not that people think about things and come to the wrong conclusion, they never think about them at all. This is true even of smart people. There are things of staggering importance right in front of our noses and we don’t even see them.