Bias

WikiLast edit: 3 Oct 2020 4:47 UTC by WrongPlanet

Bias or Cognitive Bias is a systematic deviation from rationality committed by our cognition. They are specific, predictable error patterns in the human mind 1. The heuristics and biases program in cognitive psychology has documented hundreds of reproducible errors—often big errors. This continues to be a highly active area of investigation in cognitive psychology.

In our evolutionary past, in order that a cognitive algorithm turned out into a satisfactory solution to a given problem, it wasn’t enough to solve it properly. It was necessary that the solution accounted for a large number of restrictions, such as time and energetic costs. This algorithm didn’t need to be perfect, only good enough to guarantee the survival and reproduction of the individual: “What selective pressures impact on decision mechanisms? Foremost is selection for making an appropriate decision in the given domain. This domain-specific pressure does not imply the need to make the best possible decision, but rather one that is good enough (a satisficing choice, as Herbert Simon, 1955, put it) and, on average, better than those of an individual’s competitors, given the costs and benefits involved.” 2

Therefore, the human brain make operations which solve cognitive tasks through ‘shortcuts’, that work well on some cases but fail in others. Since the cognitive modules that make those tasks are universals in the human species, how and where those shortcuts lead to mistakes are also regular. The study of why, how and where such errors arise is the field of cognitive bias. Understanding cognitive biases and trying to defend against their effects has been a basic theme of Less Wrong since the days it was part of Overcoming Bias.

Starting points

Blog posts on the concept of “bias”

Blog posts about known cognitive biases

References

See also

Not to be confused with


  1. POHL, Rüdiger (orgs.). (2005) “Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory”. Psychology Press. p. 2

  2. BUSS, David(orgs.). (2005) “The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology”. Wiley, New Jersey. p. 778.

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