The main source for many of these notes is The Art of Thinking Clearly. Some notes are copied word-for-word. I’ve also conducted additional researchers on interesting ones, and I will be adding more notes as I continue to learn more.
summary
We are overly sensitive to patterns and associations, but we lack an intuitive sense for probability. We prefer the familiar and make decisions based on evolutionary survival mechanisms. Specific stories, illusions, and presentation often outweigh facts. Correlation is not causation, but there are many hidden ways in which we neglect this adage.
Michelangelo removed everything from the stone that was not David. The philosophy of via negativa eliminates downsides, and the upside will take care of itself.
We are not built for our post-industrialized world.
thoughts
After learning about these, I understood Viktor from Arcane better — “Humanity, our very essence, is inescapable.”
judgment
- Survivorship bias - triumph is more visible than failure
- Swimmer’s body illusion - we confuse selection factors with results
- Contrast effect - human perception is based on relative comparisons
- Availability bias - we prefer a wrong map to none at all
- Endowment effect - we cling to things
- Winner’s curse
- Halo effect
- Self-selection bias
- Association bias - experience can damage your judgment
- Contagion bias
- Information bias - more information doesn’t mean better decisions
- Domain dependence - knowledge is nontransferable
- Neomania - we are drawn to newness
- Outcome bias - we evaluate decisions based on result rather than process
- Clustering illusion - we are oversensitive to pattern recognition
beliefs
- Confirmation bias - beware the special case
- Falsification of history - we adjust past views to suit us
- False-consensus effect - we overestimate unanimity with others
- Not-invented-here syndrome - we think anything we create ourselves is unbeatable
- Hedonic treadmill - money can’t buy happiness
- Introspection illusion - nothing is more convincing than your own beliefs
- Effort justification - when you put a lot of energy into a task, you tend to overvalue the result
- Inductive thinking - always has doesn’t mean always will
statistics and logic
- Coincidence - the inevitability of unlikely events
- Neglect of probability - we have no intuitive grasp of risk
- Alternative paths - risk is not directly visible
- Regression to mean
- Conjunction fallacy - when a subset seems larger than the entire set
- Base-rate neglect - when you hear hoofbeats do not expect a zebra
- Gambler’s fallacy - there is no balancing force for independent events
- Beginner’s luck - watch and wait before drawing conclusions
- The problem with averages - averages often mask underlying distribution
- Stage migration - changing categories to manipulate averages
- The Black Swan - unthinkable events can massively affect you
- Faulty logic arises from fast thinking - slow down
- The law of small numbers - small sample sizes give statistically insignificant results
control and decisions
- Illusion of control
- Paradox of choice - less is more
- Action bias - look active, even if it achieves nothing
- Omission bias - causing harm through inaction is better than through action
- Hyperbolic discounting - “now” makes us impatient
- Decision fatigue - willpower is a battery
- Status quo bias - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
- Default effect - you can change human behavior with a default setting
- Alternative blindness - we forget the next-best alternative
- Inability to close doors - choose what not to engage in, options come at a price
- Affect heuristic - you are a slave to your emotions
- Expectations influence perception
predictions, causation, and estimations
- Hindsight bias - why you should keep a diary
- Overconfidence effect - we systematically overestimate our knowledge and our ability to predict
- Anchoring - we use anchors when estimating, even when unnecessary
- Exponential growth - we don’t have any intuition for exponential growth rates
- Fundamental attribution error - we tend to overestimate individuals’ influence
- False causality - correlation is not causality
- Forecast illusion - false prophets
social
- Social proof - herd instinct
- Social loafing - when people work together, individual performances decrease
- Groupthink
- Reciprocity - do not accept free drinks
- In-group out-group bias - prejudice and aversion are biological responses to anything foreign
- Social comparison bias - we take aim at young guns
incentives
- Incentive super-response tendency - never pay your lawyer by the hour
- Motivation crowding - monetary incentives crowd out all others
- Volunteer’s folly - hands-on volunteering often does not make as big of an impact as helping through one’s expertise
credibility and interpretation
- Story bias - stories are more important than facts
- Authority bias - we are reluctant to disobey authority
- Chauffeur knowledge - do not take news anchors seriously
- Liking bias - amiability works better than bribery
- Framing - it is not what you say, but how you say it
- Self-serving bias - we attribute success to ourselves and failures to external factors
- Cognitive dissonance
- “Because” justification
- Twaddle tendency - jabber disguises ignorance
- Primacy and recency effects - first impressions are deceiving
- Sleeper effect - the source of an argument fades faster than the argument
- Forer effect, Barnum effect - how to expose a charlatan
loss aversion and investment
- Loss aversion - we fear loss more than we value gain
- Sunk cost fallacy - why you should forget the past
- Scarcity error - rare is valuable
- Fear of regret - last chances make us panic
- Ambiguity aversion - known probabilities are preferred over unknown ones
Salience effect - outstanding features receive more attention than they deserve House-money effect - “free” money is treated more frivolously Envy - comparison is the thief of joy Personification - statistics don’t stir us, people do Illusion of attention - we only see what we’re focusing on Strategic misrepresentation - the more at stake, the more exaggerated your assertions become Overthinking - thinking too much stunts intuition Planning fallacy - we overestimate our ability to get stuff done Déformation professionnelle - if your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails Zeigarnik effect - outstanding tasks gnaw at us Illusion of skill - neither skills nor toil are key criteria for success Feature-positive effects - checklists are deceiving Cherry picking - drawing the bull’s-eye around the arrow Fallacy of the single cause - we tend to hunt for scapegoats Intention-to-treat error - test subjects can vanish from the sample News illusion - the news distorts our worldviews