#mental-model #rationality #decision-making #epistemology # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought # Bias >A cognitive bias is a systematic error in how we think, as opposed to a random error or one that's merely caused by our ignorance. Whereas statistical bias skews a sample so that it less closely resembles a larger population, cognitive biases skew our beliefs so that they less accurately represent the facts, and they skew our decision-making so that it less reliably achieves our goals. >~ [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] Anti-heuristics for [[Rationality|rational]] [[Decision making|decision making]], some are more or less, actually heuristics, you can see as [[Memetic|meme]]s to guide your path to [[Rationality|rationality]]. >Our brains have evolved to employ cognitive heuristics rough shortcuts that get the right answer often, but not all the time. Cognitive biases arise when the corners cut by these heuristics result in a relatively con-sistent and discrete mistake. >~ [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] - [[Availability bias]] - [[Cognitive biases]] - [[Confirmation bias]] - [[Contentment]] - [[Philosophy/Rationality/Models/Death denial]] - [[Epistemic arrogance]] - [[Hedonic Treadmill]] - [[Intelligence delegation]] - [[Long-term over optimization]] - [[Neomania]] - [[Noise]] - [[Risk aversion]] - [[Status game]] - [[Survivorship Bias]] - [[Uncontrolled thinking]] - [[Unknown avoidance]] ## [[Philosophy/Epistemology/Falsifiability|Falsifiability]] >I've seen people severely messed up by their own knowledge of biases. They have more ammunition with which to argue against anything they don't like. And that problem- too much ready ammunition- is one of the primary ways that people with high mental agility end up stupid, in Stanovich's "dysrationa- lia" sense of stupidity. ~ [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] # External links - fs.blog - lesswrong.com - overcomingbias.com