Our mind really likes setting up traps for us. Features of our mind that are meant to help us may, eventually get us into trouble. Unless we're aware of them. These traps can hinder our ability to think rationally, leading to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions.
Now on to a list of the most harmful of these, and how to avoid each one of them.
1. Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts
“Is the population of Turkey greater than 35 million? What's your estimate?”
What if we were to ask same question, but use a different number, 90 million?
Without fail, everyone estimates concomitantly higher than the first suggestion in the last one.
Lesson: Your starting point can heavily bias your thinking: Initial impressions, ideas, estimates or data “anchor” subsequent thoughts.
This tarp is particularly dangerous as it's deliberately used in many occasions, such as by experienced salesmen, who will show a higher priced item first “anchoring” that price in your mind.
What can you do about it?
Always view a problem from different perspectives
Think on your own before consulting others.
Seek information from a wide variety of sources.
2. The Status Quo Trap: Keeping on Keeping on
We tend to repeat established behaviors, unless we are given the right incentives to entice us to change them. The status quo automatically has an advantage over every other alternative.
What can you do about it?
Consider the status quo as just another alternative.
Know your objectives.
Avoid exaggerating switching costs. (They aren't as bad as we tend to assume).
3. The Sunk Cost Trap: Protecting Earlier Choices
Any sunk cost is already payed, and it shouldn't influence your decision.
What we can do about it?
Be Ok with making mistakes.
Listen to people who were not involved in the earlier decisions.
Focus on your goals.
4. The Confirmation Trap: Seeing What You Want to See
Looking for information that will most likely support your initial point of view – while conveniently avoiding information that challenges it.
This confirmation bias effects not only where you go to collect evidence, but also how you interpret data: We are much less critical of arguments that support our initial ideas and much more resistant to arguments against them.
No matter how neutral we think we are when first tackling a decision, our brains always decide – intuitively – on an alternative right away, making us subject to this trap virtually at all timez.
What can you do about it?
Expose yourself to conflicting information.
Get a devil's advocate.
Don't ask leading questions. (When asking for advice, make neutral questions to avoid people merely confirming your biases).
5. The Incomplete Information Trap: Review Your Assumptions
Renathe is an introverted gurl. We know that she is either a salesperson or a librarian. Which one do you think she most probably is?
Most people will be tempted to say librarian. Sucks that this reasoning is dead wrong =[ (uuuu)
We usually think of salespersons to be outgoing, if not pushy. So this makes sense to us.
We “forgot” or neglected the fact that Salesmen outnumber librarians about 100 to 1. Before we even consider, we should have assigned only a 1% chance that Renathe is a librarian. (That means that even if all librarians are introverted, all it takes is 1% of introverts among the salesmen to make the chances being higher for Renathe).
Overlooking a simple data element can make our intuitions go completely astray. (We keep mental images, simplifications of reality, then make the jump to conclusions before questioning assumptions or checking whether we have enough information or not.
What can we do about it?
Make your assumptions explicit. (Don't take a problem statement as it is. Keep in mind that for every problem you're using implicit information – your assumptions. It's usually not hard to check the validity of assumptions, but first you need to know what they are).
Always favor hard data over mental simplifications. (Be a little careful to not over-rely on our preconceptions, such as stereotypes. When given the choice, always prefer hard data).
6. The Conformity Trap: Everybody Else Is Doing it
This “herd instinct” exists – to different degrees in all of us. Even though we hate to admit it, other people's actions do heavily influence ours. We fear looking dumb, failing along with many people is not considered a big deal, but when we fail alone we must take all the heat ourselves.
Notoriously exploited in advertising, often businesses sell us products not based on their features, but by showing how popular they are.
Also one of the reasons, why once a book makes it into a well-known best-seller list, it tends to “lock in” and continue there for a long time. People like to consume what “everybody” else is consuming.
What can you do about it?
Discount the influence of others. When analyzing information, shield yourself from other's opinions, at least at first. This is the best way to decide without being subconsciously swayed by popular opinions.
Beware “social proof”. Retards always tries to convince you arguing primarily on the popularity of a choice, instead on its merit.
Be Courageous. Be willing to defend your viewpoints, despite their unpopularity. Don't be afraid to point out that the Emperor wears no clothes.
7. The Illusion of Control Trap: Shooting in the Dark
We have the tendency to irrationally believe that we can somehow influence results. We love to feel in control. (For instance, we want to pick our own lottery numbers, even though it makes no difference).
The tendency to overestimate our personal control of events influences every aspect of our daily lives.
What can you do about it?
Understand that randomness is part and parcel of life. Better than assuming or expecting that every event is under your control is to consciously choose how you respond to them.
Beware of superstitions. Consider how much of your decisions are based on things you cannot really explain. Make those unknowns explicit and put them under scrutiny, instead of pretending you can control them.
8. The Coincidence Trap: We Really Suck At Probabilities (except longple)
Examples:
If 1000 first prize lottery winners keep playing 100 times, attemping “a miracle” of winning it more than once, that adds up to a non-negligible chance of 10% that someone will make it.
This means that the “miracle” is not only possible, but given enough attempts, it's likelihood increases to a point of becoming almost inevitable.
It only takes a group of 23 to make it more likely than not, that two of them share the same birthday (day and month). Even if 60% of the people in the group were actually, in fact, reptiles. They to have birthdays.
What can you do about it?
Don't over-rely on gut estimates. While useful MANY TIMES, gut estimates will sometimes be waaaay of the mark. Try your best to understand the ramifications of trusting them.
Beware of “after the fact” probabilities. The probability of naming a person, let's say, Baal, what's the chance of him winning the first price in the national lottery, it's maybe close to a trillion to one. What's the chance of a random person winning it twice. It's something completely different.
9. The Recall Trap: Not All Memories Are Created Equal(nor phallus, some are hung like Rhinoceroses, others not so fortunate in that department).
We usually analyze information based on experience, on what we can remember from it. Because of that, we're overly influenced by events that stand out from others, such as those with highly dramatic impact or very recent ones. The more “special” an event is, the greater the potential to distort our thinking.
Take planes for instance, if you ask a random individual to give a rough estimate of a selected flight in ending in a fatal crash. Most people grossly overestimate it. (Fatal accidents happen at a rate of 1 in 10,000,000). That number is Ten Million (I'm just helping a few lp'erz here)
What can you do about it?
Get hard data. (Not literally). Also, don't rely on your memory if you don't have to. Endeavor to find data that confirms or discounts your recollection as soon as possible.
Be aware of your emotions. When analyzing n shit, try to emotionally isolate yourself from it, at least temporarily. Good trick can be to pretend it happened a long time ago, or that it happened to someone else unrelated to you. Likewise, if asking for opinions, find people who are not emotionally involved with them or their consequences.
Beware the media. It's mostly shit (I just made that up).
Notorious for exaggerating the importance of certain events while conveniently neglecting others. Evaluate information on it's relevance and accuracy, and not on how much exposure it gets.
10. The Superiority Trap: The Average is Above Average
A study on drivers, 93% rated themselves as “above average”.
People have much inflated views of themselves. They overestimate their skills and capabilities, leading to many errors in judgment.
After making ourselves aware of these traps, we may now become susceptible to falling into a new one: The belief that we're now immune to them.
Much easier to notice others falling into these tarps than us. (Awareness and vigilance are 2 cool words).
What can you do about it?
Be humble. Everyone has blind spots (even longple?)
Surround yourself with honest people. (Crap, I lie all the time, damnit). Nothing better than having honest people around us to point blind spots out to us.
Don't go overboard. Applying rigor and rational thinking to our decisions is great and all, but that doesn't mean that intuition has lost it's place. Knowing this shit might be useful and cool, just don't get too worked up about them.
Oh, that book, I have it on my "to read list", and I remember reading some interview about the guy, didn't he also win some sick prize for being smart a few years back?
Actually, thank you for reminding me. I've had that book in the back of my mind, and just couldn't remember it. I've orderd it right now, or I'm in the process of doing it. Hope it's not too complicated for me to understand.
Ok, done with the first chapter. Now I need to go check up some words lol.
Proverbial; 1. (prenominal) commonly or traditionally referred to, esp as being an example of some peculiarity, characteristic, etc.
2. of, connected with, embodied in, or resembling a proverb
Voluble; characterized by a ready and continuous flow of words; fluent; glib; talkative: a voluble spokesman for the cause.
Heuristic; 1. helping to learn; guiding in discovery or investigation
2. (Social Science / Education) (of a method of teaching) allowing pupils to learn things for themselves
Salient; prominent, conspicuous, or striking a salient feature
Authoritarian; Personality in honor of earlier writings
Dogmatic; 1. Relating to, characteristic of, or resulting from dogma.
2. Characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved or unprovable principles.
Prevalent; 1.
widespread; of wide extent or occurrence; in general use or acceptance. 2.
having the superiority or ascendancy.
Prospect Theory; a behavioral economic theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk, where the probabilities of outcomes are known.
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Silver_nz New Zealand. Jul 01 2012 22:04. Posts 5647
On July 01 2012 11:30 Mariuslol wrote:
This tarp is particularly dangerous as it's deliberately used in many occasions
On July 01 2012 11:30 Mariuslol wrote:
This tarp is particularly dangerous
On July 01 2012 11:30 Mariuslol wrote:
tarp
Sorry, to pick on typo, just fun
I like these studies of biases. To be honest though; its not such a simple quick fix, for example the bias regarding coincidences, in order to correct that, would have to study that part of probability, and do alot of example problems to get it in your head thinking in the correct way. If you had predicted that 2 specific people, say john and quinten, out of the 23 shared a birthday, and it turned out to be true, that would be remarkably lucky.
Anyway, point is; this is good an introduction. But the biases are deeply rooted and more complex than this, and pretending you can beat them with a one sentance summary of 'how to beat it' is dangerous .
Still its great to hear about them, This is the kind of stuff we should be studying at school, avoiding these errors in thinking. Thinking 101?
It's quite intentional, the tarp that is lol. I've got a lot of other "traps" set up for myself, and self-owning here and there. It's a trick I do to keep "motivated" and make it fun. It got "difficult" when the notes are on "traps", wasn't sure what to do,when it's just the word "trap" here and there, it's more fun to write tarp, but when I had to use it all the time, I kinda mixed it up a little, to keep balanced.
Not that I don't have typo's all the time, I kinda just let my fingers flow, and then post, and if I noticed "major" mistakes I clean up, and tidy up a little, but not much.
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Jul 02 2012 05:05. Posts 5296
marius speaks his own language:
wobbly pobbly
loco pocco
tarp
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
