Biases & Fallacies

Social proof

Majority = true

Evolution : tribes

Clue =! Proof

Easy example :
Less obvious example :

Confirmation bias

Select information confirming your belief
Interpretation based on your belief even in the face of disconfirming evidence

Ignoring / devaluing other information so it's not objective
Ignoring numerous times it didn't go your way without really considering the content
Happens when you quickly listen to someone or skim through a document/article

Easy ex : - left handed people = more creative.
Voiture se croisent dans les tournants du quartier.
Thinking about mom. Phone ringing... It's her, that's proof ! Yeah but what about all the other times it wasn't her.
Hard ex : Gun control

Survivorship bias
(Selection bias)

Authority bias

Irrational trust in the judgement in experts
Follow the leader

We don't question the leader
It can also be faked

Ads : doctors, sports, politicians...
Is this authority figure really an expert in this field ?

Evolution : survive

Focusing on things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that didn't

Leads to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored

  • People jumping from a cliff saying it's not dangerous because they made it and not seeing all the others who died.

  • Lottery


  • Earth perfect zone

Negativity bias

Negative things have more impact than positive ones

Not objective

  • League of legends

Cognitive dissonance bias

  • A != B
  • reduce discomfort by altering belief or behavior

  • Smoking & cancer (oh but i don't smoke that much... The evidence for cancer is week anyway... But i workout so much that it doesn't even matter... Smoking and cancer are not related...)


  • cult & Maya (we're still alive not because it's bullshit but because we were here praying for the cult so it didn't happen)

Awkward moment when you realize you're a hypocrite
Reinterpret evidence to show that you're right : modify, add new thing, deny

Psychology
Inner drive to hold our attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, the things we say and behavior in harmony. If there's an incoherency, something must change to eliminate the dissonance.

Backfire effect

Increased belief after correction, belief perseverance

  • Continue to believe misinformation.
  • often plays a role in people’s belief in pseudoscientific theories, as in the case of people’s belief that vaccines are highly dangerous, and should be avoided
  • Religion, flat earth, media...
  • when people expect a prophecy to happen and it fails

Blindspot bias

Less biased than others
Recognize other's biases but fail to see your own

Pain-avoidance bias

Refuse the facts until it's bearable

  • soldier dies and mom won't accept
  • old marketing strategies won't believe that ads on social media can be revolutionary

Bias

Definition

Impact/why it's important/consequence

  • easy example
  • less obvious example

What other fields say about it

Bias defense

Be aware of it

Clearly verbalize your belief

Make the reasoning process explicit

Slow down, take a couple seconds to your emotional state that makes you reject/accept the belief
Carefully think through relevant information
Don't skim through the content/document or you will suffer from confirmation bias

Clear evidence

Notice potential gaps

Standardize these steps

Feedback
From an unclosed system (to avoid asking people from the same group)
Because people can be biased too, you want to take their feedback as another piece of information

Consider alternatives
Find other highly plausible alternatives

Create psychological self-distance
Increasing the distance from your own egocentric perspective

  • Look at yourself from a perspective that's different from your own such as the person you're talking to
  • what advice would you give to a friend if he was in your situation
  • avoid using first person language when asking questions to yourself "what's bothering you in that situation ?"

Argument from ignorance

  • You can't prove that there's an invisible flying unicorn in my bedroom therefore it's there's one
  • We can't prove how pyramids were build therefore it's alien

If we can't prove/disprove something so they're right/wrong

A lack of evidence to disprove something doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that's it's not yet been proven

Argument from incredulity fallacy

Because you found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, you make out like it's probably not true.

ex : Evolution : a fish didn't turn into a human

Just because you can't imagine/understand X to be true doesn't mean it false

Selective attention fallacy

Special pleading

Einstellung effect

Already having a formed idea in your head of how to solve something which prevents you from finding a better solution

Tunnel vision

Poisoning the well

Slippery slope

False cause : Correlation doesn't necessarily apply causation

Conjunction

Ad hominum bias : to attack someone's traits to undermine their argument

Circular reasoning bias

  • The bible says it's the word of god. God only tells the truth. So the bible is true.
  • Egg exists because of chicken. Chicken exists because of egg.

Repeating the same thing in different ways making it look like arguments.

This is use to prove that, and that is used to prove this
Dog biting its tail analogy

Urgency bias <-- find the bias, make it clear
When someone pressures you and doesn't give you time to think things through.

  • "Repent now before it's too late ! The apocalypse is coming !"
  • "If you don't take a decision now, it's gonna be too late !"