ConfirmationBias.io

Golden Hammer: When someone, usually an intellectual who has gained a cultish following for popularizing a concept, becomes so drunk with power he thinks he can apply that concept to everything. Every mention of this concept should be accompanied by a picture of @nntaleb. pic.twitter.com/V4fMpZVWfX — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Ultimate Attribution Error: We tend to attribute good acts by allies to their character, and bad acts by allies to situational factors. For opponents, it’s reversed: good acts are attributed to situational factors, and bad acts to character. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Tocqueville Paradox: As the living standards in a society rise, the people’s expectations of the society rise with it. The rise in expectations eventually surpasses the rise in living standards, inevitably resulting in disaffection (and sometimes populist uprisings). — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Woozle Effect: An article makes a claim without evidence, is then cited by another, which is cited by another, and so on, until the range of citations creates the impression that the claim has evidence, when really all articles are citing the same uncorroborated source. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Pluralistic Ignorance: Phenomenon where a group goes along with a norm, even though all of the group members secretly hate it, because each mistakenly believes that the others approve of it. (See also: Abilene Paradox) — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Belief Bias: Arguments we'd normally reject for being idiotic suddenly seem perfectly logical if they lead to conclusions we approve of. In other words, we judge an argument’s strength not by how strongly it supports the conclusion but by how strongly *we* support the conclusion. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Streetlight Effect: People tend to get their information from where it’s easiest to look. E.g. the majority of research uses only the sources that appear on the first page of Google search results, regardless of how factual they are. Cumulatively, this can skew an entire field. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Concept Creep: As a social issue such as racism or sexual harassment becomes rarer, people react by expanding their definition of it, creating the illusion that the issue is actually getting worse. I explain the process in detail here: https://t.co/hG2Erq1y96 — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Focusing Illusion: Nothing is ever as important as what you’re thinking about while you’re thinking about it. E.g. worrying about a thing makes the thing being worried about seem worse than it is. As Marcus Aurelius observed, “We suffer more often in imagination that in reality.” — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Limited Hangout: A common tactic by journos & politicians of revealing intriguing but relatively innocent info to satisfy curiosity and prevent discovery of more incriminating info. E.g. a politician accused of snorting cocaine may confess to having smoked marijuana at college. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Condorcet Paradox: a special instance of Simpson’s paradox applied to elections, in which a populace prefers candidate A to candidate B, candidate B to C, and yet candidate C to A. This occurs because the majority that favors C is misleadingly divided among different groups. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Simpson’s Paradox: A trend can appear in groups of data but disappear when these groups are combined. This effect can easily be exploited by limiting a dataset so that it shows exactly what one wants it to show. Thus: beware of even the strongest correlations. pic.twitter.com/O34Or7V5rN — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Survivorship Bias: We overemphasize the examples that pass a visibility threshold e.g. our understanding of serial killers is based on the ones who got caught. Equally, news is only news if it’s an exception rather than the rule, but since it’s what we see we treat it as the rule — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, […]

Cumulative Error: Mistakes grow. Beliefs are built on beliefs, so one wrong thought can snowball into a delusional worldview. Likewise, as an inaccuracy is reposted on the web, more is added to it, creating fake news. In our networked age, cumulative errors are the norm. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Cultural Parasitism: An ideology parasitizes the mind, changing the host’s behavior so they spread it to other people. Therefore, a successful ideology (the only kind we hear about) is not configured to be true; it is configured only to be easily transmitted and easily believed. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Emergence: When many simple objects interact with each other, they can form a system that has qualities that the objects themselves don’t. Examples: neurons creating consciousness, traders creating the stock-market, simple mathematical rules creating “living” patterns. pic.twitter.com/3lPd3JEhuB — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Dunning-Kruger Effect: Awareness of the limitations of cognition (thinking) requires a proficiency in metacognition (thinking about thinking). In other words, being stupid makes you too stupid to realize how stupid you are. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020

Ergodicity: A die rolled 100 times has equal probabilities to 100 dice rolled once; rolling a die is “ergodic”. But if the die gets chipped after 10 throws so it’s likelier to roll 4, then 1 die 100 times =/= 100 dice once (non-ergodic). Many treat non-ergodic systems as ergodic. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, […]

Causal Reductionism: Things rarely happen for just 1 reason. Usually, outcomes result from many causes conspiring together. But our minds cannot process such a complex arrangement, so we tend to ascribe outcomes to single causes, reducing the web of causality to a mere thread. — Gurwinder (@G_S_Bhogal) February 6, 2020