Cognitive Bias

Cognitive bias - a systematic error in thinking that influences judgment, often leading to irrational choices and a distorted perception of reality. 

Humans use various methodologies and approaches to thinking. We do not always have time to look at each problem rigorously and logically, instead we often rely on subconscious "shortcuts" to help make decisions quickly and efficiently. These shortcuts are called heuristics. Sometimes these mental shortcuts lead us into erroneous beliefs or decisions. When they lead to errors, these are often called cognitive biases or cognitive illusions. Identifying cognitive biases has been a popular endeavor of psychologists. Wikipedia currently lists over180 identified cognitive biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias and there is an even a wonderful graphic "codex" listing them and classifying them.

Flaw or Feature?

The foundational idea of identifying biases is that if we know about them, we can learn to overcome these biases and thus become more "rational thinkers." In essence, we are treating those cognitive biases as flaws to be corrected. Which is misleading because it seems to me that here must also be a reason why these biases exist, otherwise evolution would have weeded them out. Humans have many evolutionary features that are less than optimal for some situations, but nevertheless help us survive. A good example is our knee joints. Knees and legs are optimized for forward movement. They only bend one way and are pretty awful for moving backwards. But we don't think of knees as flawed or "biased," they are simply optimized for one function, at the expense of other functions. And we learn how to compensate for that quite well, and human survival is a testament to the value of that optimization.

For that reason, I try to avoid using the word "bias" in thinking about heuristics. And in addition to identifying how these heuristics can lead to errors of judgment, I think it is also important to think about why these heuristics exist. And while that might seem like a subtle distinction, I believe it is an important one in order to lead to more pragmatic solutions. If one is trying to convince others to think more rationally, showing them a list of 180 flaws that need to be corrected is not likely to win them over. More likely is that their eyes will roll, and they will see you as a threat, evoking evolutionary defense mechanisms that see you as an enemy to be guarded against.

Limited Time

For many real-world problems, we can always find a better answer given enough time and mental energy. But we don't have unlimited time, so we have to make trade-offs as to when a decision is good enough. We won't always get it right, but heuristics help us get a good enough answer most of the time. Through the use of heuristics, our subconscious brains can handle many tasks quickly and simultaneously. Our conscious brains are able to override our subconscious (and thus the idea of compensating for/correcting cognitive biases) but we should recognize that our conscious brains are much slower and only able to handle one task at a time. There is simply not enough time in the day for our conscious brains to review everything our subconscious decides.

Prioritization

Each person has their own priorities and approach to dedicating conscious thinking to a problem, and we can't expect them to share our priorities. More information is always better, but we shouldn't expect that teaching others about cognitive biases will make significant societal changes in our lifetimes. Instead, I favor more pragmatic approaches that accept these heuristics as human optimizations, recognize that they have value in some situations, and work to find pragmatic solutions that don't require others to acknowledge their errors or change their behavior significantly.

A Counterpoint

I often discuss the evolutionary value of much of human behavior. A very reasonable counterpoint to my viewpoint is that our modern world is so different, that what helped us survive in the past may not be useful in today's modern world. And in fact, may be counterproductive, so we need to weed-out/correct these behaviors. We certainly would all agree that today's world is vastly different than the world of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. And things move too quickly for evolution to catch up.

I don't actually disagree with that viewpoint. However, pragmatically, we have to be very judicious about where to place our limited time and energy, and how much change we can realistically expect to achieve. My point is not to disagree with the need for more education, but rather to supplement that with other additional approaches that don't rely on others to change.