10 Cognitive Biases and how they affect your beliefs

Ok, so I was listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast and he was interviewing the famous chess and martial arts champion Josh Waitzkin. They discussed the importance of knowing our Cognitive Biases, and how they often cause us to stand in the way of our own success.

Here is a list of 10 Cognitive Biases:

1. Ambiguity effect: The tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown". 

2. Anchoring or focalism: The tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor", on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject)

 3. Anthropocentric thinking: The tendency to use human analogies as a basis for reasoning about other, less familiar, biological phenomena. 

4. Anthropomorphism or personification: The tendency to characterize animals, objects, and abstract concepts as possessing human-like traits, emotions, and intentions. 

5. Attentional bias: The tendency of our perception to be affected by our recurring thoughts. 

6. Automation bias: The tendency to depend excessively on automated systems which can lead to erroneous automated information overriding correct decisions. 

7. Availability heuristic: The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be. 

8. Availability cascade: A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true"). 

9. Backfire effect: The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one's previous beliefs. cf. Continued influence effect. 

10. Bandwagon effect: The tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior. 

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