 |
"It has become pretty clear in the last 20 years
that our judgements and ability to judge neutral information is contaminated -
affected - by emotional values, by affective influences." - Moshe Bar
"People have a neuro-psychological need to believe
their perceptions are correct, so they reflexively discount, discard or block
out any evidence that contradicts their narrative. Shifting that narrative
requires a psychological quantum leap that usually comes in a flash of
insight." - Paul Chefurka
"Overconfident judgements are utterly
representative' of those made by professionals in medical care,
financial services, and a host of
other settings of "expert" decision making. In fact, physicists, economists,
and demographers all suffer from this bias, even when reasoning about their
field of expertise. When you have a good theory, overconfidence may do less
damage. The problem is people usually
believe they have a good theory." - JD Trout
A man, declared dead by an
expert, was being prepared for burial when he
revived. He sat up, but he was so shocked at the scene surrounding him that he
fainted dead away. He was put in a coffin, and the funeral party set off for
the cemetery. Just is they arrived at the grave, he again regained
consciousness, lifted the coffin lid, and cried out to be saved.
'It is
not possible that he has revived,' said the mourners, 'He has been certified
dead by an expert.'
'But I am alive!'
shouted the man.
The expert who had
pronounced him dead was present and the man appealed to him.
'Tell them
I am still living!'
'Just a moment,' said the
expert.
The
expert then turning to the mourners and
asked,
'We have heard what the alleged deceased has
had to say.
You fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the
truth.'
'He is dead, as your
expertise has already judged', agreed the
witnesses.
'Bury him!' declared the expert. And so the man was buried.
Judgement is defined as:
The
act of judging or
assessing.
The legal document stating the
reasons for a judicial decision.
The capacity
to form an opinion by distinguishing and evaluating.
The
mind's ability to
perceive and distinguish
relationships; discernment.
The
capacity to assess situations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound
conclusions.
The act or process of judging; the
formation of an opinion after consideration or
deliberation.
judge
To
govern; rule.
To act or decide as a judge.
To pass sentence on; condemn.
To have
as an opinion or assumption; suppose.
One
who makes estimates as to worth, quality, or fitness.
To determine or
declare after
consideration or deliberation.
To
form an opinion or estimation of after careful
consideration.
One appointed to decide the winners of a contest or
competition.
To determine upon
or deliberation; to esteem; to think; to
reckon.
To assume the right to pass judgement on
another; to sit in judgement or
commendation;
to criticise or pass adverse
judgement upon others.
To
compare facts or ideas, and
perceive their
relations and attributes, and thus distinguish
truth from falsehood;
to determine; to discern; to distinguish;
to form an opinion about.
One who has skill, knowledge, or
experience, sufficient to decide on the merits of
a question, or on the quality or
value of anything; one who
discerns properties or relations with skill and
readiness; a connoisseur; an expert; a
critic.
American
judges - Hugo L. Black -
Louis D. Brandeis -
Benjamin Cardozo -
William O. Douglas
-
Learned Hand - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. -
Thurgood Marshall
cognitive bias
"One nagging thing that I still don’t
understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological
biases, even though I’m acutely aware of these biases. One example is my
failure at affective forecasting, happiness dissipates more quickly than
anticipated. Another is undue optimism about how quickly I can complete work
projects, despite many years of experience in underestimating the time
actually required. One would think that explicit knowledge of these
well-documented psychological biases and years of experience with them would
allow a person to cognitively override the biases. But they don’t." -
David Buss
"One nagging thing I don't understand about myself
is why I'm still fooled by incidental feelings. Some 25 years ago I studied how
gloomy weather makes one's whole life look bad -- unless one becomes aware of
the weather and attributes one's gloomy mood to the gloomy sky, which
eliminates the influence. You'd think I learned that lesson and now know how to
deal with gloomy skies. I don't, they still get me." - Norbert Schwarz
A cognitive bias is a
pattern of deviation in judgement from what is perceived as the "normative
judgement." The "normative judgement" is a judgement made by an individual that
adheres to "expected" and accepted modes of
thought. "Expected" modes
of thought are based on
the assumption that an individual that
has brought no pre-concieved notions to his judgement operates from
an entirely objective view of
reality.
Actor-observer bias - the tendency to judge an
other's behavior by overemphasizing the influence of their personality and
underemphasizing the influence of their situation coupled with the opposite
tendency when judging oneself
Anchoring bias - the tendency to rely too
heavily on one piece of information when making decisions
Attentional bias
- inclination to neglect relevant data when making judgements of a correlation
or association
Authority bias - the tendency to value something according to
an "expert" opinion
Belief bias - an effect where someone's evaluation of
the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the
conclusion
Blind spot bias - the
tendency not to compensate for one's own cognitive biases
Choice-supportive bias - the tendency to remember
personal judgements made as better than they were
Confirmation bias - the tendency to search for or
interpret information that confirms one's preconceptions
Congruence bias -
the tendency to rely on direct testing of a given hypothesis while neglecting
indirect testing
Correspondence bias - the tendency to draw correspondent
dispositional inferences from behavior
Consistency bias - the tendency to
incorrectly remember past opinions as resembling present opinions
Distinction bias - the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when
evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately
Egocentric bias - the tendency to remember or believe you are greater than
you are
Expectation bias - the tendency to believe, certify, and publish
data that agrees with expectations, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade
data that conflicts with expectations.
Exposure bias - the tendency to
express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar
Extraordinary bias - the tendency to over value an object because it is
"special."
False consensus bias - the tendency to overestimate the degree
to which others agree
Framing bias - the tendency to describe or approach
an issue or situation too narrowly.
Hindsight bias
- the inclination to see past events as being more predictable than they
actually were
Impact bias - the tendency for people to overestimate or
underestimate the length and/or the intensity of the impact of future emotional
states
Information bias - the tendency to seek information even when it
cannot affect action
Ingroup bias - the tendency to give preferential
treatment to an individual identified as belonging to the same social sub-group
Notational bias - a form of cultural bias in which symbols are mistaken for
real things
Omission bias - the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse,
or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
Optimism bias - the tendency to be over-optimistic about
the outcome of planned actions
Outgroup homogeneity bias - the tendency to
see peers as more varied in our sub-group
Outcome bias - the tendency to
judge a decision based on the acceptability of results
Positive outcome bias - a tendency to overestimate the
probability of good things happening
Overconfidence bias - the tendency to be
overconfident in one's own abilities
Primacy bias - the tendency to judge
initial events as more important than subsequent events
Projection bias -
the tendency to assume others share similar thoughts, beliefs, values, or
opinions.
Recency bias - the tendency to judge recent events as more
important than earlier events
Restraint bias - the
tendency to overestimate one's ability to show restraint
Status quo bias -
the tendency to like things as they are
Selection
bias - the tendency to distort data arising from the way data is selected
Self-serving bias - the tendency to claim more
responsibility for successes than failures
Separation bias - the
tendency to conceive of oneself as independent of the environment
Specialist's bias - the tendency to look at things through the lens of
one's own specialty, blinded to any broader point of view
Stereotyping bias
- the tendency to project group traits - race, class, sex - on individuals
Subadditivity bias - the tendency to judge probability of the whole to be
less than the probabilities of the parts
Trait ascription bias - the
tendency to see oneself as flexible in terms of personality, behavior and mood
while viewing others as predictable.
Zero-risk bias - preference for
reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger
risk
illusions that lead to
errors in judgementBig Brother illusion - assuming that
behemoth centralized government cares about you individually
Clustering
illusion - seeing patterns where none actually
exist
Collector's illusion - assuming cheap consumer products will one
day fetch exorbinant sums
Expert opinion illusion -
assuming that someone touted as an expert
actually knows what he is talking about
Focusing illusion - wrongly
attributing influence to a single factor by exaggerating its importance
relative to other factors
Illusion of control
- the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least
influence outcomes that they clearly cannot
Irrational escalation - the tendency to make irrational
decisions based upon decisions made or actions taken under the illusion of
control in the past
Illusion of asymmetric insight - people perceive their
knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them.
Illusion of transparency - overestimating another's understanding of your
own mental state or overestimating your understanding of anothers' mental
state.
Illusory correlation - beliefs that
inaccurately suppose a relationship between a certain type of action and an
effect
Illusory superiority - perceiving oneself as having desirable
qualities to a greater degree than other people Importance illusion - assuming
that something is important because it was on network news or in the
newspaper
Money illusion - irrational notion that the arbitrary values of
currency, fiat or otherwise, have an actual immutable value
Nothing there
illusion - not seeing the forest for the trees
Optical illusion - seeing
things incorrectly
optical
illusion example
Ponzi illusion - assuming what appear to be upstanding
community members are actually honest
Politician's illusion - assuming
politicians will actually keep promises
Shopper's illusion - assuming the
products you purchase will make your life better
fallacies that lead to errors
in judgementBase rate fallacy -
ignoring available statistical data in favor of chosen particulars
Broken-window fallacy - assuming breaking a window creates economic
growth
Conjunction fallacy - assuming that specific conditions are more
probable than general ones
Consensus fallacy - assuming that others think
the same way
Double or nothing fallacy - failing to
take into account the fact that winning streaks end
Gambler's fallacy - assuming future probabilities are
altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged
Ludic fallacy -
the analysis of chance related problems according to the belief that the
unstructured randomness found in reality resembles the structured randomness
found in games, ignoring the non-gaussian distribution of many real-world
results
Memory fallacy - confusion of imagination or false memories with
true memories
Planning fallacy - underestimating task-completion times
Texas sharpshooter fallacy - selecting or adjusting a hypothesis after the
data is collected, making it impossible to test the hypothesis fairly. Refers
to the concept of firing shots at a barn door, drawing a circle around the best
group, and declaring that to be the target.
effects that lead to errors
in judgementAmbiguity effect - the avoidance of options
for which missing information makes the probability appear "unknown"
Bandwagon effect - believing something because others do
Contrast
effect - the enhancement or diminishment, relative to normal, of perception,
cognition and related performance as a result of immediately previous or
simultaneous exposure to like stimulus
Denomination effect - the tendency
to spend more money when it is denominated in small amounts (e.g. coins) than
large amounts (e.g. bills)
Devil effect - a particular negative trait of an
individual "frames" the entire individual
Dunning-Kruger effect - incompetent individuals tend to
overestimate their own level of skill and talent while failing to recognize
genuine skill in others and the extremity of their own inadequacy
Forer
effect (aka Barnum Effect) - to rate sets of statements as highly accurate for
oneself personally even though the statements could apply to many people
Framing effect - drawing different conclusions based on how information is
presented
Halo effect - a particular positive trait of an individual
"frames" the entire individual
Hawthorne effect - people act differently
when they know they are being observed
Lake Wobegon effect - the phenomenon
that a supermajority of people report themselves as above average in desirable
qualities
Moral credential effect - prior track records of non-prejudice
increases subsequent prejudice
Observer-expectancy effect - expectations of a
given result create an unconscious bias to manipulate or misinterprets data in
order to find expected results
Ostrich effect - ignoring an obvious
(negative) situation.
Neglect of prior base rates
effect - the tendency to neglect known odds when reevaluating odds in light of
weak evidence
Pseudocertainty effect - making
risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive while making
risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes
Thinking-in-the-box effect
- unawareness that ones knowledge is cognitively bound by one's
experience
Telescoping effect - recent events appear to have occurred more
remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently
Von
Restorff effect - things that have caught our attention to more likely remain
in memory
Yes-men effect - failure to see that everyone is in agreement for
the sake of unanimity
miscellaneous thought
patterns that lead to errors in judgementAvailability heuristic - estimating what is
more likely by what is more available in memory, which is biased toward vivid,
unusual, or emotionally charged examples.
Cryptomnesia - a form of
misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination, occurs when memories
seem impossible to be true
Hyperbolic discounting - the tendency for people
to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later
payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs
are
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")
Disregard of regression toward the mean - the
tendency to expect extreme performance to continue
Divestiture aversion -
valuing a good or service at more than market value after property rights to
the good or service have been established
Fundamental attribution error -
the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for
behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and power of
situational influences on the same behavior
Herd instinct - the common
tendency to jump on the bandwagon by adopting the opinions and following the
behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict
Just-World/God phenomenon - the tendency for people to believe that the
world or God is "just" and therefore people "get what they deserve"
Need
for closure - the need to have an answer and to escape the feeling of doubt and
uncertainty.
Neglect of probability - the
tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under
uncertainty
Not Invented Here - the tendency to ignore that a product or
solution already exists
Pareidolia - vague and random stimulus (often an
image or sound) are perceived as significant, e.g., hearing hidden messages on
records played in reverse or thinking the speaker on the television is talking
to you personally
Post-purchase rationalization - the tendency to persuade
oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value
Reactance
- the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to
resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice
Reminiscence
bump — the effect that people tend to recall more personal events from
adolescence and early adulthood than from other lifetime periods
Rosy
retrospection - the tendency to rate past events more positively than they had
actually rated them when the event occurred
Selective perception - the tendency for
expectations to affect perception
Self-fulfilling prophecy - the tendency to
engage behavior that elicit results which will confirm our beliefs
Semmelweis reflex - rejecting evidence that contradicts
an established, generally accepted paradigm
Subjective validation -
perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true.
Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences
Suggestibility - a
form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for
memory
System justification - the tendency to defend and bolster the status
quo
Ultimate attribution error - assigning an internal attribution to an
entire group instead of each individual within the group
Wishful thinking -
the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is
pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.
See Jesus
See
Natural Law or the Law of God
See The Subversion of American
Democracy
See The Corruption of the American
Dream
|
|
back to stacks
contents
 |
This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a new religious
ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification
of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern
propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an
international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt
version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any
group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due
to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion
aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason
which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no
church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to
develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of
reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the
human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in
detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to
their religious beliefs in America is considered a “hate
crime.”
This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary
the intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the
international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The
international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking
system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military entertainment complex of
America and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of
self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization
is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a
gun.
American social mores and values have declined precipitously over
the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more
power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general
through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed
into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The
results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social
structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a
perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the
bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the
corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which
further their purposes.
All views and opinions presented on this web
site are the views and opinions of individual human men and women that, through
their writings, showed the capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational,
insightful and unpopular thought. All factual information presented on this web
site is believed to be true and accurate and is presented as originally
presented in print media which may or may not have originally presented the
facts truthfully. Opinion and thoughts have been adapted, edited, corrected,
redacted, combined, added to, re-edited and re-corrected as nearly all opinion
and thought has been throughout time but has been done so in the spirit of the
original writer with the intent of making his or her thoughts and opinions
clearer and relevant to the reader in the present time.
Fair Use Notice
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has
not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making
such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal
justice, human rights, political, economic, democratic, scientific, and social
justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the United States
Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on
this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. For more information see: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If
you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own
that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|
 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
All Rights Reserved
|