Phillip T. Erickson - Cognitive Biases And The Blind Spots Of Critical Thinking: Master Thinking Clearly, Learn Concealed Biases Of People, And Block Predictably Irrational Mental Models

Cognitive Biases And The Blind Spots Of Critical Thinking

Master The Art Of Thinking Clearly, Learn Concealed Biases Of People, And Block Predictably Irrational Mental Models

Phillip T. Erickson

Copyright 2019 by Phillip T. Erickson - All rights reserved.

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Introduction

M an, the most rational of all animals is also guilty of erroneous and irrational thinkingfar too many times than one would imagine. The primary reason for this is the human tendency to display several cognitive biases in thinking.

A cognitive bias is an intrinsic error in someones line of thinking that causes them to err in the decisions they take and in the exercise of judgment. As a child you might remember having visited the local town museum a couple of times. The memories that you carry in your mind about that place are those of one of the largest and most fascinating place with some amazing exhibits that left an indelible impression on your young consciousness.

If someone were to ask you about the places to visit in your home town, you might recommend that they visit the museum you visited as a child, because the memories of your childhood visit are still fresh in your mind. Not once would it occur to you that your memories might not exactly be 100% accurate. Now suppose that that person did take your advice and went to the museum you suggested.

Now that person would come across a very modest building with some very unimpressive exhibits and wonder why you made such a song and dance about how great the museum was. You did so because you had a cognitive bias about the place on account of your grand childhood memories.

As the above example proves, there are all kinds of cognitive biases that may cloud a persons ability to think rationally. Any cognitive bias occurs during the processing of information that one is exposed to. The brain is quite often not able to understand or rationalize such information, which results in it making cognitive errors.

A person who was born and raised on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with literally no contact with modern civilization would not be able to comprehend what he or she was dealing with, if they were to witness a helicopter land on their island.

In an attempt to understand what the phenomenon of a flying craft carrying human beings wearing bizarre clothes could signify, such a person could think that celestial or divine beings have landed upon the island. You might think that they are being ridiculous, but to such a person his or her perception might appear the more rational in the world! Put yourself in their place and you would likely feel the say way. If you time travelled to the Europe of the middle ages and tell them that the world is spherical and not flat they would probably take you to be mad or worse a heretic who should be burned at the stake.

As you can see, people will always suffer from some cognitive bias or other, regardless of which part of the world or even which era they belong to. However, there is only one way to avoid cognitive bias and that is by indulging in what is known as critical thinking. Critical thinking is the ability to question a purported fact and accept it only after validating its truth.

However, the fact that one may suffer from cognitive bias often leads to one not being able or not even wanting to exercise the faculty of critical thinking. For instance, if you have grown up thinking that European people are superior to Asian people, you would not even care to validate the truth of your belief, by getting to know Asian people betterso sure, smug and happy would you be in that erroneous belief.

The thing about cognitive biases is that they are not without their uses. The Europeans of the past few centuries spawned global colonies on the back of their technological and military superiority over the East and other parts of the world. Their sense of racial superiority, though reprehensible, led them to expand their empires relentlessly in the process making these nations richer than they had ever been before.

Likewise, we will see people and communities quite happy and content in their own worlds where they feel both satisfied and secure. There are many reasons for this.

For one, decision making is faster and less stressful in an environment that is familiar and less threatening. If you only want to hire people for a job from the town in which your company is located, because you believe that all he best talent is available locally, your hiring process will be a very straightforward process indeed, as there would be no need to scout for suitable candidates far and wide.

On the other hand, if you believe that you should never eat anything that you are not familiar with as that might make you sick, the fact of the matter is that you might actually reduce your chances of falling sick from eating something that didnt agree with you.

But playing it excessively safe has never really been the best way forward for the human race. It is always the risk takers, mavericks and non-conformists, forever searching for the real truth who have caused mankind to strive harder and higher and in the process achieved the success that they did.

Everything from the discovery of the wheel, the printing press and atomic power, to electronics and digital technology owes something to the quest on the part of some critical thinkers who challenged the status quo and found their own answers that satisfied their intellectual curiosity. No doubt they suffered from many cognitive biases brought on by their own backgrounds and experience, but they never let that stop them from thinking, analyzing and discovering.