cognitive biases

I really like Jason Kottke’s blog at kottke.org where he covers diverse topics about culture, design, and technology (etc). More than a year ago he posted a link to a cognitive bias cheat sheet written by Buster Benson who writes over at betterhumans.coach.me.

Cognitive biases – “systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment”¹ – are fascinating. And what that little definition doesn’t really get at is that cognitive biases are actually the norm. We can think we don’t fall prey to them but …

Some of my particular favourites are about how and why we notice the things we notice: confirmation bias, subjective validation, observer effect and the availability heuristic.

As both Kottke and Benson point out, the wikipedia page on cognitive biases is both remarkable and a remarkable mess.

So Benson spent a chunk of time thinking through the wikipedia page and came up with what he calls a cognitive bias cheat sheet. His post is fantastic, and he categorises the biases as being related to four problems:

1. There is too much information.
   
2. There is not enough meaning.
   
3. We need to act fast.
   
4. What should we remember?

The entire post is here and it’s worth every moment of your time: https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18

To cap things off, Benson produced a “diagrammatic poster remix” of his post: