Naïve Realism
We know others are biased, but think we see the world as it is. Thus, teaching people about biases & fallacies doesn’t make them doubt their own beliefs, it only makes them even more doubtful of their opponents’.
Navals Razor
Hvis du strever med å velge mellom to alternativer, velg den veien som synes vanskeligere/tyngre på kort sikt. Dette vil motvirke hyperbolsk rabatt: Hjernens tendens til å overvurdere kortvarig smerte og undervurdere langsiktig smerte.
Naxalt Fallacy:
«Not All X Are Like That»: Smart people tend to use qualifiers like “generally” and “most”, and dumb people tend to ignore them. “Most people who are pro-choice are also pro-gun-control.” “Wrong! I’m not!” “Men are generally taller than women.” “False! My wife is 7 feet tall!” Knowing the one exception to the rule, does not disquality the fact that the majority follow the rule.
Negativity Bias
Focusing more on the negative events than the positive ones. (Guilty, your honour.)
Newton’s flaming laser sword
If something cannot be settled by experiment, it is not worth debating
Nigerification
Making an electric grid so unstable that the backup systems needed to provide reliable power costs far more than the grid itself.
Noble Cause Corruption:
The greatest evils come not from people seeking to do evil, but people seeking to do good and believing the ends justify the means. Everyone who was on the wrong side of history believed they were on the right side.
Noble disease
Vi dyrker dem som briljerer innenfor et område, blåser opp deres ego og får dem til å tro at de også vet mye om ting de ikke har noe greie på. Ved å feire deres intelligens, gjør vi dem dumme.
Nominal Fallacy
Vi setter merkelapp på ting for å unngå å tenke på dem. Å forklare en morders handlinger med at han er «ond», skåner oss for å konfrontere de komplekse årsakene som førte til at han begikk et drap.
Nova effekten
Du kan tenke at det var fælt å miste jobben, men hva om å beholde den ville ført til at du kort tid senere hadde omkommet i en arbeidsulykke? Du kan aldri vite sikkert om en hendelse er god eller dårlig, for hell kan lede til uhell og omvendt. Ikke vær for rask til å vurdere kortene du har fått utdelt. «Maybe so, Maybe not. We’ll see,» sier amerikanerne, når de gjenforteller den kinesiske fabelen om bonden, sønnen hans og hingsten som kom til gården deres.
Nutpicking:
Online political debate mainly involves cherry-picking the most outlandish members of the enemy side and presenting them as indicative in order to make the entire side look crazy. The culture war is essentially just each side sneering at the other side’s lunatics.
Occam’s razor
Entities should not be multiplied without necessity. When you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one, according to 14th–century friar William of Ockham.
Okrents lov
Alle vet at journalister kan ha fordommer, men selv de som streber etter objektivitet kan spre desinformasjon. Forsøket på å skape balanserte framstillinger kan gjøre at feiloppfatninger får mer plass enn de fortjener. Det er ingen grunn til å gi vaksinemotstandere like mye taletid som virologer midt i en pandemi.
Oppmerksomhetsøkonomi
Verden konkurrerer om din oppmerksomhet. Verdsett den derfor minst like høyt som pengene dine. Tenk over hva du sløser oppmerksomhet på, og hvor du vil investere den for å få mest igjen.
Overblown Implications effect
Vi tror folk bedømmer oss ut fra en enkel fiasko. Men en mislykket middagsrett, eller en flau kommentar er neppe noe som andre vil huske, selv om vi selv aldri glemmer det.
Outcome Bias
Judging an action by its outcome, not by the decision-making process. Fool’s luck is valued just as high as a well thought out decision, when the produce equal outcomes, even if reached the outcome because of good odds and the other despite poor odds.
Ovsiankina Effect:
We have an intrinsic need to finish what we’ve started. Exploit this by taking your breaks mid-task; the incompleteness will gnaw at you, increasing your motivation to return to work.
Package-Deal Ethics:
Being pro-choice and pro-gun-control don’t logically follow from each other, yet those who believe one usually also believe the other. This is because most people don’t choose beliefs individually but subscribe to “packages” of beliefs offered by a tribe.
Pareidolia:
We see whatever we look for. Survival favored the paranoid—those able to discern a predator from the vaguest outline. From these survivors we inherited hyperactive pattern-detection, which once saved us from the lions, but now curses us to see them even in the sky.
Parkinson’s Law:
Work expands to fill the time allotted for it. No matter the size of the task, it often takes precisely the amount of time you set aside to do it, because more time means more deliberation & procrastination.
Pascal’s Wager
Individuals engage in a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of God, and a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God. If God does not exist, the individual incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries. However, if God exists, they stand to gain immeasurably, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell. In the case of a polytheistic universe, this could go terribly wrong.
Permission Structure
Folk kvier seg for å forandre mening, av frykt for å framstå som dumme. I stedet for å påpeke at noen tar feil, fortell heller at du brukte å ha sammen mening, men forandret den da du fikk mer informasjon.
Peter prinsippet
Folk har en tendens til å bli forfremmet til sitt inkompetansenivå. God folk forfremmes helt til de når et nivå der de ikke greier å gjøre en god jobb. Dermed forfremmes de ikke lenger, men sjelden blir de degradert heller, og følgelig er verden full av ledere som suger.
Phronemophobia:
Wilson et al. (2014) found that people with nothing to do except think or give themselves an electric shock would often choose the shock. Many of us are so eager to avoid ourselves that we’d rather do something harmful than do nothing at all.
Poes lov
Det er nå umulig å skille trolling fra oppriktighet online, delvis fordi shitposts har blitt så troverdige og delvis fordi livet har blitt så likt shitposts.
Poppers Falsifiability Principle
For å kunne kalle en teori vitenskapelig, må det være teoretisk mulig å motbevise den. En hypotese som ikke kan testes, er ikke vitenskaplig. En teori eller hypotese er bare god om den kan motstå aktive forsøk på å motbevise den, og testen bør helt være av en slik karakter at vi forventer noe annet enn det som er utfallet.. Du bør ha en klar oppfatning av hva som kunne fått deg til å skifte mening. Hvis ikke, er ideene dine immune mot sunn fornuft.
Postjournalism:
The press lost its monopoly on news when the internet democratized info. To save its business model, it pivoted from journalism into tribalism. The new role of the press is not to inform its readers but to confirm what they already believe.
Potetparadokset
100 kg poteter som inneholder 99% vann tørkes til fuktprosenten er 98%. Hva veier de nå? Jo, 50kg. Tørrstoffet er fortsatt den samme kiloen, og med 98% vann betyr 49 kg vann på 1 kg potet. Verden er ikke alltid slik den kan se ut ved første øyekast.
Precision Fallacy
Polemic trick to divert attention from the real issue. An apologist for slavery wil raise the question as to where on draws the line between freedom and involuntary servitude, citing examples like the divorced husband who must work to pay alimony.
Preference Falsification:
If people are afraid to say what they really think, they will instead lie. Therefore, punishing speech – whether by taking offence or by threatening censorship – is ultimately a request to be deceived.
Premortem:
«Hindsight is 20/20.» Instead of waiting for something to go wrong and then conducting a post-mortem, conduct a “pre-mortem” by imagining it went wrong then using the power of hindsight to deduce the likeliest reason it went wrong. Imagine you wake up in a hospital. What is the most likely reason? Is there anything you can do today to prevent that?
Principle Of Humanity:
Every single person is exactly what you would be if you were them. This includes your political opponents. So instead of dismissing them as evil or stupid, maybe seek to understand the circumstances that led them to their conclusions.
Problem Selling:
Problem-solvers take an issue and break it down into small solvable chunks. Problem-sellers (e.g. politicians, the press) do the opposite, blaming many small issues on one big problem that looks insurmountable and terrifying.
Prokrastinering
Vi prøver gjerne å gjøre oss opptatt for å slippe å gjøre det vi burde, f.eks. bruke tid å programmere og feilsøke et smart script som kan gjøre jobben, framfor å manuelt oppdatere en tabell med data på den kjedelige måten.
Promethean Gap:
Technology is outpacing wisdom; we’re changing the world faster than we can adapt to it. Lagging ever more behind accelerating progress, we’re increasingly unable to foresee the effects of what we create. We’re amassing the power of gods, yet we remain apes. We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology, to quote Edward O. Wilson, Harvard professor and renowned father of sociobiology.
Psychogenetic Fallacy (bulverisme)
Vi har lett for å tenke at hvis vår motstander motiveres av visse fordommer, så er alle ideene deres også feil. I stedet burde vi vurdere påstandene deres isolert. Det vi sjelden tenker over, er at de kan ha informasjon som vi ikke har. Fremmedfrykt kan faktisk skyldes noen konkrete, dårlige erfaringer.
The Pundit Bias
The belief that what a politician needs to do to improve his or her political standing is do what the pundit wants substantively. Originally coined as «The pundit’s fallacy» by Matthew Yglesias.
Purity Spiral:
Members of political tribes inevitably begin competing with their fellows to be the most ideologically pure. The constant one-upmanship toward moral superiority causes the whole group to gradually become more extreme. E.g. Maoist China, Twitter echo-chambers.
Purva Paksha
You won’t understand an opposing view till you earnestly try to argue in favor of it. Doing so will override your natural inclination to straw-man the argument, and force you to confront its strongest, most reasonable form, which is usually its actual form.
The Reading Recession:
There is more text than ever, yet people are reading ever less and outsourcing writing to chatbots. This is dangerous because language is the basis of thought, and if you can’t read or write well, you won’t think well.
Recency Effect
Placing more weight on the most recent information or experience.
Red queen hypothesis
Proposed in 1973, describing that species must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate in order to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing species. Formerly known as Van Valen’s law. From Lewis Carroll’s «Through The Looking Glass»: Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. The term is also used to describe the increasing energy demand needed to extract the same amount of energy from an energy source like shale oil.
Reiteration effect
Joseph Goebbels said* «Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,» and he was right; repetition can make people believe things they otherwise wouldn’t.
(*Goebbels didn’t really say this, but everyone thinks he did because of the Reiteration Effect.)
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination:
You don’t want the night to end and the dreaded morning to begin, so you procrastinate going to bed, as if by doing so you can prevent tomorrow ever coming. But tomorrow *will* come, and if you don’t sleep well, it’ll hit you all the harder.
Rolestorming
Har du problemer med å være kreativ? Forestill deg at du er noen andre – Winston Churchill, Lady Gaga eller Yoda. Fortsette å jobbe som om du var denne personen og gjør dennes jobb. Det hjelper deg til å tenke utenfor boksen.
Roseto Effect:
Many big studies, including the 85 year Harvard Study of Adult Development, found that having close-knit relationships is at least as important for longevity as diet, sleep, and exercise, yet it’s often neglected by fitness gurus. If you want to live, love.
Rothbard’s Law:
If a talent comes naturally to someone, they assume it’s nothing special, and instead try to improve at what seems difficult to them. As a result, people often specialize in things they’re bad at.
Safetyism:
After US schools banned peanuts because some kids had allergies, more kids developed peanut allergies from lack of exposure. We’re increasingly protecting kids from life, which only makes them more vulnerable to it. Too much safety is dangerous.
Sagan standard
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
Salomos paradoks
Det er lettere å løse andres problemer enn dine egne, for avstand fremmer objektivitet. Kross & co (2014) viste at det er lettere å hjelpe seg selv hvis man tenker i tredjeperson og forestiller seg at det handler om en venn.
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
A principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers’ worldview or cognition, and thus individuals’ languages determine or influence their perceptions of the world. East African tribes have no word for «blue» and struggle to recognize it. An Amazon tribe has no word for 3-4-5-6-7, and count in 1-2-some-many.
Segal’s Law:
“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with 2 watches is never sure.” Ancient societies followed a single narrative. Modern societies are cacophonies of competing narratives. Without trust, more data doesn’t make us more informed but more confused.
Selektiv latskap
Vi er kritiske til andres argumenter, men ikke våre egne. Troche & co (2016) fant at når folk ble vist sine egne påstander forkledd som andres påstander, valgte de å avvise dem. For å kontrollere hva du faktisk mener om dine overbevisninger, forestill deg at de er noen andres.
Selfie Dysmorphia:
The Instagram arms race of lip fillers & beauty filters creates unrealistic beauty standards for girls, causing them to hate how they look. Their desire to escape themselves may help explain the sudden surge in teenage girls reporting gender dysphoria.
Self-Serving Bias
Crediting your successes to yourself and blaming your failures on others.
Semantic Apocalypse
I den digitale tidsalder lever vi alle i subkulturer. Samfunnet holdes ikke lenger sammen av et felles sett av tro og oppfatninger. Det eneste som forener oss er felles biologi: Vår frykt og vår sult. Vi har skapt en sivilisasjon organisert rundt vår dyriskhet.
Serial-Position Effect:
We tend to recall the beginnings (Primacy Effect) and endings (Recency Effect) of things better than the middles. So if you create anything with a beginning & ending, focus more effort there.
Shibboleth
En absurd ideologisk oppfatning er en form for signal om stammetilhørighet. Det signaliserer at man setter ideologien høyere enn sannheten, sannsynligheten eller fornuft, og fungerer som en troskapsed. «The stolen election» og «Qanon» er gode eksempler.
Social Influence Bias
Du kan ikke stole på kundevurderinger, for hver vurdering er påvirket av de foregående. Folk vil vurdere noe høyere hvis det har svært lav eller svært høy vurdering allerede. Mange vurderinger er altså bedre enn fortjent.
Sorites Paradox:
What’s the minimum number of grains of sand needed to make a heap? We don’t know, because human language (in this case the word «heap») is imprecise. If our language can’t even quantify a heap, how can it resolve the complex questions we so fiercely debate?
Spoonerisme
Å bytte om bokstavene i begynnelsen av et ord: «Det var en degnfull rag». Oppkalt etter William Spooner, en dean ved New College i Oxford, som var beryktet for slike morsomheter.
Spotlight Effect
You think others notice your mistakes or appearance more than they do. Most people are too concerned about themselves to notice you, you know.
St. George in Retirement Syndrome (en variant av Storeulvsyndromet):
Many who fight injustice come to define themselves by their fight against injustice, so that, as they defeat the injustice, they must invent new injustices to fight against simply to maintain their identity.
Streisandeffekten
Når et forsøk på å fjerne eller sensurere informasjon på Internett istedet fører til massiv oppmerksomhet. Stammer fra 2003, da Streisand saksøkte en flyfotograf som hadde fotografert Californias kystlinje, inkludert hennes hus.
Strutseeffekten
Å stikke hodet i sanden. Prøve å fortrenge et problem framfor å løse det. Det er grunnen til at noen kan la postkassa fylles opp av uåpnede inkassovarsler.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
You stick with a poor choice even if it would objectively be better to change your stance.
Switch Cost Effect
We simultaneously inhabit 2 worlds—online & offline—and both regularly interrupt us with demands/notifications, so we’re never able to settle in either. The constant switching of attention lowers working IQ by ~10, dumbifying us 2x more than being high on weed.
Talebs kirurg
Du skal gjennomføre en større operasjon og kan velge mellom to kirurger som har samme merittliste, men den ene er pen og den andre er ikke det. Hvem velger du? Selvsagt den styggeste, som har greid det samme som kollegaen, men uten å ha drahjelp av utseendet sitt. Husk alltid å ta hensyn til andres fordommer.
Tarzwell’s Razor:
Emotion causes bias. But it also causes motivation. As such, we’re most likely to act when our judgment can be trusted least. Solution: Don’t trust thoughts you have while emotional. Instead, pause, and wait for the feeling to pass before acting.
The Arena Razor
Pay more attention to the people who have skin in the game and face the consequences of failure. Ignore the pundits and commentators.
The Centipede’s Dilemma:
Ask a centipede which one of its hundred legs moves the fastest and it forgets how to move. Reflecting on what we normally do without thought ironically worsens performance. A culture of endless self-reflection, therapy, and navel gazing is eroding important life skills.
The Friendship Recession:
Americans without any friends have increased 400% since 1990. The National Institute on Aging says having no friends is worse for health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. As society continues to atomize, this issue will get worse
The Learning Pyramid:
How well you retain info depends on the way you learned it. People remember 5% of what they hear, 10% of what they read, 50% of what they discuss, 75% of what they do, and 90% of what they teach. The more interactive your learning, the more you learn.
The Medici Effect
Sculptors, painters, and architects converged in Florence as the Medicis were funding the artists. Their proximity led to a fertile dialogue which, in turn, led to the Renaissance. The internet will amplify this cross-pollination of ideas.
The Narcissist’s Prayer
“That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, it’s not my fault. And if it was, you deserved it.” Beware of goalpost-moving rationalizers. You’ll persuade them of nothing, and they’ll persuade themselves of anything.
The Never-Ending Now:
We’re always chasing the latest info, but this tends to be junk whose main selling point is novelty, not quality. Instead of new info, seek that which has stood the test of time: classic literature, proven theorems, replicated studies.
The Reading Recession:
There is more text than ever, yet people are reading ever less and outsourcing writing to chatbots. This is dangerous because language is the basis of thought, and if you can’t read or write well, you won’t think well.
Tall poppy syndrome
Australias og New Zealands svar på janteloven. Du skal ikke stikke deg fram og tro du er noe. Er du en valmue som rager over de andre, blir du kuttet ned.
The Tetris effect
When people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. People who have played Tetris for a prolonged amount of time can find themselves thinking about ways different shapes in the real world can fit together, such as the boxes on a supermarket shelf or the buildings on a street. The earliest known reference to the term appears in Jeffrey Goldsmith’s article, «This is Your Brain on Tetris«, published in Wired in May 1994.
The Two-Minute Rule:
If a task would take less than two minutes, do it immediately. This is because adding the task to your mental to-do list, keeping it in your memory, and managing the anxiety of not having done it will take far more effort than just doing it now. But nothing takes as little time as you think…
The Tzar delution:
The executive head can’t implement his ideas on ground because the bureaucrats are closer to it, and have an agenda of their own. The Tzar of Russia had to deal with the Deep State too. Nicholas II: “I never ruled Russia. 10,000 clerks ruled Russia.”
The Zebra Effect
Zebras are hard to individually study as it’s nearly impossible to track one of them for long (lost in the striped chaos). So scientists once put a big red dot on one zebra so he could be tracked & studied. Lions zeroed in on him and hunted him with ease. Getting lost among others is a survival mechanism. Hence the human desire to conform.
Thomas teoremet
Hvis mennesker definerer en situasjon som reell, så vil konsekvensene av situasjonen være reelle. Med andre ord vil tolkningen av situasjonen lede til handlingene. Hvis den amerikanske presidenten tror at landet blir angrepet med atomvåpen, så vil konsekvensene (et gjengjeldelsesangrep før det er for sent) være reelle, uansett om det var et sovjetisk angrep eller bare en feil i varslingsanlegget. Formulert i 1928 av William Isaac Thomas og Dorothy Swaine Thomas.
Throat-clearing
Folks behov for å bekrefte lojaliteten til egen «stamme» før de framsetter kritikk av den. «Jeg er selvfølgelig for vår politikk, men spørsmålet om kjernekraft må vi revurdere.»
Tilting At Windmills:
An online stranger doesn’t know you; all they have are a few vague impressions of you, too meager to form anything but a phantasm. So when they attack «you», they’re really just attacking their own imagination, and there is no need to take it personally.
Trivialitetsloven
Kommunen skal etablere et interkommunalt avløpsselskap og finne gatenavn til en ny vei. Det første er utenfor de flestes komfortsone og debatten uteblir. Veinavnet fører til en så lang debatt at kommunestyretmøtet går på overtid. De prosjektene som krever mest oppmerksomhet får minst, mens de trivielle tingene stjeler fokus.
True-Believer Syndrome
Ofte fortsetter vi å tro selv etter at noe er motbevist, fordi troen ikke bare er skapt av det vi tror er sant, men også av det vi foretrekker er sant. For å motvirke dette, trekk alltid ditt ønske om å tro fra de bevisene som foreligger.
Tyranny of small decisions:
Individuals make small decisions to maximize convenience but this leads to massive social failure. We nod along to contagious ideas like “gender is fluid” because resisting them is too much work – till kids start getting transgender surgery. The slippery slope is not a fallacy but a fundamental reality.
Veblen goods
Luksusvarer der etterspørselen øker fordi prisen øker. Rikfolk er ikke interessert i kjøpe ting for dets bruksverdi men for signaleffekten og når prisen øker, øker også statusen ved å eie gjenstanden.
Viewpoint Flattening:
From one angle, a cylinder is a circle. From another, it’s a rectangle. People on either side argue over the true shape, each convinced that the other is wrong, because social media rewards us for arguing in 2D about 3D issues.
Warnock’s dilemma
Innhold på nett som provoserer folk skaper mer engasjement enn det vi er enige i, og det gir innholdsleverandører en grunn til å lage provoserende innhold. Det finnes så mye provoserende på nett fordi det er det du legger merke til.
Weber–Fechner Law
Den samme forskjellen mellom to beløp er mindre synlig når beløpene er store enn når de er små. Vi tenker relativt. Dette er grunnen til at du bryr deg om prisforskjeller på en femtilapp når du skal handle en burger, men ikke når du skal handle en bil. Selv om du må jobbe like lenge for å tjene begge femtilapper.
Woozle Effect:
When a source makes an unproven claim, is then cited as proof by another, and so on, until the chain of citations looks like evidence. Evidence that puberty blockers are safe & effective was overestimated because institutions were circularly citing each other:
Youngest-Kid-in-Class Syndrome:
A study of 300,000 children (Whiteley et al, 2017) found that the youngest kids in class were more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. This suggests that immaturity is sometimes being mistaken for mental illness.
Zeigarnik-effekten
Hjernen er målfokusert, som vi husker bedre noe uferdig enn noe avsluttet. Avslutt det du jobber med midt i en setning, framfor å avslutte kapittelet, så er det lettere å komme i gang igjen.
Zipfs lov
I de fleste skriftspråk er det hyppigst brukte ordet brukt dobbelt så ofte som nummer 2, tre ganger så ofte som nummer 3, fire ganger så ofte som nummer 4 osv.