Cognitive Biases
Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from rationality in judgment. They're the mental shortcuts (heuristics) that usually serve us well but can lead to predictable errors.
Understanding biases is essential for Probabilistic Thinking — you can't estimate probabilities accurately if you don't know how your own brain distorts them. Charlie Munger famously catalogued 25 cognitive biases in his "Psychology of Human Misjudgment" talk.
Common Biases Worth Knowing
- Anchoring Bias: Over-relying on the first piece of information encountered when making decisions.
- Confirmation Bias: Seeking out information that confirms what you already believe while ignoring contradictory evidence.
- Survivorship Bias: Studying only successes and drawing conclusions that ignore the silent majority of failures.
- Availability Bias: Overweighting information that comes to mind easily, usually because it's recent or dramatic.
Connection to Mental Models
Mental models are, in part, a defense against cognitive biases. Inversion forces you to consider what you'd rather ignore. Probabilistic Thinking counters the tendency to think in certainties. The whole Mental Models Overview framework is an attempt to build systematic checks against these built-in errors.