Canvas Insights

Often times we find ourselves making the most thought-through decisions and yet having no success. Actions post that? Could be reanalyse, reassess, reposition — and yet again, land in a similar situation. This can continue over and over making us feel stuck in an unending cycle until, until we truly introspect about the cognitive errors made systematically in the whole process.

What are these cognitive errors?

Cognitive errors are deviations from logic — from rational, reasonable thought and behaviour.

These are not just occasional errors in judgement, but rather routine mistakes, repeating patterns observed over time and again, sometimes over generations.

Many an author have spoken about this in detail. One such book, a compendium rather, I stumbled across was The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli.

In his book, Dobelli speaks about close to 90+ cognitive errors that we fall prey to unless we consciously recognise them and purposefully evade them.

Let’s talk about a few from the book in the following section.

• Survivorship Bias —Since triumph is made more visible than failure usually, you systematically overestimate your chances of succeeding and mistake how minuscule the probability of success really is.
• Swimmer’s Body Illusion —has to do with confusing selection factors with results. So be honest about yourself before you take the plunge.
• Clustering Illusion — Human brain is oversensitive to patterns and seeks them everywhere. It even invents one if it does not find any familiar pattern or rule. So, suggestion to be sceptic and reconsider if you discover a pattern.
• Story Bias — We want our lives to form a pattern that can be easily followed. But stories can be dubious — simplified and distorted reality, filtering things that don’t fit. They can give a false sense of understanding which leads you to take bigger risks and stroll on thin ice.
• Social Proof — Aka herd instinct; dictates that individuals feel they are behaving correctly when they act as other people. But never forget the wise words of W. Sommerset Maugham: “If 50 million people say something stupid, it is still foolish”.
• Sunk Cost Fallacy — is pursuing something futile or unfruitful just because we’ve invested a lot of time, money, energy, or love in it. There might be a good reason to continue to invest in something such. But beware of doing it for the wrong reasons.
• Reciprocity — is a phenomenon where people have extreme difficulty being in someone’s debt. Though it can lead to cooperation and be used as a useful survival strategy but leads to retaliation on its ugly side. So be careful when accepting something for free.
• Confirmation Bias — It is the tendency to interpret new information so that it becomes compatible with our existing theories and beliefs. This can lead to skewed interpretations. To break this, consciously look for disconfirming evidence.
• Authority Bias — is following something out of sheer obedience to authority. To encounter this, whenever you’re about to make a decision, think of authorities who would exert influence on reasoning. Do your best to challenge that.
• Contrast Effect — is when you judge something to be beautiful, expensive, or large if we’ve something ugly, small, and cheap in front of it.
• Availability Bias — says that we create a picture of the world using the examples that most easily come to our minds. To fend this off, spend time with people who think differently than you do, with experiences and expertise different than yours.
• Chauffeur Knowledge — is the knowledge from people who have learnt to put on a show, rather than time and effort to understand a topic. To recognise this, use the “I don’t know” indicator— true experts recognise the limits of what they know and what they don’t. if they find themselves outside their circle of competence, they either keep quiet or say that they do not know. Chauffeurs seldom use a line like this.

In closing, quoting the citation from the book,

The Pope asked Michelangelo: “Tell me the secret of your genius. How have you created the statue of David, the masterpiece of all masterpieces?”
Michelangelo’s answer: “It’s simple. I removed everything that is not David.”

We, as humans, don’t know for sure what makes us successful or happy. But we know for certain what doesn’t. To this realisation, thinking more clearly means adopting Michelangelo’s method — don’t focus on David; instead focus on everything that is not David and chisel it away. In our case: eliminate the flawed biases and clear thinking will follow.