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Bias 2: Liking/Loving Tendency Why it evolved Attachment to parents promotes learning and safety for child Reciprocal liking between people allows social cohesion

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David Heath
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25 Cognitive Biases that Ruin Your Life

In prehistoric days when we had to avoid getting devoured by lions, these fast heuristics worked pretty well. Now that life is more complex, the decisions you need to make are more complex, and your cognitive biases trick you into making bad decisions. By learning these biases, you’ll guard yourself against people trying to exploit you. Even better, you’ll guard against your worst enemy: your own
Bias
Self Help
David Heath
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Man is a “’social animal,’ greatly and automatically influenced by behavior he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy distrusting others.
David Heath
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“Extreme success of the ants also fascinated me— how a few behavioral algorithms caused such extreme evolutionary success grounded in extremes of cooperation within the breeding colony and, almost always, extremes of lethal hostility toward ants outside the breeding colony, even ants of the same species.”
David Heath
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“In the ant’s case, the behavioral algorithms are few in number and almost entirely genetic in origin. The ant learns a little behavior from experiences, but mostly it merely responds to ten or so stimuli with a few simple responses programmed into its nervous system by its genes.”
David Heath
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It seems obvious, to me at least, that the human brain must often operate counterproductively just like the ant’s, from unavoidable oversimplicity in its mental process.”
David Heath
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“Man is easily fooled, either by the cleverly thought out manipulation of man, by circumstances occurring by accident, or by very effective manipulation practices that man has stumbled into during “practice evolution” and kept in place because they work so well.”
David Heath
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Put one hand in hot water, one in cold water, then put both in the same temperature warm water. “Now one hand feels as if it has just been put in cold water and the other hand feels as if it has just been placed in hot water. When one thus sees perception so easily fooled by mere contrast,
David Heath
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Being aware of biases is not a perfect defense. Charlie loves checklists.
David Heath
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Bias 1: Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency Incentive-caused bias Self-interest and rewards drive behavior Behaviors are conditioned by prompt rewards given after an action. Once a behavior is conditioned, random distribution of rewards keeps the reflexive behavior most established.
David Heath
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Poorly designed incentives will cause bad behaviors. In pursuit of his own self-interest, man will rationalize bad behavior. excised normal gallbladders. Did this surgeon think, ‘I can get some easy cash by fraudulently excising gallbladders?’ No, “he thought the gallbladder was the source of all evil.
David Heath
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Bad behaviors become intensely habit-forming when they are rewarded
David Heath
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Antidotes Don’t reward behaviors you don’t want. Don’t design terrible incentive structures. Fear professional advice, especially when it is good for the advisor. Learn and use the basic elements of your advisor’s trade as you deal with your advisor. Double check,
David Heath
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“If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.” – Ben Franklin
David Heath
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Bias 2: Liking/Loving Tendency Association fallacy Humans tend to like and love things and people, especially mothers, much like goslings attach to whatever is there at birth. People like and love being liked and loved. You ignore fault of and comply with wishes of the object of your affection.
David Heath
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Liking/Loving tendency How it can be harmful You can ignore the real faults of the object of your affection. In extreme cases, affection can be so strong you self-harm to attain what is loved. Because you like being loved, you pursue paths that make other people admire you, rather than the optimal choice for yourself.
David Heath
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Liking/Loving tendency Antidotes Put good admirable people in situations where people are prone to like/love, like teaching. Explicitly recognize your desire to be liked/loved, and control for that in decision making.Invert,always invert – what do you dislike most about an object of your affection? How can it go wrong
David Heath
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Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency What it is:
David Heath
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Liking/Loving tendency Examples Like making popular but wrong decisions as a manager, or pursuing a respectable but dull career path. Advertising associating products with popular figures Warren and Charlie both liked Warren’s uncle, Fred Buffett, the grocery store owner,
David Heath
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Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Antidote Invert, always invert – what can you find to like about an object of your hatred? How can you come to accept this object? What does the best case scenario look like? Respect your adversaries as people who are highly competent with many virtues, whom we will respect.
David Heath
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Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Why it evolved
David Heath
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Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency How it can be harmful Ignoring virtues can further intensify dislike, causing feedback loops Rifts can progressively widen until there is no common ground, and agreements are harder to achieve. Judgments can be made without consideration of full facts
David Heath
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Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Examples Negative political advertising, and treatment of opposing political candidates. When World Trade Center was destroyed, many Pakistanis concluded the Hindus did it, many Muslims concluded the Jews did it.Really, pick anything you strongly dislike, and see
David Heath
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Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency What it is:
David Heath
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Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency why it evolved:
David Heath
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Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency How it can harmful
David Heath
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Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency Example
David Heath
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Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency Antidotes:
David Heath
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Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency What is it?
David Heath
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Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Why it evolved?
David Heath
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Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency How it can be harmful:
David Heath
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Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Examples:
David Heath
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Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Atidotes
David Heath
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If Oak Flat were a Christian holy site or, for that matter, Jewish or Muslim, no senator who wished to remain in office would dare to sneak a backdoor deal for its destruction into a spending bill - no matter what mining-company profits or jobs might result. But this is Indian religion.
Lydia Millet
Recruiters in our country are known for lying to people.
Cindy Sheehan
Nobody is accidentally in Alaska. The people who are in Alaska are there because they choose to be, so they've sort of got a real frontier ethic. The people are incredibly friendly, interesting, smart people - but they also stay out of each other's business.
Marcus Sakey
If you earned money listening to music, I'd be a millionaire.
Michael Kiwanuka
Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.
Kahlil Gibran
Rent-control laws disproportionately benefit the non-poor because the elite pull strings, work the system and are better connected than the non-poor.
Larry Elder
I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.
Ignatius of Antioch
I didn't have to say it. I just had to write it. It was painful enough.
Robert B. Parker
When I was younger, I was insecure for about 10 years: I wore glasses, had a cow's lick, buck teeth and braces. I looked ridiculous.
Jack Whitehall
I'm a fierce advocate for diversity. Always have been, always will be.
Roland Martin
I wish at times I had finished school just to say I had.
Randy Travis
The only thing I miss from the sitcom format is that immediate gratification of when you're, if we're talking about comedy, of the live audience.
Ray Romano
Children can only take so much, and they deal with it however they can.
Julie Christie
I'm not taking maternity leave from 'Big Brother.' I e-mailed my boss over there this weekend and I said, 'Don't worry. I can still do the show!
Julie Chen
It's always an interesting experience for a politician to be heard in silence, I have to say.
Theresa May
Australia is the same size as the U.S., but it's much smaller in terms of population. I've been working in the States off and on since the '80s, and the first time I played a lead here was in '91, I think.
Robert Taylor
It sounds like something on a very trite T-shirt, but life is what happens.
Nigella Lawson