Understanding Cognitive Biases - Alexander B. Swan

The Great Courses, Alexander B. Swan

Category: Lecture

Tags: Lecture, Science

As you read this sentence, your brain has just processed about 20 million bits of information. In fact, every second of every day, your brain processes about 11 million bits. And yet, that astonishing number just isnt enough to get you through your day. Consequently, your brain takes some shortcutsand its those shortcuts, called heuristics, that make it all work. Some shortcuts are completely benign and helpfulsuch as your ability to recognize your child even if half his face is in shadow or your ability to imagine tomorrow even though you will never actually see it., The shortcuts of cognitive biases, howeverwhen the brain fills in gaps of solid, reliable information with a lot of guesswork for efficiencys sakecan lead to errors of memory and judgment and cause faulty decision-making with unintended, even dire, consequences. For example, take confirmation bias. This tendency to consider only information that confirms our existing beliefs can cause us to make incorrect assumptions abou