Cognitive Errors

I recently rewatched the movie Moneyball on Netflix. It’s fantastic. One of the underlying themes is that objective measures, if used properly, can outperform subjective measures even when those subjective measures come from veteran ‘experts’. Science is an approach for seeing the world as it is. It requires a mindset that unbiased analysis reliably beats intuition and hunches.

I’m fascinated by the ways in which we mislead ourselves through errors in thinking and judgement. If you are too, then I recommend this blog post by James Clear on five common mental errors and this short video by Annie Duke on ‘resulting’ (she’s also the author of Thinking in Bets). If you’re up for deeper dives into some of these that impact your life every day without you noticing you do it, read the classic books Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me and Thinking Fast and Slow, which are both linked on my page, Books That I Recommend.

You have to have a sense of humor if you go down this rabbit hole because anything less will leave you utterly dismayed at how they infiltrate every nook and cranny of your life.

Which ones can be corrected to improve your training?