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JGWeissman comments on Living bias, not thinking bias - Less Wrong
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No, I read the grandparent, and I doubt I have such a definition.
Yes, people smoke cigarettes, and let's assume for the sake of argument that it counts as "significantly harmful". Now imagine (hypothetically) that the same mechanism of thought also causes them to pursue lifestyles that grant them an overall 20% increase in healthy lifespan as compared to nonsmokers. In that scenario, the bias that causes smoking cigarettes is not "significantly harmful on average".
Now consider another hypothetical where people smoke cigarettes due to their biases, and other people without those biases have a significantly higher incidence of being run over by buses. Then, the biases that cause smoking cigarettes are not "significantly harmful on average" as compared to the alternative.
I see you assuming exactly what taw claims we're assuming. I don't see you citing any empirical studies showing that it is the case.
If that were true, then the cognitive defect would be the inability to distinguish between the problems of choosing whether to smoke cigarettes and how to avoid being run over by buses. Both the "biased" and "unbiased" people are somehow throwing away enough information about at least one of these problems to make them seem isomorphic in such a way that the effective strategy in one corresponds to the ineffective strategy in the other. The underlying problem behind the bias is throwing away the information.