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DSimon comments on Living bias, not thinking bias - Less Wrong
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I'm not convinced biases are real in either me or anybody else in realistic situations, as opposed to highly artificial laboratory setting.
Here are two very extreme "biases" of perception - they're shocking the first time you see them, and even if you know about them you can do absolutely nothing to reduce their power:
In laboratory setting we can use such "biases" to manipulate people, and make them fail tests. But these same "biases" actually help more often than hinder in real life.
Is there any serious evidence that "biases" are significantly harmful on average in nonartificial settings? This is the big unspoken assumption, but evidence is lacking.
Can you provide some specific real examples of this?
Many heuristics are sloppy, which only matters in edge cases, but much cheaper in standard use cases. Using them instead of thinking through things fully saves time and energy, though it's sometimes wrong.
I don't know if that's usefully described as a "bias", though, provided that the person understands the tradeoffs of what they're doing. Properly used, heuristics (and other forms of estimation) lose precision, but not accuracy.