Some structures are the sum of parts, and our designation of a meaning to the complete structure is the layer at which I think we may create things and sometimes we feel them very tangible. For example randomness is our lack of information of how thing operate so we feel them as random (or certain on the opposite side) and created probability to manage that.
Also, I think that we tend to group and categorize these parts into "information packets" (as constructs in our minds) so our brain doesn't have to compute the whole history of things each time we think about them. To think about time is much more efficient than to think about every earth spin and at which point in earth's orbit we are.
I think we are so used to time that our brain feels it exists as nearly a tangible thing.
The car is made of material that we can touch and it works, and takes us to where we want to go,but I still think the idea of the car is a construct.
After I posted my great idea that "Determinism Is Just A Special Case Of Randomness" because "if not I don't see how there could be free will in a deterministic universe" I was positively guided by the LW community to read the Free Will Sequence so I am learning more about our biases and how we build illusions like free will and randomness in our minds.
But I don't see a list on LW or Wikipedia of a list of cognitive illusions and I think it would be great to have one of those just as it is useful for many people to visit the List Of Cognitive Biases page as a study reference or even to use in day to day life.
I think these are some cognitive illusions that are normally discussed as such:
- Free will
- Randomness/probability
- Time
- Money
There must be many more, but I don't find a list with summaries and that would great (to help me avoid writing posts like my "great idea" above!).
EDIT: The majority of comments below are about questioning if they are illusions or not and if they should be called cognitive illusions.
I guess there is no list of cognitive illusions because there is no academic agreement about these issues like in cognitive biases which are generally accepted as such!
Thx for the comments!