billswift comments on Passing the Recursive Buck - Less Wrong

15 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 June 2008 04:50AM

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Comment author: billswift 19 June 2008 06:19:07AM 0 points [-]

Rarely is any one thing decisive. Most decisions we make are over-determined, meaning that there are multiple reasons to do or not do most of the actions we choose. What motivates a particular choice is the sum of the weights of the reasons in our mind at the time we choose. Availability bias, confirmation bias, framing, and many other biases affect our choices, which is a good reason for learning about them. Lately, this blog has put more emphasis into agreement and disagreement and the biases affecting that, but the biases affecting your thinking without any interaction with others are at least as important, but can be more easily rooted out given the time and knowledge and effort.