Overcoming Bias is a group blog on the systemic mistakes humans make, and how we can possibly correct them. The primary contributors are Robin Hanson of George Mason University and Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Common topics include "cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, microeconomics, applied statistics, social psychology, probability and decision theory, even a bit of Artificial Intelligence now and then."
The complete list of Yudkowsky's posts on Overcoming Bias was compiled by Andrew Hay here.
A categorized list of Yudkowsky's posts moved from Overcoming Bias to Less Wrong is available at Less Wrong/All Articles.
| Title | Author | Date | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| How To Join | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-20 | Description of OB and how to contribute. |
| Hide Sociobiology Like Sex? | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-20 | Should we teach children about self-interest explanations and sociobiology earlier? |
| Quiz: Fox or Hedgehog? | Hal Finney | 2006-11-21 | Discussion of Philip Tetlock's Fox/Hedgehog classification guide in Expert Political Judgement. |
| The Movie "Click" | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-21 | Is there a bias towards working hard and against spending enough time with family? |
| The Wisdom of Bromides | Nick Bostrom | 2006-11-21 | Biases may exist on an individual level, even if they cancel out on a group level, so even apparently contradictory bromides might highlight important types of failure. |
| Beware Heritable Beliefs | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-22 | Some opinions are highly heritable, so put extra scrutiny on those beliefs. |
| The Martial Art of Rationality | Eliezer Yudkowsky | 2006-11-22 | Rationality as martial art. Individuals should be able to train their mind like they train muscles. |
| A 1990 Corporate Prediction Market | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-23 | First known example of a market designed primarily to gain information from was created by Xanadu, Inc. in 1990. |
| Why Are Academics Liberal? | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-24 | Ratio of Democrats to Republicans in academia is 5:1 compared to roughly 1:1 in general populace. Is this due to intelligence and information, or social reasons? |
| Moral Overconfidence | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-24 | Students admit to cheating, lying, and theft, but 75% think they are more ethical than their peers. |
| What Exactly is Bias? | Nick Bostrom | 2006-11-25 | "A bias is a non-rational factor that systematically pushes one's beliefs in some domain in one direction." |
| Foxes vs Hedgehogs: Predictive Success | Hal Finney | 2006-11-26 | According to Philip Tetlock, foxes (a flexible, tentative cognitive style) are more successful than at forecasting. Hedgehogs do worse than a random guess. |
| To the barricades! Against ... what exactly? | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-26 | Even though bias might have a broader technical meaning, it is better to think of it as "cheaply avoidable error". |
| Asymmetric Paternalism | Peter McCluskey | 2006-11-26 | Paternalism to correct common biases and public choice considerations. |
| Why truth? And… | Eliezer Yudkowsky | 2006-11-26 | We seek the truth for intellectual curiosity, pragmatic reasons, and for its own sake, although there is danger in thinking a moral duty to be rational exists. |
| …What's a bias, again? | Eliezer Yudkowsky | 2006-11-26 | A bias is an obstacle to us knowing the truth. Biases are best defined by observed patterns of errors, not by an actual definition, because there are so many ways to be wrong. |
| Beware Amateur Science History | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-27 | Publicizers are often better known for a discovery than the actual innovator. |
| Surprisingly Friendly Suburbs | Hal Finney | 2006-11-27 | Areas with lower population density tend to be friendlier, contrary to popular belief. |
| Are The Big Four Econ Errors Biases? | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-28 | Bryan Caplan's work on voter irrationality identifies correlated errors, not biases. Public more skeptical of economics than physics experts. |
| Pascalian Meditations | Guy Kahane | 2006-11-28 | Attempts to reduce bias feasible, even though our cognition is limited. The desire to deduce bias is not itself a bias. |
| (In)cautious defense of bias | Paul Gowder | 2006-11-28 | Random error helps "evolutionary" development of truth. Bias needed to fight bias. Bias might generate beneficial self-fulfilling prophecies. Errors needed to exercise reason and debating skill. |
| Beware of Disagreeing with Lewis | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-28 | Disagreement in the philosophy of disagreement. |
| Thank you ma'am, may I have another? | Robin Hanson | 2006-11-30 | What do complaints by women signal? |
| Macro Shares: Prediction Markets via Stock Exchanges? | Peter McCluskey | 2006-11-30 | New security might function as a pure prediction market alternative. |
| The Onion on Bias: "Duh" | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-01 | Everyone knows local sport reporting is biased, but no one cares. What about other biases if they become widely known? |
| The Proper Use of Humility | Eliezer Yudkowsky | 2006-12-01 | Use humility to justify further action, not as an excuse for laziness, irrationality, or ignorance. Humility can be too easy to admit to. |
| Biases of Science Fiction | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-02 | Conflicts between good story telling and good forecasting. |
| Bias, Well-Being, and the Placebo Effect | Guy Kahane | 2006-12-02 | Self-deceptive illusions appear to make us happier. |
| Does Profit Rate Insight Best? | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-03 | Traders who make the most money in a prediction market might not be the best forecaster. |
| Future Selves | Hal Finney | 2006-12-03 | Time-inconsistent preferences and akrasia |
| Seen vs. Unseen Biases | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-04 | Seen biases might cancel out unseen ones, so partial debiasing might make us less accurate, although avoid using this as an excuse. |
| Bosses Prefer Overconfident Managers | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-05 | Bosses appear to interpret accurate estimates as a signal of incompetence. |
| Math Zero vs. Political Zero | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-05 | What does it mean if a study finds the effect of a small increase in the minimum wage to be near zero? |
| Reasonable Disagreement | Nicholas Shackel | 2006-12-06 | Some disagreements might be reasonable because of incommunicable evidence and insights. |
| The Wisdom of Crowds | Hal Finney | 2006-12-06 | |
| Alas Amateur Futurism | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-07 | |
| Leamer's 1986 Idea Futures Proposal | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-08 | |
| Time on Risk | Hal Finney | 2006-12-09 | |
| Agreeing to Agree | Hal Finney | 2006-12-10 | |
| The Modesty Argument | Eliezer Yudkowsky | 2006-12-10 | |
| Law as No-Bias Theatre | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-11 | |
| We Are Smarter Than Me | Hal Finney | 2006-12-11 | |
| Should Prediction Markets be Charities? | Peter McCluskey | 2006-12-11 | |
| Do Helping Professions Help More? | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-12 | |
| Ignorance of Frankenfoods | Hal Finney | 2006-12-12 | |
| The 80% Forecasting Solution | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-13 | |
| Fillers Neglect Framers | Robin Hanson | 2006-12-14 | |
| Malatesta Estimator | Adrian Tschoegl | 2006-12-14 | |