Is there a list of cognitive illusions?

1 DonaldMcIntyre 06 May 2015 04:25AM

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!

Is Determinism A Special Case Of Randomness?

-4 DonaldMcIntyre 04 May 2015 01:56AM

I was trying to reconcile the fact that in a deterministic universe there could be life with free will, but I am going full circle now and am starting to think that everything is really random, if not I don't see how there could be free will in a deterministic universe.

If mathematicians measure randomness with probability, then there must be some things that have a 100% occurrence probability (in the current universe above atomic levels I presume), which now I see as special cases of randomness rather than opposites to randomness, and these lead us to think that there is determinism.

I think we may have this cognitive bias (deterministic views of reality) because it is extremely helpful to use these 100% probability occurrence things to model the universe rationally, learn, and to predict the future, but it is not the whole story or at least a complete description of reality.

What do you think?

EDIT 1: Thank you all for the comments below. I recognize I am naive in this topic.

Although I am not convinced yet, I think my possible argumentative error is:

P1: I observe free will in the behavior of living things.

P2: Deterministic physical mechanical processes don't permit free will.

C: Therefore physics must include random processes.

I think I only see a solution of free will in randomness, but maybe there are other solutions ( I will read the Free Will Sequence here on LW!)

EDIT 2: After reading some articles of the Free Will Sequence I realize the problem of investing energy around free will questions if free will is just a mistake in our thinking process.

It is something like why ask about time travel if time doesn't exist? or, why explore the mechanics of randomness vs determinism if randomness doesn't exist and thus the dichotomy "randomness vs determinism" doesn't exist in the first place? 

 

 

 

Are Cognitive Biases Design Flaws?

1 DonaldMcIntyre 25 February 2015 09:02PM

I am a newbie so today I read the article by Eliezer Yudkowski "Your Strength As A Rationalist" which helped me understand the focus of LessWrong, but I respectfully disagreed with a line that is written in the last paragraph:

It is a design flaw in human cognition...

So this was my comment in the article's comment section which I bring here for discussion:

Since I think evolution makes us quite fit to our current environment I don't think cognitive biases are design flaws, in the above example you imply that even if you had the information available to guess the truth, your guess was another one and it was false, therefore you experienced a flaw in your cognition.

My hypotheses is that reaching the truth or communicating it in the IRC may have not been the end objective of your cognitive process, in this case just to dismiss the issue as something that was not important anyway "so move on and stop wasting resources in this discussion" was maybe the "biological" objective and as such it should be correct, not a flaw.

If the above is true then all cognitive bias, simplistic heuristics, fallacies, and dark arts are good since we have conducted our lives for 200,000 years according to these and we are alive and kicking.

Rationality and our search to be LessWrong, which I support, may be tools we are developing to evolve in our competitive ability within our species, but not a "correction" of something that is wrong in our design.

Edit 1: I realize there is change in the environment and that may make some of our cognitive biases, which were useful in the past, to be obsolete. If the word "flaw" is also applicable to describe something that is obsolete then I was wrong above. If not, I prefer the word obsolete to characterize cognitive biases that are no longer functional for our preservation.

How to debate when authority is questioned, but really not needed?

3 DonaldMcIntyre 23 February 2015 01:44AM

Especially in the comments of political articles or about economic issues I find myself arguing with people who question my authority about a topic rather than refute my arguments.

----

Examples may be:

1:

Me: I think money printing by the Fed will cause inflation if they continue like this.

Random commenter: Are you an economist?

Me: I am not, but it's not relevant.

Random commenter: Ok, so you are clueless.

2: 

Me: The current strategy to fight terror is not working because ISIS is growing.

Random commenter: What would you do to stop terrorism?

Me: I have an idea of what I would do, but it's not relevant because I'm not an expert, but do you think the current strategy is working?

Random commenter: So you don't know what you are talking about.

----

It is not about my opinions above, or even if I am right or not, I would gladly change my opinion after a debate, but I think that I am being disqualified unfairly. 

If I am right, how should I answer or continue these conversations?