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IV — The Biased Brain

Your reasoning has a systematic tilt

Confirmation bias, availability, anchoring, hindsight, Dunning–Kruger, base-rate neglect, survivorship, motivated reasoning.

Epistemic status · Strong Evidence

Bias is not stupidity

These are efficient shortcuts that pay off in the environments they evolved for and misfire in modern informational ones. Intelligence does not remove them; it makes the rationalisations better.

The most expensive three

Confirmation bias decides which evidence you look at. Availability decides which risks feel real. Base-rate neglect makes rare things feel likely because a story fits.

What actually helps

Not awareness alone. Structure: written predictions, checklists, adversarial collaborators, and decisions made before the outcome is visible.

Practice

Write down the strongest evidence against your current position — from memory, before searching.

TEST A BELIEF

Next

Base rates, Bayes, and the shape of uncertainty