Overview
We must discipline ourselves to overcome the tendency for our decisions to not fully account for all information, reward timescale, decision context, and probability.
Types
| Name | Description | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Discounting | Discounting is the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. | [1] |
| Hyperbolic discounting | Leads to choices that are inconsistent over time – people make choices today that their future selves would prefer not to have made, despite using the same reasoning. | [1] [2] |
| Neglect of probability | The tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty. | [1] [3] |
| Outcome bias | The tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made. | [1] |
Practical Perspectives
- Our best decisions are the ones we will want to continue over the long-term.
- Structured decision-making can provide formal cues to describe various dimensions of decision-making that can help prevent their from being omitted from the process.
Key Research
- From [1]: A study showed that when making food choices for the coming week, 74% of participants chose fruit, whereas when the food choice was for the current day, 70% chose chocolate.
Related Fallacies
Information omission
| Name | Description | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| McNamara fallacy (quantitative fallacy) | Making a decision based only on quantitative observations, discounting all other considerations. | [4] |
| Base rate fallacy | Making a probability judgment based on conditional probabilities, without taking into account the effect of prior probabilities. | [4] [5] |
| Overwhelming exception | An accurate generalization that comes with qualifications that eliminate so many cases that what remains is much less impressive than the initial statement might have led one to assume. | [4] [6] |
| Slothful induction (also called appeal to coincidence) | An inductive argument is denied its proper conclusion, despite strong evidence for inference. | [7] [8] |
| No true Scotsman | Makes a generalization true by changing the generalization to exclude a counterexample. | [4] [9] |
| The third-cause fallacy | A logical fallacy where a spurious relationship is confused for causation. It asserts that X causes Y when, in reality, X and Y are both caused by Z. | [10] [9] |
| Regression fallacy | Ascribes cause where none exists. The flaw is failing to account for natural fluctuations. It is frequently a special kind of post hoc fallacy. | [4] |
Faulty information
Some fallacies of information neglect involve simply using the wrong or faulty information.
| Name | Description | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Double counting | Counting events or occurrences more than once in probabilistic reasoning, which leads to the sum of the probabilities of all cases exceeding unity. | [4] |
| Hasty generalization | Basing a broad conclusion on a small sample or the making of a determination without all of the information required to do so. | [4] [11] |
| False analogy | An argument by analogy in which the analogy is poorly suited. | [4] [12] |
| Cherry picking | Act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. | [4] [13] |
| Survivorship bias | A small number of successes of a given process are actively promoted while completely ignoring a large number of failures | [4] |
| Sampling bias | A bias in which a sample is collected in such a way that some members of the intended population have a lower or higher sampling probability than others. It results in a biased sample, a non-random sample of a population (or non-human factors) in which all individuals, or instances, were not equally likely to have been selected. | [14] [15, 16] |
References & Acknowledgements
[1] Wikipedia contributors. "List of cognitive biases." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Jul. 2020. Web. 23 Jul. 2020. link
[2] Laibson D (1997). "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting". Quarterly Journal of Economics. 112 (2): 443–477. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.337.3544. doi:10.1162/003355397555253.
[3] Baron J (1994). Thinking and deciding (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-43732-5.
[4] Wikipedia contributors. "List of fallacies." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 26 Jul. 2020. Web. 28 Jul. 2020.
[5] Kahneman, Daniel; Amos Tversky (1985). "Evidential impact of base rates". In Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic & Amos Tversky (ed.). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. pp. 153–160. PMID 17835457.
[6] Fischer, David Hackett (1970). Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-131545-9.
[7] Wikipedia contributors. "Slothful induction." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Apr. 2020. Web. 28 Jul. 2020.
[8] Barker, Stephen F. (24 July 2002). The Elements of Logic (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-283235-5.
[9] Flew, Antony (1984). A Dictionary of Philosophy (Revised 2nd ed.). Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-20923-0.
[10] Wikipedia contributors. "Correlation does not imply causation." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 24 Jul. 2020. Web. 28 Jul. 2020.
[11] Hurley, Patrick J. (2007). A Concise Introduction to Logic (10th ed.). Cengage. ISBN 978-0-495-50383-5.
[12] Damer, T. Edward (2009). Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-free Arguments (6th ed.). Wadsworth. ISBN 978-0-495-09506-4. Retrieved 30 November 2010.
[13] Hurley, Patrick J. (2007). A Concise Introduction to Logic (10th ed.). Cengage. ISBN 978-0-495-50383-5.
[14] Wikipedia contributors. "Sampling bias." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 27 May. 2020. Web. 28 Jul. 2020.
[15] Medical Dictionary – 'Sampling Bias' Retrieved on September 23, 2009 Archived March 10, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
[16] TheFreeDictionary – biased sample Retrieved on 2009-09-23. Site in turn cites: Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition.
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