Tag Archives: Standard Biases

Hunting has two main modes: searching and chasing.  With searching you look for something to chase. With chasing, in contrast, you have a focus of attention that drives your actions. You may find something else worth chasing along the way, and then switch your focus to a new chase, but you’ll still maintain a focus.

It seems to me that while reading non-fiction, most folks are in searching mode.  Most would be more intellectually productive, however, in chasing mode.  It helps to have in mind a question, puzzle, or problem, and then read in order to answer your question, explain your puzzle, or solve your problem.

In searching mode, readers tend to be less critical. If a source came recommended, they tend to keep reading along even if they aren’t quite sure what the point is. Since authors tend to be more prestigious than readers, readers tend to feel reluctant to question or judge what they’ve read.   They are more likely to talk about whether they enjoyed the read, than whether the author’s argument works.

In chasing mode, readers are naturally more critical.  When you are looking for something particular, it feels less presumptuous to stop reading when your source comes to seem irrelevant.  After all, the source might be good for some other purpose, even if not for your purpose.

In chasing mode, you continually ask yourself whether what you are reading is relevant for your quest, or whether the author actually has anything new or interesting to say. You flip around seeking sections that might be more relevant, and you might even look up the references for an especially relevant section.

Also, search-readers often don’t have a good mental place to put each thing they learn.  In which case they don’t end up learning much.  Chasers, in contrast, always have specific mental places they are trying to fill with what they read, so they better integrate new things they learn with old things they know.

In chasing mode, readers also tend to better interleave reading and thinking. People often hope that search-mode reading will inspire them to new thoughts, and are disappointed to find that it doesn’t. Chase-mode reading, in contrast, requires constant thinking, in order to evaluate how the current source addresses your chosen focus.  This tends to make it easier to notice missing holes in the literature, where your new idea can be placed.

So if you read to be intellectually productive, rather than just to fill your time, consider reading while chasing something, anything.  (From a conversation with Heather Macsorley.)

Added 8p: Katja and Andy comment, and dloye offers this quote from Samuel Johnson:

What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

Sometimes it can just be that simple:

After choosing between two alternatives, people perceive the chosen alternative as more attractive and the rejected alternative as less attractive. This postdecisional dissonance effect was eliminated by cleaning one’s hands. Going beyond prior purification effects in the moral domain, physical cleansing seems to more generally remove past concerns, resulting in a metaphorical “clean slate” effect. (more)

Bryan portrays himself as an intellectual elitist, but he has an oddly unflattering portrait of the elite.  When it comes to the dreamworld of political debate, elites are relatively rational but that is exactly the sphere in which individuals are least decisive over actual outcomes.  When it comes to the really big, important decisions, such as how many kids to have, individuals in the elite are highly decisive in steering outcomes yet quite irrational.  They underappreciate the joy of kids.

That is Tyler.  This seems a plausible example of where thinking goes wrong, i.e., where those who think less tend to make better decisions by following tradition and intuition, and those who rely more on explicit reasoning often take many decades to realize their mistake.  What are the clearest other examples of this, and what features do such examples have in common?  Ideally, we’d use these features to construct a coherent argument to warn young excess thinkers away from their most common mistakes.

Our minds are big, and composed of many parts.  When our parts disagree, other folks tend to see some parts of our minds as more their allies than other parts.  And such folks will tend to support their allies by encouraging us to give more weight in our minds to their allied parts.

One big division in our mind seems to be between our “heart” and our “head.”  But oddly, literature seems to contain far more examples of folks being encouraged to follow their hearts than their heads.  Why this difference?  Katja Grace ponders:

My favorite explanation at the moment is that we always do what our hearts tell us, but explain it in terms of abstract fabrications when our hearts’ interests do not align with those we are explaining to. Rationalization is only necessary for bad news. … We dearly want to do whatever our listener would have, but are often forced by sensible considerations to do something else.

OK, but why do we not as often give the reverse excuse, that we cannot do what our listener and head wants, because our heart compels us otherwise?  I suggested:

We usually know more about what their heart wants than what their head wants. So if they were going to lie they could just lie about what their head wants – no need to invoke the heart.

Here’s another heart-over-head theory:

Maybe the heart is stupider than the head, so we’re more often tempted to fool someone by appealing to their heart. Similarly, we’d prefer to negotiate with the less sharp partner in a business partnership.

Bryan tells me that for the thinking vs. feeling, or “agreeableness”, personality type dimension, more agreeable folks trust their head less and cooperate more via positive heart feelings.  Negative heart feelings, such as anger, are described via other personality dimensions.  So does “think with your heart” really just mean “be more agreeable” and so “succumb to my social pressure”?   If so why don’t those negative feelings come as easily to mind?

Are there other plausible theories?

Highly trustworthy individuals think others are like them and tend to form beliefs that are too optimistic, causing them to assume too much social risk, to be cheated more often and ultimately perform less well than those who happen to have a trustworthiness level close to the mean of the population.  On the other hand, the low-trustworthiness types form beliefs that are too conservative and thereby avoid being cheated, but give up profitable opportunities too often and, consequently, underperform.  Our [empirical] estimates imply that the cost of either excessive or too little trust is comparable to the income lost by foregoing college. [emphasis added]

More here.  How much to trust others does sound like a very important parameter, and it makes sense that errors on this could have large consequences.  But it is puzzling that we make such large errors, apparently unable to learn much useful from those around us about how much to trust.  I could see how a lack of trust might prevent one from learning from others that one should trust more, but how does trusting too much prevent one from learning from others to that one should trust less?