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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

You will never find a procedural solution to your self-biases. The problem is that no matter how much "more objective" than your initial judgment you try to become, you can never achieve an objective viewpoint. This means that in a way, each judgment is an initial judgment and subject to the same degree of distortion.

Nor is ambivalence/paralysis a refuge, necessarily. Humans tend to regard opposed choices as equal by virtue of being opposed; we're inclined toward dualism. Which is to say, enforced inaction or lopsided compromise are also products of predictable biases.

The only way to be sure you're right about a given question is to be right.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Our biases probably exist to overcome what the first poster discusses: ambivalence and inaction.

Consider a human species that ponders the way you suggest, and then consider another species that acts even if action is reckless on occasion.

Which one will come home from the hunt empty handed more often?

But nevertheless you are correct. While being biased toward doing might be good on a hunt (where most of our evolution in this area took place), there are many many situations where it's very bad in a modern context. Our biases toward wishful thinking, overcommitment, etc. are probably yet another example of something that was adaptive in prehistory but can be very maladaptive in a modern context.

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