Dan Ariely: Are we in control of our own decisions?

Ok, I am now a fan of this guy’s work.  I’ll have to check out more of his stuff.

“We wake up in the morning and we believe we make decisions”.

Dan Ariely: Beware conflict of interest

An excellent discussion and insight into our personal bias. 

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. - Carl Sagan




Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion. - Voltaire

TED: Trial, Error, and the God Complex

This is the TED talk I watched that inspired my last post.  This speech is interated with The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction. I still need to give my indepth review but Rebecca Costa talks about our hidden biases called "super-mems", things we believe to be true- but may in fact be false.  Watch and let me know what you think.  I will make an effort to write more later.

Type of Bias to keep in mind when discussing data

In all the conference rooms at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) they have a poster listing common types of Bias:


Wishful thinking

- “hope is not a management tool”

Group think
- “I hate conflict”


Status Quo Bias
- Ever heard “we’ve not had a problem before”

Overconfidence Bias
- “We’ve always been successful in the past”


Currency Bias
- “We remember recent events and forget history”


Confirming Evidence Bias
- “I’ve read smoking doesn’t cause cancer”


Anchoring Bias
- The first information we receive gets more weight


Sunk Cost Bias
- “But look at the money we’ve already spent”

Just something to keep in mind.