I really like Jason Kottke’s blog at kottke.org where he covers diverse topics about culture, design, and technology (etc). More than a year ago he posted a link to a cognitive bias cheat sheet written by Buster Benson who writes over at betterhumans.coach.me.
Cognitive biases – “systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment”1 – are fascinating. And what that little definition doesn’t really get at is that cognitive biases are actually the norm. We can think we don’t fall prey to them but …
Some of my particular favourites are about how and why we notice the things we notice: confirmation bias, subjective validation, observer effect and the availability heuristic.
As both Kottke and Benson point out, the wikipedia page on cognitive biases is both remarkable and a remarkable mess.
So Benson spent a chunk of time thinking through the wikipedia page and came up with what he calls a cognitive bias cheat sheet. His post is fantastic, and he categorises the biases as being related to four problems:
The entire post is here and it’s worth every moment of your time: https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18
To cap things off, Benson produced a “diagrammatic poster remix” of his post: