“The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.” – Sherlock Holmes
Other biases:
- 2-1a1a1 ‘Falsification (confirmation) bias’ - Always try to falsify your theory. Don’t pick up similar maps.
- 2-1a1a3 ‘Availability heuristic’ - We easily recall what is salient, important, frequent, and recent
- 2-1a1a5 ‘Narrative instinct’ - Often the right explanation is one with the least intent involved
- 2-1a1a6 ‘Tendency to overgeneralize from small samples’
- 2-1a1a8 ‘Tendency to overestimate consistency of behavior’ - Behavior of others are often not innate-intentional but situational
- 2-1a1a9 ‘Survivorship bias’ - We only see what can be seen
SAFEGUARD:
- Keep a record of your thoughts at the time you make the decision. Don’t rely on your memory after the fact. Trying to recall what you knew and thought at the time you made the decision is a fool’s game.
- A second benefit of recording your thoughts is that in the process of writing something, you often realize you don’t really understand it as well as you thought you did. It’s far better (and cheaper) to realize this before making your decision instead of after. If you do so in advance, you have an opportunity to get more information and a better grasp of the problem.
- 1-1a5a2 Good writing happens at the edge of explicit-inexplicit or explicit-unconscious — that is, via surprises.
- 2-1a0aa Applied Occam’s razor - ‘If you can’t program it, you don’t understand it. If you can’t write about it, you can’t code it.‘
- 4-1a4b6a When you write down, you are helping yourself both now and in the future
- 9-4c Someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial