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Tversky: Cognitive biases stem from useful heuristics that carry unavoidable costs

Barbara Tversky · Barbara Tversky: Action Shapes Thought · Sep 6, 2022 · at 1:13:21

Cognitive psychologist Barbara Tversky discusses the first law of cognition ('no benefits without costs') with host Shane Parrish, explaining how mental categorization creates biases.

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“There's a reason, For every one of these biases, that is, there's an underlying reason that's deeper, more abstract, or broader, that where these things have been useful in one way or another, but their use is highly limited, and can lead you into trouble, as when somebody pulls a hand out of a pocket, and another person thinks it's a gun, So it can lead to error, and sometimes catastrophic error.”

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