%% ID: 13729038 Updated: 2022-02-20 %% ![](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article1.be68295a7e40.png) # About Title: [[Other/Obsidian Starter Vault(Second Brain)/Readwise/Articles/The Mental Models of Human Nature and Judgment]] Author: [[fs.blog]] Category: #articles Number of Highlights: ==56== Last Highlighted: *2022-02-18* Readwise URL: https://readwise.io/bookreview/13729038 Source URL: https://fs.blog/mental-models/ # Highlights 2. Bias from Incentives ^288851007 --- A trusting system is one that tends to work most efficiently; the rewards of trust are extremely high. ^288851008 --- 1. Trust ^288851009 --- 3. Pavlovian Association ^288851010 --- Highly responsive to incentives, humans have perhaps the most varied and hardest to understand set of incentives in the animal kingdom. This causes us to distort our thinking when it is in our own interest to do so. A wonderful example is a salesman truly believing that his product will improve the lives of its users. It’s not merely convenient that he sells the product; the fact of his selling the product causes a very real bias in his own thinking. ^288851011 --- We have a DNA-level instinct to seek safety in numbers and will look for social guidance of our behavior. This instinct creates a cohesive sense of cooperation and culture which would not otherwise be possible but also leads us to do foolish things if our group is doing them as well. ^288851012 --- 4. Tendency to Feel Envy & Jealousy ^288851013 --- where denial has powerful destructive effects but allows for behavioral inertia. Denying reality can be a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism, or a purposeful tactic. ^288851014 --- Humans have a tendency to feel envious of those receiving more than they are, and a desire “get what is theirs” in due course. The tendency towards envy is strong enough to drive otherwise irrational behavior, but is as old as humanity itself. Any system ignorant of envy effects will tend to self-immolate over time. ^288851015 --- 8. Representativeness Heuristic ^288851016 --- 10. Narrative Instinct ^288851017 --- 9. Social Proof (Safety in Numbers) ^288851018 --- 6. Denial ^288851019 --- 7. Availability Heuristic ^288851020 --- tend to most easily recall what is salient, important, frequent, and recent. The brain has its own energy-saving and inertial tendencies that we have little control over – the availability heuristic is likely one of them. ^288851021 --- Having a truly comprehensive memory would be debilitating. Some sub-examples of the availability heuristic include the Anchoring and Sunk Cost Tendencies. ^288851022 --- Human beings have been appropriately called “the storytelling animal” because of our instinct to construct and seek meaning in narrative. ^288851023 --- the famous dogs salivating at the ring of a bell. Human beings are much the same and can feel positive and negative emotion towards intangible objects, with the emotion coming from past associations rather than direct effects. ^288851024 --- 5. Tendency to Distort Due to Liking/Loving or Disliking/Hating ^288851025 --- humans have a tendency to distort their thinking in favor of people or things that they like and against people or things they dislike. This tendency leads to overrating the things we like and underrating or broadly categorizing things we dislike, often missing crucial nuances in the process. ^288851026 --- long before we developed the ability to write or to create objects, we were telling stories and thinking in stories. ^288851027 --- 11. Curiosity Instinct ^288851028 --- We like to call other species curious, but we are the most curious of all, an instinct which led us out of the savanna and led us to learn a great deal about the world around us, using that information to create the world in our collective minds. ^288851029 --- Even before there were direct incentives to innovate, humans innovated out of curiosity. ^288851030 --- 12. Language Instinct ^288851031 --- As we saw with the narrative instinct, we use these instincts to create shared stories, as well as to gossip, solve problems, and fight, among other things. Grammatically ordered language theoretically carries infinite varying meaning. ^288851032 --- 13. First-Conclusion Bias ^288851033 --- Our tendency to settle on first conclusions leads us to accept many erroneous results and cease asking questions; it can be countered with some simple and useful mental routines. ^288851034 --- 14. Tendency to Overgeneralize from Small Samples ^288851035 --- We take a small number of instances and create a general category, even if we have no statistically sound basis for the conclusion. ^288851036 --- 15. Relative Satisfaction/Misery Tendencies ^288851037 --- 16. Commitment & Consistency Bias ^288851038 --- humans are subject to a bias towards keeping their prior commitments and staying consistent with our prior selves when possible ^288851039 --- when it is combined with the first-conclusion bias, we end up landing on poor answers and standing pat in the face of great evidence. ^288851040 --- 17. Hindsight Bias ^288851041 --- Once we know the outcome, it’s nearly impossible to turn back the clock mentally. ^288851042 --- Our narrative instinct leads us to reason that we knew it all along (whatever “it” is), when in fact we are often simply reasoning post-hoc with information not available to us before the event. ^288851043 --- The hindsight bias explains why it’s wise to keep a journal of important decisions for an unaltered record and to re-examine our beliefs when we convince ourselves that we knew it all along ^288851044 --- 18. Sensitivity to Fairness ^288851045 --- Justice runs deep in our veins. ^288851046 --- of fairness can be considered grounds for reciprocal action, or at least distrust. ^288851047 --- Yet fairness itself seems to be a moving target. What is seen as fair and just in one time and place may not be in another. Consider that slavery has been seen as perfectly natural and perfectly unnatural in alternating phases of human existence. ^288851048 --- 19. Tendency to Overestimate Consistency of Behavior (Fundamental Attribution Error) ^288851049 --- in practice this assumption is consistently demonstrated to be wrong, and we are consequently surprised when others do not act in accordance with the “innate” traits we’ve endowed them with. ^288851050 --- We tend to over-ascribe the behavior of others to their innate traits rather than to situational factors, leading us to overestimate how consistent that behavior will be in the future. ^288851051 --- 20. Influence of Stress (Including Breaking Points) ^288851052 --- Stress causes hasty decisions, immediacy, and a fallback to habit, thus giving rise to the elite soldiers’ motto: “In the thick of battle, you will not rise to the level of your expectations, but fall to the level of your training.” ^288851053 --- 21. Survivorship Bias ^288851054 --- is famously written by the victors. ^288851055 --- we over-attribute success to things done by the successful agent rather than to randomness or luck, and we often learn false lessons by exclusively studying victors without seeing all of the accompanying losers who acted in the same way but were not lucky enough to succeed. ^288851056 --- 22. Tendency to Want to Do Something (Fight/Flight, Intervention, Demonstration of Value, etc.) ^288851057 --- Most humans have the tendency to need to act, even when their actions are not needed. We also tend to offer solutions even when we do not have knowledge to solve the problem. ^288851058 --- 23. Falsification / Confirmation Bias ^288851059 --- What a man wishes, he also believes. Similarly, what we believe is what we choose to see. ^288851060 --- It is a deeply ingrained mental habit, both energy-conserving and comfortable, to look for confirmations of long-held wisdom rather than violations. ^288851061 --- The modern scientific enterprise operates under the principle of falsification ^288851062 # The Mental Models of Human Nature and Judgment ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article1.be68295a7e40.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[fs.blog]] - Full Title: The Mental Models of Human Nature and Judgment - Category: #articles - URL: https://fs.blog/mental-models/ ## Highlights - 2. Bias from Incentives - A trusting system is one that tends to work most efficiently; the rewards of trust are extremely high. - 1. Trust - 3. Pavlovian Association - Highly responsive to incentives, humans have perhaps the most varied and hardest to understand set of incentives in the animal kingdom. This causes us to distort our thinking when it is in our own interest to do so. A wonderful example is a salesman truly believing that his product will improve the lives of its users. It’s not merely convenient that he sells the product; the fact of his selling the product causes a very real bias in his own thinking. - We have a DNA-level instinct to seek safety in numbers and will look for social guidance of our behavior. This instinct creates a cohesive sense of cooperation and culture which would not otherwise be possible but also leads us to do foolish things if our group is doing them as well. - 4. Tendency to Feel Envy & Jealousy - where denial has powerful destructive effects but allows for behavioral inertia. Denying reality can be a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism, or a purposeful tactic. - Humans have a tendency to feel envious of those receiving more than they are, and a desire “get what is theirs” in due course. The tendency towards envy is strong enough to drive otherwise irrational behavior, but is as old as humanity itself. Any system ignorant of envy effects will tend to self-immolate over time. - 8. Representativeness Heuristic - 10. Narrative Instinct - 9. Social Proof (Safety in Numbers) - 6. Denial - 7. Availability Heuristic - tend to most easily recall what is salient, important, frequent, and recent. The brain has its own energy-saving and inertial tendencies that we have little control over – the availability heuristic is likely one of them. - Having a truly comprehensive memory would be debilitating. Some sub-examples of the availability heuristic include the Anchoring and Sunk Cost Tendencies. - Human beings have been appropriately called “the storytelling animal” because of our instinct to construct and seek meaning in narrative. - the famous dogs salivating at the ring of a bell. Human beings are much the same and can feel positive and negative emotion towards intangible objects, with the emotion coming from past associations rather than direct effects. - 5. Tendency to Distort Due to Liking/Loving or Disliking/Hating - humans have a tendency to distort their thinking in favor of people or things that they like and against people or things they dislike. This tendency leads to overrating the things we like and underrating or broadly categorizing things we dislike, often missing crucial nuances in the process. - long before we developed the ability to write or to create objects, we were telling stories and thinking in stories. - 11. Curiosity Instinct - We like to call other species curious, but we are the most curious of all, an instinct which led us out of the savanna and led us to learn a great deal about the world around us, using that information to create the world in our collective minds. - Even before there were direct incentives to innovate, humans innovated out of curiosity. - 12. Language Instinct - As we saw with the narrative instinct, we use these instincts to create shared stories, as well as to gossip, solve problems, and fight, among other things. Grammatically ordered language theoretically carries infinite varying meaning. - 13. First-Conclusion Bias - Our tendency to settle on first conclusions leads us to accept many erroneous results and cease asking questions; it can be countered with some simple and useful mental routines. - 14. Tendency to Overgeneralize from Small Samples - We take a small number of instances and create a general category, even if we have no statistically sound basis for the conclusion. - 15. Relative Satisfaction/Misery Tendencies - 16. Commitment & Consistency Bias - humans are subject to a bias towards keeping their prior commitments and staying consistent with our prior selves when possible - when it is combined with the first-conclusion bias, we end up landing on poor answers and standing pat in the face of great evidence. - 17. Hindsight Bias - Once we know the outcome, it’s nearly impossible to turn back the clock mentally. - Our narrative instinct leads us to reason that we knew it all along (whatever “it” is), when in fact we are often simply reasoning post-hoc with information not available to us before the event. - The hindsight bias explains why it’s wise to keep a journal of important decisions for an unaltered record and to re-examine our beliefs when we convince ourselves that we knew it all along - 18. Sensitivity to Fairness - Justice runs deep in our veins. - of fairness can be considered grounds for reciprocal action, or at least distrust. - Yet fairness itself seems to be a moving target. What is seen as fair and just in one time and place may not be in another. Consider that slavery has been seen as perfectly natural and perfectly unnatural in alternating phases of human existence. - 19. Tendency to Overestimate Consistency of Behavior (Fundamental Attribution Error) - in practice this assumption is consistently demonstrated to be wrong, and we are consequently surprised when others do not act in accordance with the “innate” traits we’ve endowed them with. - We tend to over-ascribe the behavior of others to their innate traits rather than to situational factors, leading us to overestimate how consistent that behavior will be in the future. - 20. Influence of Stress (Including Breaking Points) - Stress causes hasty decisions, immediacy, and a fallback to habit, thus giving rise to the elite soldiers’ motto: “In the thick of battle, you will not rise to the level of your expectations, but fall to the level of your training.” - 21. Survivorship Bias - is famously written by the victors. - we over-attribute success to things done by the successful agent rather than to randomness or luck, and we often learn false lessons by exclusively studying victors without seeing all of the accompanying losers who acted in the same way but were not lucky enough to succeed. - 22. Tendency to Want to Do Something (Fight/Flight, Intervention, Demonstration of Value, etc.) - Most humans have the tendency to need to act, even when their actions are not needed. We also tend to offer solutions even when we do not have knowledge to solve the problem. - 23. Falsification / Confirmation Bias - What a man wishes, he also believes. Similarly, what we believe is what we choose to see. - It is a deeply ingrained mental habit, both energy-conserving and comfortable, to look for confirmations of long-held wisdom rather than violations. - The modern scientific enterprise operates under the principle of falsification