File of Bias I, introduction

In this entry, I will talk about Cognitive Bias, that is something that I introduced in my last blog entry, file of lies.

So, what is cognitive bias? Before introducing the concept, I want you to get rid of any pride about the image you have about yourself, becuase this is something that affect everybody, you and me included.

As I have been telling, you can find lies in everywhere. Is easy to accept that others lie to us, its a bit harder to accept that our senses lie to us, although it make sense... but what is hard to admit is to know that your own common sense lie too.

Cognitive bias are tools that human brain uses to lie to us. When I mean "lie to us", I mean the tools that the brain uses to lie to "it's owner", as well as others. I should point out that cognitive bias are totally unconcious, meaning, you never realize they are there when they become active. You dont say "ok I will use confirmation bias now", so they are different of "denial".

This might seem a bit weird, because "hey, its me, how come I lie to myself?". Well there are a lot of reasons why you might want to lie to yourself.

- maybe you agree with a political party/person/religion, and you want to forget about the bad things they do "for the greater good".
- maybe you had a bad and painful experience in the past, and you want to convince yourself that it didnt happened
- maybe you did something you know is wrong, but you want to convince yourself you are not a bad person so you can sleep well at night
- maybe you sense something that makes you uncofortable about others or yourself, but you try to forget in order to keep the status quo

But, above all, our brain lies to us because it HATES to admit it doesnt know something.

Of course, we are concious that we dont know a lot of things. However, is easy to fool yourself into believing you know something you really don't, usually in order to feel you are better than others. This becomes clear if you look closely when we humans are "in packs", that is, when we are interacting with mor than one person at a given point. And it becomes obvious when that "pack" is the close family. In those places, differences in opinion and discursions are common - some more heated than others. In those discursions there often is a "winner" and a "loser". The winner is accepted as "right", and the loser is seen as "wrong". The public around will cheer him, and in the end accept his/her arguments as true.

However, when checking the dynamics of the arguments, more often than none you will find that being "right" or "wrong" is not really what determines who wins or loses. The one who wins a discursion, tends to be the most skillful talking and argumenting and/or charismatic. Actually there are people that live from this, like politicians.

Dissecting this, is easy to figure out that, after an argument, the winner becomes "the leader of the pack", while the loser should give up and follow the others, or pay with ostracism. And when we "win", pride will keep us to admit we are wrong, because, admiting that we are wrong show us as "weak" and not skillful enough to rule others.


This is because human beings are what is called "gregarious", that is, social living beings, whose life goes around relationships and bounds with other people. "Gregarious" creatures are hierachic by nature, because it makes the group organization easier. Between gregarious creatures, there are some that are more tendent to become leader, and others that have the tendency to follow leaders, but, overall, everyone have its brain wired to try to become leader at one point, and to follow the leaders at another.

As far as I know, this is the main reason why we fool ourselves: the most important thing is to prove ourselves (or our leader) right, so we think we (or him/her) deserve to "be the leader of the pack". We humans have this tendency, just like gregarious animals (wolves, dogs, gorillas, dolphins....). However, our society is more complex that other gregarious animals, so our brain is too. Over the years, our brains developed certain tricks to keep the same style of society (gregarious) adapted to our new brain skills (specially talking and deductive skills).

To be continued