Cognitive Shortcuts Quotes

Pundits, media companies and politicians have discovered that it is emotion, not reason, that wins votes and pulls in eyeballs. It’s fun and lucrative while it lasts, but the Greeks and Romans can tell you precisely what it does to a civilization in the long run.

Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.

Life-complication Theory: Given a choice between an easy solution and a complicated one, the loser will usually opt to travel the complicated path. Don't ignore a solution just because it's simple!

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

I think belief is like having the first Microsoft Windows - it's so rudimentary, in the human brainwork, it's so obviously a sham.

I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think, unfortunately, too many of us in America jump to conclusions about each other.

Stereotypes are the mind's shorthand for dealing with complexities. They have two aspects: they are much blunter than reality; they are shaped to fit a man's preferences or prejudgments. Thus two principles are involved: differentiation or its lack, and biased preferential perception.

Far from being a loathsome aberration that ought to be purged from our behavior, it turns out that stereotypes are essential life tools, are accurate much more often than not.

We Liberals like to think our thoughts aren't controlled. We pride ourselves on our independent thinking. We know we shouldn't believe everything we read. We realize the media is skewed, we know it's owned by a small group of people, we realize it's biased, etc.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals.

It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old ditches.

By their very nature, heuristic shortcuts will produce biases, and that is true for both humans and artificial intelligence, but the heuristics of AI are not necessarily the human ones.

It's a closing of the mind that happens when you want to be lazy and go with the easiest answers, like the media do all the time in their sound bytes.

I made a lot of money and had a great time playing with the words that make up the news. I exploited the laziness behind the news and people's reading habits.