General Cognitive Biases

• List of Cognitive Biases
• List of Eponymous Laws
• List of Paradoxes
• List of Fallacies

• The Gordian Knot - an intractable problem

• Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies

• Your Bias

• Cognitive Bias Codex graphic
• 50 Cognitive Biases Infographic

Special Laws and Effects

• 90-90 Rule: 90% of the work will take 90% of the time. The remaining 10% of the work will take 90% of the time
• Abilene Paradox: The tendancy of a group to agree despite individuals holding differenct opinions
• Akrasia Effect: Procrastination and Time Inconsistency
• Apophenia: Seeing patterns in random data - can be a generalization of Confirmation Bias Pareidolia is the tendancy to see objects like faces in unusual places examples
• Argumentum ad populum: If many believe it so, it is so
• Brook’s Law: Adding people to a software project makes it later (and exceptions)
• Cunningham’s Law: The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer
• Cobb’s Paradox: We know why projects fail, we know how to prevent that, so why do they still fail?
• Classical Conditioning: People (and dogs) can be trained to respond to a stimulus (see Orienting Response)
• Conway’s Law: Systems produced are copies of communication structures
• Einstellung Effect: The tendancy to solve problems in the same way they’ve been solved in the past despite there being better ways.
• Enkrateia Effect: Opposite of Akrasia, or self control
• Focusing Illusion: Nothing is as important in life as you think it is while you are thinking about it
• Fundamental Attribution Error: Tendancy to under-emphasize situation and over-emphasize personality in observed behaviour
• Godwin’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1
• Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure
• Granger Causality: Time delayed correlations
• Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity Hubbard’s Revision: Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system of interactions.
• Hawthorne Effect: Behavior changes when being observed
• Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law
• Better than Average Heuristic: Tendancy to over-estimate our own skill compared to others. Part of Illusory Superiority and similar to Dunning Kruger Effect or not Debunking Dunning Kruger
• Larman’s Laws of Organizational Behavior: Orgs are optimized for status quo
• Law of Requisite Variety To achieve stability in a complex system the number of control states must be greater than the number of system states
• Little’s Law: Lead Time = WIP / Throughput
• Little’s 2nd Law: People are good a what they like
• Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong
• Moore’s Law: Rate of doubling
• Next in Line Effect: You will forget the information from the person immediately ahead of you in line
• Occam’s Razor: Pick the solution with the fewest assumptions
• Orienting Response: Changes in environment can interrupt attention and focus (lesser form of Startle Response )
• Pareto Principle: 80/20 rule
• Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available
• Peter Principle: People in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “level of incompetence”
• Post hoc ergo propter hoc: Causation fallacy
• Pratfall Effect: Making a mistake can increase personal appeal
• Price’s Law: 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work
• Reciprocity: Responding with like behaviour, can be both positive and negative
• Ringelmann Effect: Social loafing and Bystander effect, the tendancy to do less individually when part of a team
• Rosenthal Effect: Higher expectations lead to increased performance
• Stockdale Paradox: Maintain positive future despite present difficulty
• Sutton’s Law: Why do you rob banks? Because that’s where the money is
• Tog’s Paradox: Attempts to reduce complexity in tasks or products lead to more complex and challenging items.
• Zeigarnik Effect: People remember uncompleted tasks better than completed ones