And now for my next trick, watch as I pull a rabbit out of this empty top hat. Just like a magician is knowingly performing a trick, cognitive biases are those mental errors that come from simplified processing of information. Even knowing these exist, we still struggle to overcome their influence.
Previously I have mentioned biases and illustrated they are basically mental shortcuts. Cognitive biases are different from other biases like organizational, cultural, or self-interest. Instead of resulting from any emotional or intellectual tendencies about a situation, they result from subconscious methods of processing information. Therefore, they can be consistent and predictable when critical thinkers understand them.
Sometimes a cognitive bias can be one of those rules of thumb. For example, we tend to judge distance from an object by its clarity of image. The sharper the image of the object, the closer it appears to be. This rule has some validity when we compare various objects in an image that are known to have significant differences in their distance from the viewer. However, when other factors are introduced those distance estimations can become less clear. For instance a mist or fog can impact the clarity of an object to our vision.
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