Brain Wars: Six Cognitive Biases and How to Combat Them

“Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance.” ~ Anthony de Mello

Nobody is immune to cognitive biases, not even trained psychologists and logicians who thoroughly understand them. We can become more aware of them, but we will never be immune to them. And that’s okay. We don’t need to be impervious in order to be more open-minded. We just need to be more understanding, more intelligent, and more imaginative in our approach, especially toward beliefs that have not previously been questioned.

Like Robert Anton Wilson cryptically said, “I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination.” Indeed, we generally only need to turn the tables on belief in order to combat most cognitive biases. But if that’s not enough for you, here are six particularly prevalent cognitive biases and how to combat them.