Biases Quotes

“I'm convinced that most men don't know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man's atrocities, but wouldn't dream of imprisoning a mother for her son's crime?”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“While you judge me by my outward appearance I am silently doing the same to you, even though there's a ninety-percent chance that in both cases our assumptions are wrong.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“If we want to become who we are, we must not cling to false selves but face our lives’ raw realities, mastering biases and contradictions. ("Digging for white gold")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.”
― Aesop

“Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.”
― Amos Tversky, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

“Do you believe in UFOs?’ I’m always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not of evidence. I’m almost never asked, ‘How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Groups have powerful self-reinforcing mechanisms at work. These can lead to group polarization—a tendency for members of the group to end up in a more extreme position than they started in because they have heard the views repeated frequently.
At the extreme limit of group behavior is groupthink. This occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment.” The original work was conducted with reference to the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. However, it rears its head again and again, whether it is in connection with the Challenger space shuttle disaster or the CIA intelligence failure over the WMD of Saddam Hussein.

Groupthink tends to have eight symptoms:
1 . An illusion of invulnerability. This creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks. [...]
2. Collective rationalization. Members of the group discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions. [...]
3. Belief in inherent morality. Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
4. Stereotyped views of out-groups. Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary. Remember how those who wouldn't go along with the dot-com bubble were dismissed as simply not getting it.
5. Direct pressure on dissenters. Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
6. Self-censorship. Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
7. Illusion of unanimity. The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.
8. "Mind guards" are appointed. Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group's cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions. This is confirmatory bias writ large.”
― James Montier, The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How not to be your own worst enemy

“I don't have any problems with foreigners," says Peter. "I don't even know any."

"Well," says the woman with a smile, "not knowing any doesn't stop most people from having problems with them.”
― Marc-Uwe Kling, QualityLand

“The equivalent of humans searching for their “real selves” is small cats chasing their tails. For it seems to me that there is no “real self”. We humans are ever-shifting, dynamic entities and not unchangeable, rigid selves. And even if there were a kind of centrum within us that we could call an “inner self”, we would never reach down to it, because of our natural biases about what we are and what our place in the world is. When we look in the mirror, we don’t see what we are, but we see what we want to be. Yet, as elusive as the search for self is, so clear is what we have to do on earth: to love and take care of each other. Life is too short and too miraculous to waste it on something other than love and joy!The equivalent of humans searching for their “real selves” is small cats chasing their tails. For I believe that there is no “real self”. We humans are ever-shifting, dynamic entities and not unchangeable, rigid selves. And even if there were a kind of centrum within us that we could call an “inner self”, we would never reach down to it, because of our natural biases about what we are and what our place in the world is. When we look in the mirror, we don’t see what we are, but we see what we want to be. Yet, as elusive as the search for self is, so clear is what we have to do on earth: to love and take care of each other. Life is too short and too miraculous to waste it on something other than love and joy!”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“To make tradition out of stagnation is to make fertilizer out of living veins.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Divine Refugee

“Consciousness not compost.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Divine Refugee

“Ignorance is inevitable,
Bigotry is optional.
Biases are inevitable,
Prejudice is optional.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“Biases are inevitable, prejudice is optional.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“...check your own style of leading for cultural bias. What assumptions are you making about what “good” participation looks like? For instance, how do you expect people to deliver feedback? What would be an appropriate and expected level of assertiveness among your team members? Do you see any patterns suggesting that your style might inadvertently favor one side, or that you might be excluding or alienating one group? Is it possible team members have been communicating with you, but you just haven’t heard their points because they’re not delivered in the way you’re accustomed to hearing? It’s your job to be hyper-vigilant for ways your own cultural biases may be clouding your leadership and reducing the effectiveness of the team.”
― Andy Molinsky

“We are the makers of observable reality, shaped by hopes and biases of our own.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“Just as there is such a thing as blinded by light, there is such a thing as blinded by reason. Just as there is such a thing as poisoned by oxygen, there is such a thing as poisoned by belief.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Little Planet on The Prairie: Dunya Benim, Sorumluluk Benim

“It is certainly the case that if you are often reviewed, you will find yourself repeatedly blamed and praised for saying what you never said, and for not saying what you have said.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Art of Writing and the Gifts of Writers

“An experimenter’s own biases, expectations and intentions, whether expressed knowingly and outwardly, or even held subconsciously, are known to influence certain experiments. This effect is so well known that it has a name: the ‘observer-expectancy effect’ or ‘experimenter effect’ and has itself been a topic of research.”
― Jon Noble, Natural Remote Viewing

“Crutches are not feet, chains are not roots.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“The ingrained hostility to India’s Hindu civilisation also stems from the ill-informed claim that this is essential to preserve the nation’s secular fabric. Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate, is an ardent votary of this school of thought. In his book The Argumentative Indian, he argues that those who speak of a Hindu civilisation ‘are the promoters of a narrowly Hindu view of civilisation’.2 While conceding that ‘these old books and narratives have had an enormous influence on Indian literature and thought’—a rather supercilious way of describing thousands of years of civilisational achievement—he nevertheless views ‘the harking back to ancient India with the greatest suspicion’. The key to his thinking lies precisely in this inadvertent confession. For him, the very attempt to revisit ancient India is ab initio a tainted exercise, a matter of the greatest suspicion. This is an a priori conclusion, influenced by factors extraneous to the independent value and need of such a project. For a person of his intellectual calibre, to dogmatically label anyone wanting to ‘hark back’ to ancient India as a Hindu fundamentalist is, to put it politely, deeply disturbing.”
― Pavan K. Varma, The Great Hindu Civilisation: Achievement, Neglect, Bias and the Way Forward

“You cannot develop consciousness without correcting your biases.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“if your own proposal isn’t going to be attractive to you when it comes from the other side, what chance is there that the other side’s proposal is going to be attractive when it actually comes from the other side? (quoted by Tavris / Aronson)”
― Lee Ross

“Assumption is obstacle to communication, stereotypes are obstacle to awareness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Vegetables must be washed and cooked, to eliminate harmful bacteria 'n parasites, and bring out their true nutrition - mind must be washed in compassion, and cooked in the fire of reason, to eliminate harmful biases and prejudice, and achieve our true capacity for life.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Choose to fight physical infection or not, your body will do it for you, but as for psychological contaminations, you have to fight them yourself - the faculties are already carved in your brain circuits, but you have to be willing to use them, defying the comforting fantasies of convention, that's how an ape evolves into human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Spare the bias, spoil the brain.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“You need to know your money biases so you can stay on track by making well-informed decisions.”
― Tammy Trenta, Wisdom to Be Wealthy: Accelerate to the Top 1% and Create Generational Wealth Using the Family Office Blueprint

“Recognizing and understanding your money biases is the first step towards developing a healthier relationship with money.”
― Tammy Trenta, Wisdom to Be Wealthy: Accelerate to the Top 1% and Create Generational Wealth Using the Family Office Blueprint