Number bias
The New York Times ran an editorial about an interesting type of cognitive bias: according to the article, the fact that our system of timekeeping is based on factors of 24, 7, etc. and the fact that we have 10 fingers profoundly influences our way of thinking. As the article explains, this bias is distinct from scope neglect and misunderstanding of probability. Has anyone else heard of this kind of “number bias” before? Also, is this an issue that deserves further study on LessWrong?
Pretty much expected: priming, availability.
Also anchoring.
Cognition is not independent of its environment. If we ever achieve uploads I’ll be extremely interested to see how our thinking changes to reflect the new environment.
In some (but not all) cases, this actually makes sense. Using a 7-day cycle for scheduled events is good, because scheduling is a big coordination game; if some people scheduled their events to happen every 7 days, and others scheduled them to happen every 8 days, then it would be much harder to keep a routine.
(Although if an event is something that people are likely to attend once, rather than repeatedly, then it may make sense to schedule it for different days of the week, so that conflicts are more likely to block only one occurrence, rather than every occurrence.)
Random related claim (from The Game): If you ask a girl to pick a number from 1 to 10, most of the time (maybe 70%?) they’ll pick 7.
What happens if you ask a guy?
They’ll pick WTF gay penis.
That’s beautiful.