Exploiting your own biases is a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, although I’ve thought about it more in terms of using biases (and other unpleasant aspects of our personality) to at least partially counteract each other.
For example, if you know from experience that your initial estimate of how long a software project will take—which you are often forced to give, even if informally, before you’ve had time to think properly—is usually far too low (planning fallacy), make your initial estimate X times your real estimate. Even if you don’t really believe it will take that long, the anchoring effect ensures that your final estimate will probably be higher (and thus more accurate) than if you had chosen your initial estimate ‘more rationally’ (not really, of course, but that’s how it feels).
We are all familiar with this particular example—and I’m sure many of us in the software field have used it repeatedly—but the general principle of using one bias to counteract another seems more widely applicable. As long as we still have these biases, why not try to put them to positive use and to use them against each other?
I don’t think that every bias can be counteracted with some other specific bias, but in a more general sense, we can also often use what we consider weaknesses (e.g., intense emotions interfering with rational thought during an argument) to re-structure or change how we think about decisions or tasks so that the ‘rational’ decision/behavior feels like it is the emotional or ego-gratifying one that takes no effort. I personally have found that merely thinking about certain things as (and engaging in them as if they were) games or optimization problems can be very helpful in getting myself out of habitual patterns of behavior, switching from a state that is mostly automatic and system1-like into a state that is more reflective and strategic and system2-like. What makes the alternate state so powerful is that by viewing it as a game, my strong ego and intense sense of competition compels me to put great effort into winning the game.
Exploiting your own biases is a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, although I’ve thought about it more in terms of using biases (and other unpleasant aspects of our personality) to at least partially counteract each other.
For example, if you know from experience that your initial estimate of how long a software project will take—which you are often forced to give, even if informally, before you’ve had time to think properly—is usually far too low (planning fallacy), make your initial estimate X times your real estimate. Even if you don’t really believe it will take that long, the anchoring effect ensures that your final estimate will probably be higher (and thus more accurate) than if you had chosen your initial estimate ‘more rationally’ (not really, of course, but that’s how it feels).
We are all familiar with this particular example—and I’m sure many of us in the software field have used it repeatedly—but the general principle of using one bias to counteract another seems more widely applicable. As long as we still have these biases, why not try to put them to positive use and to use them against each other?
I don’t think that every bias can be counteracted with some other specific bias, but in a more general sense, we can also often use what we consider weaknesses (e.g., intense emotions interfering with rational thought during an argument) to re-structure or change how we think about decisions or tasks so that the ‘rational’ decision/behavior feels like it is the emotional or ego-gratifying one that takes no effort. I personally have found that merely thinking about certain things as (and engaging in them as if they were) games or optimization problems can be very helpful in getting myself out of habitual patterns of behavior, switching from a state that is mostly automatic and system1-like into a state that is more reflective and strategic and system2-like. What makes the alternate state so powerful is that by viewing it as a game, my strong ego and intense sense of competition compels me to put great effort into winning the game.