There was a great post on lesswrong.com about this:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_peo...

Very interesting. I have always wondered if teaching people about cognitive biases can help them avoid them. On the very least, I am convinced that this may not be as easy as I was thinking.

Some relevant excerpts from the cited article:

>> If you're irrational to start with, having more knowledge can hurt you.

>> I've seen people severely messed up by their own knowledge of biases.

>> You can think of people who fit this description, right?

This makes sense now. If the brain behind is close to a random baseline in interpreting statements, how can you feed more statements (about interpreting) to expect a positive outcome.

A question still remains: Would it help to teach people of these biases when they are kids.

The impression I keep getting is that (with due respect to "the power of the context" http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf) teaching someone about fallacies automatically makes them about 15 IQ stupider.

I am not sure what you are getting at. That the PARC people were too deep in awesomeness to productize it? Just grabbing at straws I haven't read the whole article.

I'm referring to the maxim often repeated by Alan Kay that "[point of view|context|a change of context] is worth [40|80] IQ".

Darn! I would be -150 by now. :-)

It's a one-off effect rather than -15IQ per fallacy, though I wouldn't deny that adding more fallacies could have some cumulative effect. Maybe deeper, rather than more extensive, understanding of fallacies, cognitive biases and so on may start to reverse the effect, though I wouldn't exactly bet on it doing do consistently.

It should be named the basilisk bias.

It's a similar idea to the argument from fallacy, wherein a conclusion is believed to be false because its argument contains a fallacy.

I do not think it is a common problem. Discounting other people's correct arguments because you diagnose a fallacy or the effects of a cognitive bias? More common.

Sounds like the opposite of the Dunning-Krueger effect[0]. Instead of one with below average skill overestimating their ability, someone with above average skill underestimates their ability.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

The DK effect is that everyone is bad at estimating their ability, the lower skilled have more error in their estimates. The DK effect doesn't apply to the person, it applies to the person in the context. I might think I am more skilled at auto repair than I actually am. And in fact, I might think that because I am a bad ass at writing codes.

It might be that the DK effect is _more_ pronounced in someone who has mastered a skill that they think transfers to other problem domains.

But who knows, I am not a cognitive psychologist, I only play one on the internet.

I am not sure, but I think an illogical argument can be just illogical without being a bias. It is possible to reject the initial solution due to some bias (which may be any of the number of them), but it may also be possible to be just wrong at rejecting it.

Agree, have you watched Japanese Soup “Legal High 2” ? To win the lawsuit, the lawyer doesn't case too much...