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2024年6月22日发(作者：)

Orthodox views prize intelligence and intellectual rigor highly in the modern

realm of universities and tech industry jobs. One of the underlying assumptions of this

value system is that smart people, by virtue of what they've learned, will formulate

better decisions. Often this is true. Yet psychologists who study human decision

making processes have uncovered cognitive biases common to all people, regardless

of intelligence, that can lead to poor decisions in experts and laymen alike.

Thankfully these biases can be avoided. Understanding how and in what

situations they occur can give you an awareness of your own limitations and allow

you to factor them into your decision-making.

One of the most common biases is what is known as the fundamental attribution

error. Through this people attribute the failures of others to character flaws and their

own to mere circumstance, subconsciously considering their own characters to be

stainless. "Jenkins lost his job because of his incompetence; I lost mine because of the

recession." It also leads us to attribute our own success to our qualifications,

discounting luck, while seeing others' success as the product of mere luck.

In other words, we typically demand more accountability from others than we do

from ourselves. Not only does this lead to petty judgments about other people, it also

leads to faulty risk assessment when you assume that certain bad things only happen

to others. For example, you might assume, without evidence, that the price of your

house will go up even though 90 percent of them have dropped in price, because you

yourself are more competent.

Confirmation bias is sometimes found together with fundamental attribution

error. This one has two parts. First, we tend to gather and rely upon information that

only confirms our existing views. Second, we avoid or veto things that refute our

preexisting hypotheses.

For example, imagine that you suspect your computer has been hacked. Every

time it stalls or has a little error, you assume that it was triggered by a hacker and that

your suspicions are valid. This bias plays an especially big role in rivalries between

two opposing views. Each side partitions their own beliefs in a logic-proof loop, and

claims their opponent is failing to recognize valid points. Outwitting confirmation

bias therefore requires exploring both sides of an argument with equal diligence.

Similar to confirmation bias is the overconfidence bias. In an ideal world, we

could be correct 100 percent of the time we were 100 percent sure about something,

correct 80 percent of the time we were 80 percent sure about something, and so on. In

reality, people's confidence vastly exceeds the accuracy of those judgments. This bias

most frequently comes into play in areas where someone has no direct evidence and

must make a guess - estimating how many people are in a crowded plaza, for example,

or how likely it will rain. To make matters worse, even when people are aware of

overconfidence bias, they will still tend to overstate the chances that they are correct.

Confidence is no prophet and is best used together with available evidence. When

witnesses are called to testify in a court trial, the confidence in their testimony is

measured along with and against the evidence at hand.

The availability bias is also related to errors in estimation, in that we tend to

estimate what outcome is more likely by how easily we can recount an example from

memory. Since the retention and retrieval of memories is biased toward vivid,

sensational, or emotionally charged examples, decisions based on them can often lead

to strange, inaccurate conclusions.

In action this bias might lead someone to cancel a trip to, for example, the

Canary Islands because of a report that the biggest plane crash in history happened

there. Likewise some people might stop going out at night for fear of assault or rape.

Repelling the availability bias calls for an empirical approach to a particular decision,

one not based on the obscured reality of vivid memory. If there is a low incidence of

disaster, like only one out of 100,000 plane landings results in a crash, it is safe to fly

to the Canary Islands. If one out of one million people who go out is assaulted, it is

safe to go out at night.

The sunk cost fallacy has a periodic application and was first identified by

economists. A good example of how it works is the casino slot machine. Gamblers

with a high threshold for risk put money into a slot machine hoping for a big return,

but with each pull of the lever they lose some money playing the odds. If they have

been pulling the lever many times in a row without success, they might decide that

they had better keep spending money at the machine, or they will have wasted

everything they already put in.

The truth is that every pull of the lever has the same winning probability of

nearly one in a trillion, regardless of how much money has been put in before - the

previous plays were sunk costs.

In everyday life this can lead people to stay in damaging situations because of

how much they have already put in, stuck on the erroneous belief that the value of that

time or energy they have invested will decay or disappear if they leave. The wisest

course is to recognize the effects of the sunk cost fallacy and to leave a bad situation

regardless of how much you have already invested.

While there are still more biases, the key to avoiding them remains the same:

When a decision matters, it is best to rely on watertight logic and a careful

examination of the evidence and to remain aware that what seems like good intuition

is always subject to errors of judgment.

26. What is a traditional view about smart people according to Paragraph 1?

A They often do wrong things.

B They have no cognitive biases.

C They can make better decisions.

D They can learn things more quickly.

27. According to the text, the most typical characteristic of the fundamental error is

that _____________.

A you blame other people or their personality for an existing problem

B you believe competence is most important to achieving success

C you don’t recognize the importance of luck in someone’s success

D you hold a negative attitude toward the work you are trying to do

28. If you are only interested in evidence that is in agreement with your own belief,

you are being affected by_________.

A the fundamental attribution error

B the confirmation bias

C the overconfidence bias

D the availability bias

29. The overconfidence bias usually occurs when_____.

A someone is 100 percent sure about something

B someone uses evidence that is easily available

C someone fails to examine the evidence carefully

D someone has no evidence and has to make a guess

30. The availability bias leads to strange and inaccurate conclusions because it causes

people to ______.

A become too confident about their predictions

B use evidence that is not so convincing and strong

C pay too much attention to others’ character flaws

D avoid information that is not supportive of their views

31. According to the text, the reason why people don’t want to leave a bad investment

situation and commit the sunk cost fallacy is that __________.

A they don’t want to admit that they have made a poor decision

B they will lose more money if they decide not to continue it

C they will have greater chances to win if they are patient

D they don’t want their previous investments to be wasted

32. From the text, we can learn that smart people make bad decisions

because_________.

A they don’t know much about cognitive biases

B they don’t know much about their own limitations

C they are likely to be affected by some cognitive biases

D they lack knowledge about things not in their field of study

33. The purpose of the text is ____________.

A to help us learn about cognitive biases and be better at decision-making

B to explain why smart people make various kinds of poor decisions

C to prove to us that cognitive biases are not rare but are with us every day

D to show the similarities and differences between different cognitive biases

34. What can lead to poor decisions in experts and laymen alike?_______.

A Intelligence B Orthodox views C Assumption D Cognitive biases

35. What does the word “petty” in paragraph 4 mean?_________.

A lovely B pretty C unimportant D adorable

答案

26-35 CABD BDCA DC

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