Debiasing is the process of overcoming bias. Results in being able to systematically avoid stupidity in certain situations where intuitive heuristics run amok. It takes serious study to gain meaningful benefits, half-hearted attempts may accomplish nothing, and partial knowledge of bias may do more harm than good.

Simply being told about the biases rarely helps to notice and overcome them. For example, the overestimation of prior probability of an event that has already happened caused by hindsight bias doesn't go away when people are told about this bias and when they try to counteract its effects. Due to overconfidence, often more than 50% of people report that they are capable of above-average performance. When asked about how good they are at overcoming overconfidence, they exhibit the same bias¹.

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External links

See also

Bias
Rationality
Dangerous knowledge, Valley of bad rationality
Crisis of faith

References

Emily Pronin (2002). "The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 (3): 369-381. (PDF)↩