Comment by twicker on The New Yorker article on cognitive biases · 2012-06-19T04:50:21.837Z · LW · GW

Ah - you're discussing the Lehrer article. Yeah, I can see how you got that.

The authors are discussing something called the "introspection illusion" -- see here for a very complete review: https://psych.princeton.edu/psychology/research/pronin/pubs/Pronin%202009%20Introspection%20Illusion.pdf

Basically, it's not talking about introspection as, say, Zen self-questioning, where you start with an assumption that you do not know yourself and therefore must question (and be curious). Instead, it's talking about the more-automatic process that most people go through where they think, "Oh, I believe myself to be above the effects of bias - and, therefore, I won't exhibit bias." Most people think of themselves as good, and, bias being bad, most people therefore don't think of themselves as having it. Even people who do question themselves and truly probe their own reactions don't do so 100% of the time; that would be pretty exhausting for just about anyone. I'll be the first to admit that I don't fully trust my biases, nor trust myself to always figure out when my biases are operating (though I do very well at the cognitive tasks - which I almost wholly attribute to having taken a formal logic class).

So: Lehrer may be squelching curiosity, especially curiosity about oneself, but I suspect that he may not fully understand the introspection illusion. I would suspect that West et al. would have a very different opinion - more towards being very skeptical of what answers you believe you receive from your introspection and towards constantly questioning yourself.