It’s hard to set your emotions aside when you’re faced with a difficult decision. This is problematic, since our emotions often cause us to make the wrong decision in important areas of life, including in our relationships, our finances, and our health.| Effectiviology
A red herring is a piece of information that’s meant to distract people from something important in a misleading manner. Red herrings are usually used either as a literary device, such as when an author uses a side character to divert attention from another character, or as a rhetoric technique, such as when someone responds to a question with unrelated information in order to hide their refusal to answer the original question.| Effectiviology
A false dilemma (or false dichotomy) is a logical fallacy that occurs when a limited number of options are wrongly presented as being mutually exclusive or the only available options. For example, a false dilemma occurs when someone says that we must choose between options A or B, without mentioning that we can pick both or that option C also exists.| Effectiviology
The burden of proof (“onus probandi” in Latin) is the obligation to provide sufficient supporting evidence for claims that you make. For example, if a politician claims that a new policy will lead to a positive outcome, then the politician has a burden of proof with regard to this claim, meaning that they need to provide evidence that supports it.| Effectiviology
The argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone concludes that since they can’t believe something is true, then it must be false, and vice versa. For example, someone using the argument from incredulity might claim that since they don’t see how a certain scientific theory could be true, then it must be false.| Effectiviology
The appeal to novelty is a logical fallacy that occurs when something is assumed to be either good or better than something else, simply because it’s perceived as being newer or more novel.| Effectiviology
The divine fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone assumes that a certain phenomenon must occur as a result of divine intervention or a supernatural force, either because they don’t know how to explain it otherwise, or because they can’t believe that this isn’t the case.| Effectiviology
The appeal to nature is a logical fallacy that occurs when something is claimed to be good because it’s perceived as natural, or bad because it’s perceived as unnatural.| Effectiviology
The appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy that involves manipulating people’s emotions to strengthen their support for the conclusion of an unsound argument (e.g., one that’s misleading or baseless). For example, a person using an appeal to emotion in a debate might encourage the audience to ignore certain, by trying to make the audience angry at their source.| Effectiviology
The platinum rule is a moral principle which denotes that you should treat others the way they want to be treated. For example, the platinum rule denotes that if someone wants you to leave them alone, then you should do that. The platinum rule can be useful in many situations, but it’s important to ... Read more| Effectiviology
Begging the question (also called petitio principii or circular reasoning) is a logical fallacy that occurs when an argument’s premise depends on or is equivalent to the argument’s conclusion. In other words, an argument begs the question if one or more of its premises assume that the argument’s conclusion is necessarily true.| Effectiviology
Concepts that will help you understand the world better, so you can think, communicate, choose, learn, and act more effectively.| effectiviology.com
Whether you’re studying for a college course, practicing a new language, or trying to improve at your favorite sport, there are three factors that determine how successful your learning process will be. These factors are your natural abilities, the amount of effort that you put into learning, and how optimized your learning process is.| Effectiviology
Reflective practice involves actively analyzing your experiences and actions to help yourself improve at the things you do.| Effectiviology
A common question people ask is whether you should write notes by hand or type them up on a computer.| Effectiviology
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence is an adage which denotes that not having proof that something exists is different from having proof that it doesn’t exist. For example, lack of research about the efficacy of a new medical treatment (i.e., absence of evidence), is different from research showing that the new treatment is ineffective (i.e., evidence of absence).| Effectiviology
A false premise is an incorrect assumption that forms the basis of an argument and makes it logically unsound. For example, in the argument “all birds can fly, and penguins can’t fly, so penguins aren’t birds”, the assumption that “all birds can fly” is a false premise (since some birds can’t fly).| Effectiviology
The fallacy fallacy (also known as the argument from fallacy) is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone assumes that if an argument contains a logical fallacy, then its conclusion must be false.| Effectiviology
Reflective learning involves actively monitoring and assessing your knowledge, abilities, and performance during the learning process, in order to improve the process and its associated outcomes.| Effectiviology
When going over study material, there is an important distinction between two approaches, known as knowledge-telling and knowledge-building, that we can use in our own learning or promote in those that we teach:| Effectiviology
Reactive devaluation is a cognitive bias that causes people to devalue things that are offered to them, especially if offered by someone they perceive negatively. For example, reactive devaluation can cause someone to wrongly dismiss a good business proposal as bad, just because they dislike the person who offered it.| Effectiviology
The overkill backfire effect is a cognitive bias that causes people who encounter a complex explanation to reject it in favor of a simpler alternative, and to sometimes also reinforce their belief in the simpler alternative.| Effectiviology
The credentials fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone dismisses an argument by stating that whoever made it doesn’t have proper credentials, so their argument must be wrong or unimportant.| Effectiviology
An ad hominem argument is a personal attack against the source of an argument, rather than against the argument itself. Essentially, this means that ad hominem arguments are used to attack opposing views indirectly, by attacking the individuals or groups that support these views.| Effectiviology
False balance (also called fake balance, the balance fallacy, and bothsidesism) occurs when multiple things (like theories) are presented as more equal to each other in some regard (like level of supporting evidence) than they really are. For example, false balance occurs when a journalist presents the baseless opinion of a random layperson as being equally informed as the evidence-based perspective of a scientific expert.| Effectiviology
The principle of charity is a philosophical principle that denotes that, when interpreting someone’s statement, you should assume that the best possible interpretation of that statement is the one that the speaker meant to convey. Accordingly, to implement the principle of charity, you should not attribute falsehoods, logical fallacies, or irrationality to people’s argument, when there is a plausible, rational alternative available.| Effectiviology
A logical fallacy is a pattern of reasoning that contains a flaw, either in its logical structure or in its premises.| Effectiviology
Cherry picking is a logical fallacy where someone focuses only on evidence that supports their stance, while ignoring evidence that contradicts it. For example, a person who engages in cherry picking might mention only a small selection of studies out of all the ones available on a certain topic, to make it look as if the scientific consensus matches their stance.| Effectiviology
The appeal to the stone is a logical fallacy that occurs when a person dismisses their opponent’s argument as absurd, without actually addressing it, or without providing sufficient evidence in order to prove its absurdity. For example, a person using the appeal to the stone in a debate might simply laugh off all of their opponent’s claims and calls them ridiculous, with no justification.| Effectiviology
Hofstadter’s law is the adage that “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law”. This means that people tend to underestimate how long things will take them to do, even when they try to account for their tendency to underestimate this. Hofstadter’s law has implications across many ... Read more| Effectiviology
The appeal to authority (also known as the argument from authority, authority fallacy, appeal to expertise, appeal to expert opinion, and argumentum ad verecundiam) is a logical fallacy that occurs when a claim is assumed to be true because it was made by a perceived authority figure. In addition, the appeal to authority is ... Read more| Effectiviology
The outcome bias (or outcome effect) is a cognitive bias that leads people to judge decisions mainly based on their outcomes, in a way that’s irrelevant to the true quality of those decisions. Accordingly, the outcome bias can cause people to judge good decisions as being bad if they lead to negative outcomes, and to judge bad decisions as being good if they lead to positive outcomes.| Effectiviology
The Picard principle is the adage that “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” This principle denotes that even if you follow the best course of action available to you, you can sometimes still end up with a negative outcome, such as failure to achieve your goals.| Effectiviology
The action bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to favor action over inaction, without properly considering the outcomes that this will bring. For example, the action bias can drive someone to make unnecessary changes to their investment portfolio, even if it would be better for them to do nothing.| Effectiviology
The protégé effect is a psychological phenomenon where teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information to others helps a person learn that information. For example, a student who is studying for an exam could benefit from the protégé effect and improve their understanding of the material, by teaching that material to their peers.| Effectiviology
The confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to search for, interpret, and recall information in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs. For example, if someone is presented with a lot of information on a certain topic, the confirmation bias can cause them to only remember the bits of information that confirm what they already thought.| Effectiviology
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from rationality, which occurs due to the way our cognitive system works. Accordingly, cognitive biases cause us to be irrational in the way we search for, evaluate, interpret, judge, use, and remember information, as well as in the way we make decisions.| Effectiviology
A strawman is a fallacious argument that distorts an opposing stance in order to make it easier to attack. Essentially, the person using the strawman pretends to attack their opponent’s stance, while in reality they are actually attacking a distorted version of that stance, which their opponent doesn’t necessarily support.| Effectiviology
In a perfectly rational world, people who encounter evidence that challenges their beliefs would first evaluate this evidence, and then adjust their beliefs accordingly. However, in reality this is seldom the case.| Effectiviology
The Shirky principle is the adage that “institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”. More broadly, it can also be characterized as the adage that “every entity tends to prolong the problem it is solving”.| Effectiviology
An ingroup is a social group that a person identifies as being a part of, based on factors like nationality, race, religion, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation.| Effectiviology
A snuck premise is a controversial and unsupported assumption that someone includes in their argument as if it’s necessarily true. For example, if someone says “the problem with this immoral law is that it will have negative consequences”, the premise that the law is immoral can be considered snuck, if it’s controversial and unsupported by evidence.| Effectiviology
Incidental learning is learning that occurs unintentionally, from activities where learning is not a conscious goal for the learner. For example, when someone plays a sport just for fun, but ends up improving their skills over time, they’re engaging in incidental learning.| Effectiviology
Intentional learning is learning that occurs as a result of activities where learning is a deliberate—and often primary—goal for the learner. For example, someone who reads research articles in order to understand a scientific phenomenon is engaging in intentional learning.| Effectiviology