Canonical · Cognitive Biases · Concept
Motivated Stopping
Eliezer Yudkowsky · 2007
"When you want to believe something, you stop looking for evidence at the first confirming fact. When you don't want to believe it, you demand impossible proof."
Humans are not impartial truth-seekers; we are lawyers arguing for a predetermined verdict. This manifests in two behaviors: Motivated Stopping and Motivated Continuation.
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Up NextSuggested: Continues the theme of Cognitive Biases
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Availability)
"People estimate how frequent or likely something is by how easily examples come to mind — which means vivid, recent, or heavily-reported events get judged as far more common than they actually are, while common but unremarkable events get systematically underestimated."
Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman · PaperContinue→