Confirmation Bias - What is it, and how does it apply to chess?

@KMcGeoch said in #6:
> One thing that I'd add is that 2-4-6 experiment in the blog post isn't the same as the original as in the original only 1 sequence is given while in the blog post 4 are given each with the increment by 2 criteria that does mean misdirection is stronger in your case and that could be down to Asch conformity experiments with simulations. This does mean people are less likely to try 3-6-9 assuming it's a ratio.
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> Actually way I'd look at it you would need to give literally 1000s of 3 number combinations to be relatively sure of the exact rule. This is because it's entirely possible that numbers in ascending order isn't the only rule when it could follow AND or OR conditions. It could instead be something like numbers in ascending order and at least one number is non-prime.
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> I think the idea of the experiment is that people assume it's increment + 2 not realising it's a subset of the ascending order rule. However there's nothing stopping the ascending order rule being a subset of another rule. So then question is at what point do you stop searching for a rule that may not exist. So it can be argued that everyone that found the "correct" rule also has succumbed to confirmation bias.
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> However in example given one thing missing was a case where pattern didn't apply so if you don't have a failure condition anything could work. If exhaustively testing things to consider include numbers within a set range, there's no clarification as to how numbers that aren't integers are treated (e.g. 0.5, 1/3, pi, infinity, imaginary numbers etc), whether negatives are treated as absolute values or not etc.

My thoughts but you actually took your time.
I guess the "numbers must be in ascendent order" is the only "truth" that you can safely infer. But the thing is, if we are given an "infinite" sample of 3 numbers ascending in +2 increment (or 3 as in the post) the next could always break the + 2 rule and resort to the "ascendent" rule, but we know that this not how prediction works.

This was an excellent article and the idea of cognitive bias is not something that I have seen talked about explicitly in chess literature. I particularly liked the first example where white is presented with the binary choice of capturing on f6 with the queen or the pawn. I have fallen into lost positions for similar reasons in the past- I essentially dealt with this by telling myself to pay more attention to what my opponent is doing before making a move, but looking at this problem through the lens of confirmation bias is much more helpful because it can allow one to make changes in their thinking process which can eliminate such mistakes in the future.

I hope that you will continue to write articles as I find them very interesting, for instance after reading this article I've already considered how sunk cost fallacy could be applied to a chess game also (e.g. sometimes we do not want to move our pieces backwards because we spent time mobilizing them into the attack).

By the way, we played in the aforementioned Maia Open tournament in 2023!

Confirmation bias is when something occurs once and because it worked out that way, the person thinks it must be true universally. It is not a logical structure but a lack of evidence in decision making or understanding of the world.

For example, someone holds a belief that vaccines cause cognitive disabilities. Then someone they know has a child who got a vaccine and they were diagnosed with a cognitive disability. The cause of the disability was genetic but the association led to a confirmation of their erroneous bias because it was based on a single incident without scientific evidence.

@HelloItsDmitri
For the 2-4-6 question, isn't it true? Adding increments of 2 works every time, so it seems to me to be really dumb, if you gave different sequences, such as 7-8-9 then it would make sense, but you only gave 4 examples in which the pattern holds true

@Bobjeff01 said in #14:
> @HelloItsDmitri
> For the 2-4-6 question, isn't it true? Adding increments of 2 works every time, so it seems to me to be really dumb, if you gave different sequences, such as 7-8-9 then it would make sense, but you only gave 4 examples in which the pattern holds true

I think that's the point of the exercise where people assume a certain rule applies and when evidence seems to confirm it they don't check if it's actually something else. It's also a psychological trick since if you were giving an IQ test and asked what's the pattern then increments of 2 would be correct answer. Way questions and examples are posed is a form of leading questions.

@KMcGeoch if all the evidence points to a certain solution, why do you need to investigate it unless it's wrong? Again it's one of those poorly worded questions that psychologists think that it's some sort of "gotcha" but really doesn't make any sense