List of Cognitive Biases
Wow, there are now 194 listed Cognitive Biases.  The number keeps growing.<p>It is an awful sign for a scientific community when they are working on a theory that includes 196 different exceptions and adjustments that have to be made in order to make a model fit the data.  It means that your underlying model probably isn&#x27;t right.<p>This reminds me of when Astronomers thought the universe revolves around the Earth, rather than the Sun.  The earth-centered theory made sense until we got better data, and then sometimes planets appeared to go backwards.  Sometimes they appeared to swirl around a line. Sometimes there were swirls within the swirls, and sometimes swirls within those:  <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;invisible.college&#x2F;attention&#x2F;dissertation&#x2F;retrogrades.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;invisible.college&#x2F;attention&#x2F;dissertation&#x2F;retrogrades...</a><p>Astronomers had to account for this data with a complex set of retrograde motions and epicycles layered upon epicycles. These complexities only increased as telescopes and charting techniques improved, uncovering more distortions from in the idealized orbital lens. Take, for instance, the numerous parameterized gears required for an early Galilean planetary model: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;invisible.college&#x2F;attention&#x2F;dissertation&#x2F;galileo2.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;invisible.college&#x2F;attention&#x2F;dissertation&#x2F;galileo2.jp...</a><p>Only when Copernicus and Kepler put the <i>sun</i> in the center of the universe could the models be simplified.  Suddenly, each planet&#x27;s orbit fit a perfect elipse -- no epicycles, no retrograde motions.<p>We can do the same thing for Economic theory, by moving the center of the utility function from the <i>future</i> to the <i>present</i>.  Right now, Economics models humans as optimizing future outcomes.  The modeled humans are focused on the future: they allocate infinite attention to computing the optimal action for the future.  But real humans have scarce attention for computing the future.  When they run out of attention, these 194 heuristics and biases display themselves in full effect.<p>We solve this dilemma when we evaluate the utility function in the present, rather than the future.  Instead of assuming humans have infinite attention, the utility function itself predicts <i>how</i> humans allocate their scarce attention.  The new utility function evaluates the utility of attention itself.<p>And it turns out that we can empirically measure this value of this utility function, by running controlled experiments online with 1,000s of participants, and paying them different amounts of money to attend to different tasks.  This lets us measure how much utility people ascribe to paying attention to television shows, sexy pictures, video games, advertisements, iPhone screens, or reddit posts.  We can measure it in pennies per second.<p>This new model is a measurable <i>Attention Economics</i>: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;invisible.college&#x2F;attention&#x2F;dissertation.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;invisible.college&#x2F;attention&#x2F;dissertation.html</a>