A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “scope insensitivity”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott Alexander explores 'bicameral reasoning', comparing how we often weigh issues equally (like the US Senate) instead of proportionally to their importance (like the House), leading to potentially skewed decision-making.
Scott Alexander argues for the value of using quantification and made-up statistics in decision-making, even when imperfect, as they often outperform intuition and reveal biases in our thinking.
Scott explains prospect theory, Kahneman and Tversky's model of how people actually make decisions, showing how its value and probability weighting functions predict numerous cognitive biases including loss aversion, scope insensitivity, and framing effects.
Scott highlights a study showing juries give harsher penalties for crimes affecting few people versus many, demonstrating the cognitive bias of scope insensitivity.