Pillar IV
Epistemology & Cognitive Vulnerabilities.
The structural faults in how we know what we think we know — motivated reasoning, self-illusion, and the deliberate and accidental architectures of ignorance.
13 entries ·search the index →
125+ found this interesting
Wilful Ignorance
The deliberate avoidance of knowledge one could obtain, undertaken to protect a comfort, an interest, or a self-image.
- #Denial
- #Information Avoidance
- #Accountability
150+ found this interesting
Motivated Reasoning
Reasoning recruited to reach a desired conclusion: evidence and logic serve as post-hoc advocates for what we already want to believe.
- #Cognition
- #Bias
- #Identity
150+ found this interesting
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in ways that confirm one's existing beliefs.
- #Bias
- #Evidence
- #Belief
175+ found this interesting
Dunning–Kruger Effect
The miscalibration in which the unskilled overestimate their competence — because the skill needed to perform is also the skill needed to judge performance.
- #Metacognition
- #Expertise
- #Self-Assessment
100+ found this interesting
Epistemic Bubbles
An information environment in which outside voices are simply absent, so local consensus hardens into unquestioned truth.
- #Information
- #Polarisation
- #Networks
100+ found this interesting
Cipolla's Laws of Stupidity
Carlo Cipolla's playful but durable framework: stupid behaviour is defined not by intellect but by producing loss for others while gaining nothing for oneself.
- #Rationality
- #Decision-Making
- #Power
125+ found this interesting
Illusory Truth Effect
Repeated statements feel truer — familiarity is mistaken for truth, even when the repetition is known to come from propaganda and even for claims we initially rejected.
- #Misinformation
- #Memory
- #Propaganda
100+ found this interesting
Availability Heuristic
Judging how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind — so vivid, recent, or heavily covered risks feel far more probable than they are.
- #Heuristics
- #Risk
- #Salience
100+ found this interesting
False Consensus Effect
People overestimate how much others share their beliefs, preferences, and habits — reading their own position as the common one and dissenters as deviant.
- #Projection
- #Consensus
- #Egocentrism
125+ found this interesting
Belief Perseverance
Beliefs built on evidence that has been fully discredited continue to influence judgement — the mind keeps the conclusion after the foundation is gone.
- #Belief
- #Memory
- #Debunking
125+ found this interesting
Semmelweis Reflex
The reflex-like rejection of new evidence that contradicts established norms, beliefs, or paradigms — named after the doctor whose life-saving handwashing discovery was rejected by his own profession.
- #Paradigms
- #Evidence
- #Science
125+ found this interesting
Denialism
The organised rejection of well-established facts — not ignorance but a active campaign to manufacture doubt, exploit uncertainty, and protect identity or interest against inconvenient evidence.
- #Misinformation
- #Science
- #Doubt
100+ found this interesting
Universally Accepted Confirmation Bias
A norm can look innocuous while quietly setting the standard for what counts as permissible — and when a whole society accepts it without examination, the bias it encodes becomes invisible.
- #Norms
- #Confirmation Bias
- #Social Convention
Continue through the taxonomy