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Am I the only one to find knowledge of cognitive biases to be of no use whatsoever?

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Someone should write a framework for putting cognitive biases to practice. Kinda like this

commoncog.com

Mental Models: Munger's Speech

There has been an uptick in self-help books and blogs about mental models. But, there's a problem when putting it in practice.

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There’s a reason it’s not useful, actually. Decision science consists of 3 pts: descriptive models (how people normally think), normative models (how they should think/make optimal decisions), prescriptive models (how to get from descriptive to normative). Biases are descriptive.

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I’m slightly surprised not one person has asked: “so what are the prescriptive models in the literature?” I won’t say that using a cognitive bias is itself a bias. Understanding the descriptive models and the normative models are necessary for using the prescriptive ones.

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What are the most common prescriptive models? I'm imagining Confirmation Bias as descriptive and Thinking From First Principles as normative (situationally at least), but what gets you from A to B? (feel free to choose different A and B)

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It'll probably take a blog post to do justice, but here's a collection from Baron's Thinking and Deciding. (I'm probably breaking copyright law for uploading an entire chapter, so I'll take this down as some point) dropbox.com/s/32n320o6k0qg

6:30 AM · Jul 27, 2019Twitter Web App

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Note: requires understanding of the search inference framework, which I've summarised here: commoncog.com/blog/putting-m IMO, Baron's approach of arresting the 3 errors of search-inference is more useful than the goal of 'achieving perfect instrumental rationality'.

commoncog.com

Putting Mental Models to Practice Part 3: Better Trial and Error

Instrumental rationality is the sort of thinking that allows you to achieve your goals. We take a closer look at what decision science says is the 'best' way to pursue this purpose.

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Oh, the decision making/search inference process is the preceptive "model"? I was thinking of something more red-pillish, but I think I'm grasping it now. Would the Scientific Method fit that mold too?

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