Somebody should write an “encyclopedia of copes and rationalizations”
Copes and rationalizations are both much more interesting and I think more analytically sound mental models than “biases”
“Cognitive biases” is the most overrated idea I’ve ever encountered. Like everyone else I was impressed when I first encountered them in ~2005. Now I think they are ontologically ill-posed, not-even-wrong in terms of analytical “insights” and cancerous as normative scaffolding.
Things tagged as copes and rationalizations don’t pretend to be anything more than they are — little narrative patterns that form a folksonomy of revealing cognitive tendencies. No shady “experimental” evidence and claims of statistical significance. Just literary observations.
Around January 2008, I wrote what now seems like an embarrassingly gushy fanboi review of the cognitive-biases pop lit. But I think that’s also around the time I started turning sharply skeptical.
By the time I began writing Tempo in 2009-2011, I was already fully skeptical, but I didn’t want to pick fights I couldn’t win. So I kinda pulled my punches and wrote a tepid rejection in defending my own narrative rationality model, which is in direct contradiction to biasology
If I were writing tempo today, I wouldn’t pull my punches. I’m not a polemicist by nature so I wouldn’t attempt to tear it down, but I’d reject it firmly, no punches pulled, and openly declare my thing as a conflicting conceptualization of the same phenomenology
I recommended picking beefs as a way to bootstrap a an indie consulting career, but I don’t recommend it as a way to bootstrap a writing career. You want to build energy around exploring a generative vein you discover, not burn yourself up fighting an idea space you dislike.
I’m still ambivalent about this advice even for indie consulting. Beefs are just such a toxic thing to bring into your life. (Before anyone bugs me again… no this isn’t online anywhere, and yes the ebook is still in production)
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