Routine Focus Of Brain

. Routine focus of the brain runs ahead of the facts, constructing a rich image on the basis of scraps of evidence

. We are prone to exaggerate the consistency and coherence of what we see

. Halo effect can involve thinking we understand a person about whom we actually know very little.

. Causal thinking exposes us to mistakes in evaluating the randomness of truly random events.

. We are pattern seekers, ie we believe in a coherent world and order in which regularities appear not by accident but by mechanical causality and/or someone's intention.

. There is a tendency to see patterns in randomness. If you follow your routine focus of the brain, you will more likely err by mass classifying a random event as systematic, ie

"...we are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random..."

Daniel Kahneman 2012

For example, most people expect that small schools/classroom size perform better than large schools/classroom size. The truth is that small schools are not better on average; they are simply more variable.

. We pay more attention to the content of the message and information than about their reliability. As a result, we end up with a view of the world that is simpler and more coherent than the data justifies, ie

"...jumping to conclusions is a safer sport in the world of our imagination than it is in reality..."

Daniel Kahneman 2012

"...Statistics produced many observations that appear to beg for causal explanations but do not let themselves to such explanations. Many facts of the world are due to chance, including accidents of sampling. Causal explanations of chance events are inevitably wrong..."

Daniel Kahneman 2012