Four problems that biases help us address:

Information overload, lack of meaning, the need to act fast, and figuring out what needs to
be remembered for later.

Problem 1: Too much information.

There is just too much information in the world, we have no choice but to filter almost all of
it out. Our brain uses a few simple tricks to pick out the bits of information that are most
likely going to be useful in some way.

 We notice things that are already primed in memory or repeated often. This is the
simple rule that our brains are more likely to notice things that are related to stuff
that’s recently been loaded in memory.
See: Availability heuristic, Attentional bias, Illusory truth effect, Mere exposure
effect, Context effect, Cue-dependent forgetting, Mood-congruent memory
bias, Frequency illusion, Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, Empathy gap

 Bizarre/funny/visually-striking/anthropomorphic things stick out more than non-

bizarre/unfunny things. Our brains tend to boost the importance of things that are
unusual or surprising. Alternatively, we tend to skip over information that we think is
ordinary or expected.
See: Bizarreness effect, Humor effect, Von Restorff effect, Negativity bias, Publication
bias, Omission bias

 We notice when something has changed. And we’ll generally tend to weigh the
significance of the new value by the direction the change happened (positive or
negative) more than re-evaluating the new value as if it had been presented alone.
Also applies to when we compare two similar things.
See: Anchoring, Contrast effect, Focusing effect, Framing effect, Weber–Fechner
law, Distinction bias

 We are drawn to details that confirm our own existing beliefs. This is a big one. As is
the corollary: we tend to ignore details that contradicts our own beliefs.
See: Confirmation bias, Congruence bias, Post-purchase rationalization, Choice-
supportive bias, Selective perception, Observer-expectancy effect, Experimenter’s
bias, Observer effect, Expectation bias, Ostrich effect, Subjective
validation, Continued influence effect, Semmelweis reflex, Bucket error, Law of
narrative gravity

 We notice flaws in others more easily than flaws in ourselves. Yes, before you see
this entire article as a list of quirks that compromise how other people think, realize
that you are also subject to these biases.
See: Bias blind spot, Naïve cynicism, Naïve realism

Problem 2: Not enough meaning.

The world is very confusing, and we end up only seeing a tiny sliver of it, but we need to
make some sense of it in order to survive. Once the reduced stream of information comes in,
we connect the dots, fill in the gaps with stuff we already think we know, and update our
mental models of the world.

 We find stories and patterns even in sparse data. Since we only get a tiny sliver of
the world’s information, and also filter out almost everything else, we never have the
luxury of having the full story. This is how our brain reconstructs the world to feel
complete inside our heads.
See: Confabulation, Clustering illusion, Insensitivity to sample size, Neglect of
probability, Anecdotal fallacy, Illusion of validity, Masked man fallacy, Recency
illusion, Gambler’s fallacy, Hot-hand fallacy, Illusory
correlation, Pareidolia, Anthropomorphism

 We fill in characteristics from stereotypes, generalities, and prior histories

whenever there are new specific instances or gaps in information. When we have
partial information about a specific thing that belongs to a group of things we are
pretty familiar with, our brain has no problem filling in the gaps with best guesses or
what other trusted sources provide. Conveniently, we then forget which parts were
real and which were filled in.
See: Group attribution error, Ultimate attribution
error, Stereotyping, Essentialism, Functional fixedness, Moral credential effect, Just-
world hypothesis, Argument from fallacy, Authority bias, Automation
bias, Bandwagon effect, Placebo effect

 We imagine things and people we’re familiar with or fond of as better than things
and people we aren’t familiar with or fond of. Similar to the above but the filled-in
bits generally also include built in assumptions about the quality and value of the
thing we’re looking at.
See: Halo effect, In-group bias, Out-group homogeneity bias, Cross-race
effect, Cheerleader effect, Well-traveled road effect, Not invented here, Reactive
devaluation, Positivity effect

 We simplify probabilities and numbers to make them easier to think about. Our
subconscious mind is terrible at math and generally gets all kinds of things wrong
about the likelihood of something happening if any data is missing.
See: Mental accounting, Normalcy bias, Appeal to probability fallacy, , Base rate
fallacy, Murphy’s law, Hofstadter’s law, Subadditivity effect, Survivorship bias, Zero
sum bias, Denomination effect, Magic number 7+-2, Swimmer’s body
illusion, Money illusion, Conservatism

 We think we know what others are thinking. In some cases this means that we
assume that they know what we know, in other cases we assume they’re thinking
about us as much as we are thinking about ourselves. It’s basically just a case of us
 modeling their own mind after our own (or in some cases after a much less
complicated mind than our own).
See: Curse of knowledge, Illusion of transparency, Spotlight effect, Streetlight
effect, Illusion of external agency, Illusion of asymmetric insight, Extrinsic incentive
error

 We project our current mindset and assumptions onto the past and
future. Magnified also by the fact that we’re not very good at imagining how quickly
or slowly things will happen or change over time.
See: Hindsight bias, Outcome bias, Moral luck, Declinism, Telescoping effect, Rosy
retrospection, Impact bias, Pessimism bias, Planning fallacy, Time-saving bias, Pro-
innovation bias, Projection bias, Restraint bias, Self-consistency bias

Problem 3: Need to act fast.

We’re constrained by time and information, and yet we can’t let that paralyze us. Without
the ability to act fast in the face of uncertainty, we surely would have perished as a species
long ago. With every piece of new information, we need to do our best to assess our ability
to affect the situation, apply it to decisions, simulate the future to predict what might
happen next, and otherwise act on our new insight.

 In order to act, we need to be confident in our ability to make an impact and to feel
like what we do is important. In reality, most of this confidence can be classified as
overconfidence, but without it we might not act at all.
See: Overconfidence effect, Egocentric bias, Optimism bias, Social desirability
bias, Third-person effect, Forer effect, Barnum effect, Illusion of control, False
consensus effect, Dunning-Kruger effect, Hard-easy effect, Illusory superiority, Lake
Wobegone effect, Self-serving bias, Actor-observer bias, Fundamental attribution
error, Defensive attribution hypothesis, Trait ascription bias, Effort justification, Risk
compensation, Peltzman effect, Armchair fallacy

 In order to stay focused, we favor the immediate, relatable thing in front of us over
the delayed and distant. We value stuff more in the present than in the future,
and relate more to stories of specific individuals than anonymous individuals or
groups. I’m surprised there aren’t more biases found under this one, considering
how much it impacts how we think about the world.
See: Hyperbolic discounting, Appeal to novelty, Identifiable victim effect

 In order to get anything done, we’re motivated to complete things that we’ve
already invested time and energy in. The behavioral economist’s version of
Newton’s first law of motion: an object in motion stays in motion. This helps us finish
things, even if we come across more and more reasons to give up.
See: Sunk cost fallacy, Irrational escalation, Escalation of commitment, Loss
aversion, IKEA effect, Processing difficulty effect, Generation effect, Zero-risk
 bias, Disposition effect, Unit bias, Pseudocertainty effect, Endowment
effect, Backfire effect

 In order to avoid mistakes, we’re motivated to preserve our autonomy and status
in a group, and to avoid irreversible decisions. If we must choose, we tend to choose
the option that is perceived as the least risky or that preserves the status quo. Better
the devil you know than the devil you do not.
See: System justification, Reactance, Reverse psychology, Decoy effect, Social
comparison bias, Status quo bias, Abilene paradox, Law of the instrument, Law of
the hammer, Maslow’s hammer, Golden hammer, Chesterton’s fence, Hippo problem

 We favor options that appear simple or that have more complete information over
more complex, ambiguous options. We’d rather do the quick, simple thing than the
important complicated thing, even if the important complicated thing is ultimately a
better use of time and energy.
See: Ambiguity bias, Information bias, Belief bias, Rhyme as reason effect, Bike-
shedding effect, Law of Triviality, Delmore effect, Conjunction fallacy, Occam’s
razor, Less-is-better effect, Sapir-Whorf-Korzybski hypothesis

Problem 4: What should we remember?

There’s too much information in the universe. We can only afford to keep around the bits
that are most likely to prove useful in the future. We need to make constant bets and trade-
offs around what we try to remember and what we forget. For example, we prefer
generalizations over specifics because they take up less space. When there are lots of
irreducible details, we pick out a few standout items to save and discard the rest. What we
save here is what is most likely to inform our filters related to problem 1’s information
overload, as well as inform what comes to mind during the processes mentioned in problem
2 around filling in incomplete information. It’s all self-reinforcing.

 We edit and reinforce some memories after the fact. During that process, memories
can become stronger, however various details can also get accidentally swapped. We
sometimes accidentally inject a detail into the memory that wasn’t there before.
See: Misattribution of memory, Source confusion, Cryptomnesia, False
memory, Suggestibility, Spacing effect

 We discard specifics to form generalities. We do this out of necessity, but the impact
of implicit associations, stereotypes, and prejudice results in some of the most
glaringly bad consequences from our full set of cognitive biases.
See: Implicit associations, Implicit stereotypes, Stereotypical bias, Prejudice, Fading
affect bias

 We reduce events and lists to their key elements. It’s difficult to reduce events and
lists to generalities, so instead we pick out a few items to represent the whole.
See: Peak–end rule, Leveling and sharpening, Misinformation effect, Duration
 neglect, Serial recall effect, List-length effect, Modality effect, Memory inhibition,
Part-list cueing effect, Primacy effect, Recency effect, Serial position effect, Suffix
effect

 We store memories differently based on how they were experienced. Our brains
will only encode information that it deems important at the time, but this decision
can be affected by other circumstances (what else is happening, how is the
information presenting itself, can we easily find the information again if we need to,
etc) that have little to do with the information’s value.
See: Picture superiority effect, Levels of processing effect, Testing effect, Absent-
mindedness, Next-in-line effect, Tip of the tongue phenomenon, Google effect, Self-
relevance effect

Great, how am I supposed to remember all of this?

You don’t have to. But you can start by remembering these four giant problems our brains
have evolved to deal with over the last few million years (and maybe bookmark this page if
you want to occasionally reference it for the exact bias you’re looking for):

1. Information overload sucks, so we aggressively filter. Noise becomes signal.

2. Lack of meaning is confusing, so we fill in the gaps. Signal becomes a story.

3. Need to act fast lest we lose our chance, so we jump to conclusions. Stories become
decisions.

4. This isn’t getting easier, so we try to remember the important bits. Decisions inform
our mental models of the world.

In order to avoid drowning in information overload, our brains need to skim and filter
insane amounts of information and quickly, almost effortlessly, decide which few things in
that firehose are actually important and call those out.