The Most Common Cognitive Bias

Why HN readers recommended it

Recommended as a clear demonstration of confirmation bias and the value of trying to break your own hypothesis.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Veritasium

Topic

confirmation bias

Format

explainer

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

8

Recommendation years in dataset

2015–2023

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Veritasium, a pretty interesting youtube channel, posted a video on this experiment a while back. I found the discussion afterwards to be more thought-provoking than this article. [VIDEO]

• Experimental science is all based around ruling out the null hypothesis. For that it needs to be falsifiable . The hypothesis 'the dog can differentiate between A and B' is very hard to falsify. Because the dog could differentiate, but choose to not act. You …

• Veritasium has a great video[1] about people’s cognitive bias towards using examples that prove their mental model, rather than using examples that disprove their mental model. But if you want to actually confirm you have accurate understanding of something, testing examples that don't fit your …