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Debias Spot your own cognitive biases · Android · Free

Masked-Man Fallacy

Assuming that if you don't know someone's identity, you can't know facts about them, even if you already do.

Not enough meaning Finding patterns in sparse data

This fallacy confuses knowledge of a person's identity with knowledge of facts about them. It happens because we conflate knowing 'who' someone is with knowing 'what' is true of them. For example, you might know a man in a mask is your brother, but mistakenly think you can't know he's in the room because you don't know it's him under the mask.

Would you catch it?

Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.

Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.

Scenario 1Which bias?

A news article quotes an 'anonymous insider.' You dismiss the entire story, stating, 'If they won't say who they are, the information can't be reliable.'

Scenario 2Which bias?

After a blind date, Mia tells her friend, 'I had a wonderful time, but I can't say he's funny because I don't know his last name.'

100+ more scenarios for this bias alone. 18,869 across all 188 — plus a log of which biases are yours.
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Biases rarely arrive alone.

Understand more. Assume less.

188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.

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