Variety: James 1v5
“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him”. James 1:5
“Lead us not into temptation” (Matthew 6:13)
In the search of wisdom we pray that we would not be led into the following temptations:
Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.
Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.
Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.
Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I am more likely to respond in kind.
Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their own incompetence and consider themselves at least of average competence.
Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.
Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.
Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.
Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.
Catastrophe Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).
Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.
Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.
Constancy/Baseline Bias: Early in life, our brains set a baseline of normalcy based on what we constantly experience day to day. What our brains determine as normal or constant becomes acceptable to us. Later in our life, our baselines may be reset when a new normal becomes our constant experience. [This is the flipside of Catastrophe Bias.]
Certainty/Closure Bias: Our brains find it difficult to rest when we feel uncertainty, so we would often rather reach for premature closure on an unwarranted certainty than live with appropriate uncertainty. We may even prefer a pessimistic certainty to a potentially optimistic uncertainty.
Cleverness Bias: Our brains are vigilant to protect us against deceptions, and this vigilance against deception can make us so habitually skeptical that we become cynical, rejecting all good or encouraging information as naïve. In protecting ourselves from danger, we can unintentionally insulate ourselves from positive possibilities.
Brian McLaren