To be clear, sometimes authority bias is good and proper. For instance, valuing the opinion of a climate scientist who has been studying climate chaos for thirty years more than your Aunt who saw Rush Limbaugh say climate change is a hoax in the 1990s is normal and rational.
Basically, authority bias as a reasoning flaw stems from misidentifying who is authoritative on a subject.
I guess authority bias is most absurd when one tries to use it as a crutch to validate an argument.
You should believe me simply because ‘x’ researcher said this about the topic
In a vacuum, appealing to authority is fallacious. An idea must stand up on its own merits.
IRL, things get fuzzy. No one has the expertise and time to derive everything from first principles and redo every experiment ever performed. Thus we sadly have to have some level of trust in people.
For negativity bias my wife just told me a great technique that she uses for that. Come up with a list of people whose opinions matter to you. Any time you question yourself, imagine how each person on that list would react to what you did. Since those are the only people whose opinions matter to you, if it’s mostly positive, then you should feel proud of your choice.
What’s interesting is how, even when knowing these biases, one has a tendency to often have and display at least some of them.
(At least, that’s the case for me)
