Monday 9 February 2015

Sins of the Mind

Check out the Confessional For Modern Sins at sinsofthemind.org.

Bob Prophette is offering absolution from modern sins in the form of cognitive bias.

The work is based on the iconography developed for the The Royal Society of Account Planning's Visual Study Guide Of Cognitive Biases - PSFK.

 The website will be followed by a physical installation.

 Both the website and the installation play with the idea of cognitive bias, to get people to admit to these biases and "absolve" them of their "sins".

 The idea is to poke fun at this over hyped area of discussion which reached an apex with the success of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

 Putting this in a sin + confession = absloution context emphasises that these so called biases should not be taken out of context. In the right context, the biases are actually very valuable short cuts to good decisions. Its the context that matters, not the bias.

 This idea is associated with the work of Gigerzener.