What exactly is cognitive biases in a simple term?
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They’re basically traps for your thoughts. There are [a lot of very common ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) that people have been noticing for a long, long time. They are very easy ways to mislead yourself when thinking about things without a bit of care and knowledge.
One very common example is confirmation bias: this is the tendency to give more credibility to things that reinforce ideas you already have and less credibility to evidence that contradicts what you already think. In reality, you should attempt to weigh evidence on its merits without regard to your pre-existing ideas.
Another is the Egoistic Fallacy: this is the tendency to assume that other people think and feel like you do, and assume they are motivated to take an observed action by the feelings or ideas that would motivate you to take that action. In reality, they may have very different foundational beliefs and could take that action for reasons very different to yours.
There are many of these common traps that we all fall into every day. You can’t really prevent ever falling victim to them, but when you’re doing something important it’s a good idea to watch out for ways you may be misleading yourself by habits of thought that obscure the reality of the situation.
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