@stephenpetro411: Every physician in the US had the same data on smoking and lung cancer. Same studies. Same numbers. Same conclusions. Twenty years after the Surgeon General's report, smoking rates still varied wildly by specialty. Lowest? Radiologists, who examined diseased lungs daily, and oncologists, who treated dying patients. Highest? Psychiatrists and dermatologists — the doctors furthest from the consequence. Same data. Completely different behavior. CIA analyst Richards Heuer calls this the vividness criterion: concrete, dramatic information overrides abstract statistics, even when the statistics are far more reliable. In 1967, General Westmoreland told President Johnson the enemy in Vietnam was on its last legs. That vivid story became the frame. So when traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail jumped 200%, analysts explained it away. When captured documents outlined a nationwide offensive, they explained it away too. Then came the Tet Offensive — over a hundred cities at once. Next time a single story is moving you toward a decision, ask: what do the actual data say — and am I trusting this example just because it's vivid? #CognitiveBias #DecisionMaking #Heuristics #BookTok #CriticalThinking

Stephen Petro

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Wednesday 17 June 2026 12:57:57 GMT