Case file
A team has spent nine months building an internal tool. A supported product now meets every requirement for less than the remaining development cost. The team argues that stopping would waste the nine months already invested.
Bias Detective: Investigate the Reasoning Trap
Bias Detective teaches you to recognize when sunk cost, framing, familiarity, selective evidence, or a vivid story is distorting a two-option decision.
Case 1 of 80 solved
A detective looks for an unfair advantage
A bias is not proof that a choice is wrong. It is a reason to inspect whether one option, claim, or speaker received an advantage that the evidence did not earn.
Evidence advantage
One option is supported by verified facts while the other is judged from assumptions, selective complaints, or a thinner search.
Language advantage
Keeping, protecting, premium, freedom, loss, or waste changes the emotional frame before consequences are compared.
Process advantage
The default, first number, senior speaker, or early favorite controls what receives attention and what remains untested.
How to use each case
Read the scene once and choose the strongest explanation without searching for every possible bias. Real decisions can contain several distortions, but the game asks which pattern most directly explains the evidence or process failure described.
After answering, read the corrective question aloud. The label helps you recognize the pattern, while the question helps you change it. For example, naming sunk cost is less useful than rebuilding the comparison from today forward.
Why a correct label is not the final answer
People sometimes use bias terms to dismiss another person's preference. That creates a new shortcut. A preference for the current option may reflect status quo bias, but it may also reflect real switching cost, accumulated knowledge, trust, or continuity.
The stronger practice is to test the suspected advantage. Give the current and proposed option the same benchmark. Search for evidence that could disconfirm the favorite. Collect private group views before the senior speaker talks. If the choice remains the same after the correction, the original preference may be justified.
Take the skill into a live comparison
- Before research: write what evidence could make either option lose.
- Before scoring: describe both options with neutral, parallel language.
- Before a group discussion: collect independent constraints and concerns.
- Before continuing a project: compare only future cost and future value.
Continue with the guide to testing the current option fairly, the forward-looking sunk-cost method, or the decision evidence quality checklist.