This mental tendency echoes the words of the song: “When I’m not near the girl I

love, I love the girl I’m near.” Man’s imperfect, limited-capacity brain easily

drifts into working with what’s easily available to it. And the brain can’t use

what it can’t remember or what it is blocked from recognizing because it is

heavily influenced by one or more psychological tendencies bearing strongly on

it, as the fellow is influenced by the nearby girl in the song. And so the mind

overweighs what is easily available and thus displays Availability-Misweighing

Tendency.

 

The main antidote to miscues from Availability-Misweighing Tendency often

involve procedures, including use of checklists, which are almost always

helpful.

 

Another antidote is to behave somewhat like Darwin did when he emphasized

disconfirming evidence. What should be done is to especially emphasize factors

that don’t produce reams of easily available numbers, instead of drifting mostly

or entirely into considering factors that do produce such numbers. Still another

antidote is to find and hire some skeptical, articulate people with far-

reaching minds to act as advocates for notions that are opposite to the

incumbent notions.

 

One consequence of this tendency is that extra- vivid evidence, being so

memorable and thus more available in cognition, should often consciously be

underweighed while less vivid evidence should be overweighed.