Oo, new issue of the ACM magazine. I usually laugh at the cover and toss it because their front-and-center stories are frequently about troonery or boohooing that women still feeeeeeeeel unheard or whining that any given industry isn't 80% black people or whatever. This time nothing jumped out, so I flipped through to a research article. Ah! Here we go. "Cognitive biases in software development" by a team of seven people, led by a Pajeet. This oughta be good. I'll just read the intro, I'm sure there's something deranged that shows some deeply ironic cognitive bias in this paper about cognitive biases.
Look at that. "For example, confirmation bias (tendency to pay more attention to information that agrees with our preconceptions) is demonstrated in some individuals' characterization of the COVID-19 virus as "just another flu", prompting them to engage in social behavior contrary to experts' and health organizations' advice. As with this example, the occurrence of cognitive biases can cause significant impacts on society."
I eagerly await the forthcoming Covid Derangement Syndrome diagnosis. What the fuck is this Branch Covidian detour in the first paragraph of a paper about writing code? Don't believe your lying eyes that show Covid is barely different from the flu, NO! It's a mental pathology that causes you to draw logical conclusions from data. The experts agree!