New Delhi, April 29 -- We often think of bias as a flaw that needs to be purged. It's not. It's a cognitive shortcut that we need to fine-tune. We are constantly bombarded by shapes, colours, sounds and smells. Even though the human sensory system can collect this information at a rate of approximately 10 million bits per second, our conscious mind can only process 50 bits of information per second. That we are such a successful species, even though we can only process 0.0005% of all the data we collect, is a testament to our brain's ability to quickly sort the important from the trivial.

We do this using heuristics, simple rules of thumb that help us decide which information to prioritize based on context, experience and human evolution...