Rene,

Thank you for the thoughtful reflection on my article and for connecting it to key concepts like willingness versus willpower. I appreciate you drawing these connections to mindfulness and self-acceptance as well. Developing self-awareness of our cognitive biases and mental patterns is so important, though certainly easier said than done!

I’m glad you found the list of biases useful as “short cuts for negotiating with others.” Engineers do tend to get stuck in our own perspectives, so understanding common traps like sunk cost fallacy, confirmation bias, and optimism bias can hopefully make us more open-minded. Critical reasoning skills are crucial, and so is humility about our reasoning blindspots.

Your point about the need for personal transformation in addition to intellectual understanding is well taken. Just being aware of biases doesn’t free us from them; it requires work to shift from reactive, fear-based patterns to flexibility and willingness. This journey you describe from will to willingness is elegantly framed.

Thank you again for furthering this meaningful dialogue. Please feel free to connect if you have any other thoughts to share.

Best regards,
Ian