[zemaj]

Cognitive biases don't mean that the brain as a whole is irrational. While we can't always stop the cognitive biases from occurring, we can avoid situations where they occur. For example when choosing a candidate for a job you want to make a decision before comparing with other people's opinions to avoid the bandwagon effect.

However some you can actually mitigate, just by knowing they happen. For example everyone has loss aversion - where we overvalue the loss of something in compared to how much we value gaining from it first place. By knowing that you have loss aversion you can focus on thinking about how much you actually gained when thinking about how much something will cost when you lose it to get a more "real" estimation. For example I'm giving up a business I've been running for years - it's painful to do and something I've been putting off, but I can mitigate the pain but genuinely examining what benefit I've gained, not just making the decision based on the vague "I don't want to give this up" feeling. It works for lots of things; relationships, jobs, etc...

Personally I do it mostly because I like control. I don't like not understanding my decisions. Understanding why I did something makes me "feel" better. That in itself is reason enough :)