Cognitive biases. But that’s not all. There is also an absolutely impressive series of biases—or effects—cognitive in nature, involving the brain’s processes of informa-tion processing61. These biases involve psychological or intellectual mechanisms, such as attention, memory, reasoning, and decision-making, which go beyond mere sensory perceptions. It is impossible—and, moreover, unnecessary—to list them all here. We will only mention those relevant to our discussion, which rein-force the idea of a subjective apprehension of the world, already highlighted by physiological and perception biases.

⋆ The halo effect — or contamination effect, or notoriety effect — refers to the phenomenon whereby the perception of a person’s characteristics is altered by one or more initial traits. For example, a very friendly person may be, without basis, attributed other qualities and will, without justification, evoke feelings such as trust or respect.

⋆ The Dunning-Kruger effect — or overconfidence bias — refers to the phe-nomenon in which less qualified people overestimate their skills, while the most qualified individuals tend to underestimate theirs.

⋆ Confirmation bias refers to the tendency to give more credibility to information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs or preconceived ideas.

⋆ The placebo effect — or its opposite, the nocebo effect — relies on the belief in the positive or negative effect of a substance, often medicinal, inducing a real physiological effect.

⋆ Magical thinking bias refers to the belief that our practices, beliefs, superstitions, or thoughts can have a concrete influence on the reality of the world62. This bias can be seen as a psychological response to the awareness of our own finitude and, more generally, to our metaphysical anxieties.

⋆ Memory bias refers to the influence of the environment, psychological, or emotional state of an individual on the way they store and retrieve their mem-ories. Due to this phenomenon, the precise reconstruction of a memory often occurs through several “experiences” made in different contexts or states, which, under the influence of external stimuli63, contribute to consolidating the content. However, it should not be believed that this reconstruction is faithful to reality, because the memory itself is a mental construction already biased by the indi-vidual’s psychological state. The identification of the memory is thus inevitably imperfect, influenced by the emotional or mental state at the time. Certain aspects are embellished or darkened, while others may be filled in with invented details. Thus, the reconstruction of memory is inherently contextual. It is also proven that certain altered states of consciousness, such as semi-consciousness, hypnosis, hypnagogia (the intermediate state between wakefulness and sleep), or trance, can help unearth buried memories64.

By pure analogy, this phenomenon can be compared to the reconstruction of a quantum state in a superposition of states (1), namely the determination of the coefficients cn(t), performed through a series of measurements. It is also inter-esting, but still by pure analogy, to note that the concept of contextuality is also present in quantum mechanics. Indeed, it can be shown65 that if a theory with hidden variables exists, then it must necessarily be contextual. This means that if the result of the measurement of an observable A were determined by determin-istic hidden variables, it would necessarily depend on the group of observables —{B, C, . . .}—compatible with each other and compatible with A with which we choose to measure this quantity66. This contextuality transforms into non-locality when considering a situation where the observables are spatially distant from each other.