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Your Brain Is Lying To You Right Now And You Can't Stop It
Your brain is lying to you right now.
Everything you remember… is being rewritten.
Your reality isn’t real.
👉 Read the full breakdown:
Your Brain Is Lying To You Right Now And You Can't Stop It You don't remember what happened. You remember the last time you thought about
The Hindsight Bias Of The Healed: When Healing Turns Into Judgment
When did our scars become badges of superiority, rather than maps of empathy? ~ j.lx._The Memory We Refuse to Keep: On Healing, Hindsight, and the Arrogance of the “After”We all want to grow, to overcome. We spend our lives trying to “level up.” We celebrate our victories, and rightly so. We fight our way out of toxic heartbreaks, wrestle addictions into submission, scrape through financial…
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Why the COVID-19 Inquiry May Be a Waste of Time.
Introduction:
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a global crisis of unprecedented proportions, impacting countless lives and economies worldwide. In the wake of such a catastrophe, it is only natural that people seek answers and accountability. This has led to the establishment of various inquiries and investigations aimed at understanding what went wrong and preventing similar crises in the future. While the desire for transparency and accountability is essential, it's worth considering whether the ongoing COVID-19 inquiry might be a potential waste of time.
Hindsight Bias:
Hindsight bias is a cognitive phenomenon where people believe, after the fact, that the outcomes of a particular event were entirely predictable. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to criticize the decisions and actions of individuals and governments during the pandemic. However, at the time, decision-makers faced unprecedented challenges, incomplete information, and rapidly evolving circumstances. The COVID-19 inquiry may unfairly judge these decisions with the advantage of hindsight.
Distracting from Current Issues:
The ongoing COVID-19 inquiry can divert valuable resources, time, and attention away from addressing the immediate challenges and needs of the pandemic. The world is still grappling with the virus, with new variants emerging, vaccination campaigns underway, and healthcare systems stretched. Focusing on past actions instead of the present could hinder ongoing efforts to mitigate the virus's impact.
The Blame Game:
Inquiries often become platforms for finger-pointing and blame-shifting. While accountability is essential, the COVID-19 inquiry runs the risk of turning into a political battleground where different parties or nations attempt to deflect blame onto one another. This can hinder international cooperation, which is vital for effectively combating a global health crisis.
Complex and Multifaceted Causes:
The COVID-19 pandemic is the result of a complex interplay of factors, including scientific, political, economic, and cultural elements. It is challenging to distill these complex causes into a single, linear narrative. An inquiry may oversimplify these factors or struggle to uncover the full truth, leading to incomplete or biased conclusions.
Resource Allocation:
Conducting an inquiry is a resource-intensive process, requiring significant time, manpower, and financial resources. These resources could be better used for immediate pandemic response efforts, healthcare infrastructure improvements, or further scientific research into the virus and its variants.
Potential for Political Manipulation:
Inquiries are not immune to political influence. They can be used as tools by governments and political parties to further their agendas, whether by targeting opposition figures or diverting public attention from other issues. This can undermine the integrity of the investigation and its outcomes.
Conclusion:
While accountability and transparency are crucial aspects of governance, it's important to consider whether the ongoing COVID-19 inquiry might be a potentially fruitless endeavor. Rather than dwelling on the past, efforts may be better directed towards addressing the current challenges, fortifying healthcare systems, and promoting international cooperation in the ongoing fight against COVID-19. Ultimately, whether the inquiry proves to be a valuable exercise or a waste of time will depend on its execution and the practical outcomes it generates.
Ve l’avevo detto!
Contenuto elaborato da: Martina Galimberti
“[…] noi esseri umani ci inganniamo costantemente elaborando fragili resoconti del passato e convincendoci che siano veri”
Daniel Kahneman in “Pensieri lenti e veloci”, p.265
Vi è mai capitato di pensare di aver previsto un evento? Di dire frasi come ”ve l’avevo detto io”? BENE! Come tutti gli esseri umani siete caduti nell’hindsight bias o bias “del senno del poi”. Consiste nel credere di aver saputo prevedere in anticipo un evento accaduto nel passato. In realtà ci stiamo ingannando! La nostra mente, quando raccontiamo una storia, evita di farci incappare nelle incoerenze per rendere il racconto e il pensiero più fluido. Il risultato? Ci convinciamo che la realtà sia sempre stata chiara e controllabile: il mondo ci sembra meno spaventoso.
Kahneman nel suo libro “Pensieri lenti e veloci”, sottolinea come sia per noi difficile elaborare possibili incoerenze perché potrebbero confondere le nostre idee e i nostri sentimenti. Siamo quindi naturalmente portati a costruire storie di comportamenti ed intenzioni delle persone in modo che siano coerenti con le conseguenze delle loro azioni. Per questo, quando capita un evento imprevisto, aggiustiamo la storia che ci siamo raccontati fino a quel momento in modo che sia coerente con le nostre aspettative. Ed ecco che esclamiamo “io lo sapevo, me lo sentivo”! Rivediamo velocemente la nostra prospettiva della realtà per adattarla ai nuovi dati e alle nuove conoscenze che abbiamo acquisito. Sembra un meccanismo perfetto.
Perché, allora, viene considerato un bias? Modificare completamente la nostra prospettiva rispetto ad un problema o ad un’idea, spesso, non ci permette di tenere a mente quale fosse il nostro stato mentale e il nostro pensiero nel passato.
Ri-narrare significa, in un certo senso, modificare ciò che è stato per adattarlo al presente.
Fonte: Kahneman, D. (2012). Pensieri lenti e veloci. Milano: Mondadori
"all that City’s victory tells us is that we under-rate the importance of randomness. City won the title despite having less possession and fewer shots on goal than their opponents. They also had fewer injuries than most teams, and a narrow average winning margin. In these senses, they might just have been lucky. [..] even in quite small groups such as football squads, emergence matters. Some complex systems can display properties which their component parts do not. [..] This tells us that what matters is not (just) individuals’ qualities, but interactions between them. City’s players might have been unheralded before this season, but they seem to bring out the best in each other by playing to each others’ strengths. [..] “building capability by hiring stars does not work well.” This can be because there’s a lack of fit between the star and his colleagues, or because what looked like star performance was in fact due more to organizational capital than individual brilliance. Herein, though, lies a problem: it might not always be possible to tell in advance whether you have the right match or not. The fact that there is usually a strong correlation between teams’ wage bills and performance suggests not*: it tells us that it is very rare for teams to succeed by hiring cheap players who are in fact good fits with each other. This warns us that City might have simply gotten lucky in finding players who are good matches for each other, and perhaps it is only the hindsight bias that gives us the impression that they knew what they were doing."
....But sometimes we are too hard on ourselves. We forget that what is obvious to us now was not nearly so obvious at the time...
Social Psychology, David G. Myers
Understanding Biases
Man HBO has been on an awesome roll. Like the entire planet I have been watching Game of Thrones. Seriously George R.R. Martin, screw you! True Detective was an epic journey and loved the shout out at the end to one of my favourite comic book authors, Alan Moore. Silicon Valley is laugh out loud funny and sadly I identify with boring business guy Jared.
This article about HBO passing up on Walking Dead caught my eye given how HBO has been producing great shows. I’m not blaming the author for writing a click bait article but there is a massive bias. This got me thinking about biases and how spotting biases are important and can prevent you from making mistakes.
Survivorship Bias
In WWII, an analysis was done on airplanes that returned back. Take a look at the picture below and look at the returned airplanes. If the bullets on the wings were shot up, where you would put more armour?
Source
Most people would exclaim more armour is needed on the wings as that has the most bullets. This is an example of survivorship bias! You looked at the surviving planes, assumed that bullet holes = bad, therefore you want to reduce bullet holes. Yet you need to look at the planes that didn’t survive, the ones that were shot down. When you do that, you noticed that the downed airplanes has bullet holes in the center of the plane. In fact, armour should be placed in the center, not in the wings as bullets in the center were the cause of planes being downed.
Survivorship Bias is extremely prevalent in many business articles and especially in that Walking Dead article. Walking Dead “survived” after being rejected by HBO. To understand why it was rejected, one needs to look at the entire sample of TV shows that were rejected by HBO along with Walking Dead. As such, to truly measure efficacy and reduce Survivorship Bias, one needs to look at the entire sample not just the survivors.
Sampling Bias
A friend of a friend of mine works as a lawyer in one of the seven sister law firms in Toronto in their Venture Capital arm. He remarked that “Man it’s so easy to be an entrepreneur, all my clients are making mad money.” Can anybody see the issue with this?
The lawyer works as one of the most prestigious and I’m guessing the most expensive firms in Canada. So obviously the ones that can afford their services are already successful. This is called sampling bias. When making conclusions based on a set of data, you need to ensure the set of data that you are collecting does not have any bias built in.
Hindsight Bias
Holy crap, did you see the Apple stock shoot up? See when I told you six months ago that the new iPhone would be sick and drive up prices you should’ve have listened to me. You hear this a lot, and a lot of it is hindsight bias, or knew it all along syndrome.
Poor StormTrooper
What hindsight bias does is that it creates a reality distortion field around you. It makes it hard for you to become objective in how you diagnose and solve a problem. With hindsight bias, you may overweight certain factors (your successes), and discount other factors (your failures).
To prevent this bias, when making decisions you should write down why you are making those decisions. Even make a bet (whether elections outcomes, stock pickings, sports) to get some “skin in the game” to make it real. After the outcome write an after action report. See if your initial thoughts match with what happened.
Survivorship, Hindsight and Sample Bias. All biases which somebody “logical” may succumb too. Hopefully with this post you can spot these a lot easier.
Alpha Selection Bias
Every weekday morning Seeking Alpha, the widely followed investing website, sends out an email, “Wall Street Breakfast: Must Know News.” It’s not news, but it is a good, if idiosyncratic, round up of market-related events, and I read it almost every day. (You can get this by creating a free account and selecting it from the "Alerts" tab.)
Wall Street Breakfast also contains a section called “Alpha-Rich Stock Movers and Great Calls” which is a first rate example of hindsight bias, data mining, sample selection bias, and perhaps herding as well.
Each day this section identifies 2 or 3 successful stock calls made by contributors some time in the recent past. Implicit (or maybe not so implicit) is the assertion that these successes are the result of alpha uncovered by the authors.
What Seeking Alpha is doing is cherry-picking the winners with hindsight and showing them off as prescient, alpha-rich analysis.
Seeking Alpha doesn’t report on the aggregate performance of all the stock calls that they had identified as ‘alpha-rich’ when they were made. There is no model portfolio containing all the stock calls.
No systematic consideration is given to the contemporaneous performance of peers and the broad market.
I think (I can’t tell for sure) no consideration is given for serendipitous events unrelated to the original stock call.
No account is taken of the possible impact of the initial call itself on investors’ short-term price assessments (e.g., some stock sites list as news the date on which a stock is highlighted by Seeking Alpha).
It is fun to read stories about great calls, and to give kudos to the people who made those calls. But it isn’t possible to infer anything about their alpha-richness based on the information Seeking Alpha shares with its readers in its daily email.
