Is your mind playing tricks on you?
#71 - big decisions twisted up by betraying biases
Hi there,
When I sit down to write1, the garden behind me is dark as the customary Sunday evening lull sets in and I sit down to be self-indulgent for a bit, writing about the boons and banes in my life. But this evening, it's well lit outside, a sign better climes are coming.
This week was a very productive one with catchup all-over from the 2 snow days along with my return to cricket, plenty of music and watching 2 films.
Highlight of the week ⭐: since the blog has been a form of dental diary, it would be remiss to not mention - my braces are off! I was separated from my 18-month frenemies on Friday, leaving me with straight, not yet shiny, teeth that I can be happy about. Task now: keeping them this way.
I. For my A-Levels, I am studying a wonderful combination (I’m biased of course2) Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Economics. However throughout Year 10, Phy, Computer Science and Econ were in a metaphorical stirring pot. I eventually fixed on Econ in Year 11, leaving me stuck between the other two.
Once my exams were done, I sat down by my computer when I was isolated with COVID and decided to brain dump every pro and con of picking either subject; a good SWOT analysis should help me make a clear rational decision. It was only then that it became apparent that Physics was a no-brainer for my situation. In hindsight, I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed Computer Science.
But until then, I had been telling myself “There have been a few Phy lessons this year that I haven’t enjoyed. Will I really enjoy Physics? Probably not.” When it came to answering that question of ‘Why?’ though, my mind stumbled, my fingers slowed - I wasn’t able to come up with an answer.
II. Two weeks ago, we went on a school trip to Oxford. The city was beautiful, the college we went to was pristine and it seemed like a great place to live and study. On a walking tour of the centre, a friend asked me “Why Cambridge over Oxford?” Given I’ve been saying Cambridge for over 3 years at this point, I found myself blathering a response. It wasn’t coherent and certainly wasn’t one that would convince me.
I did a bit of truth-seeking over the summer in trying to choose between the two. This question has been reignited, prompting to me find an answer that makes logical sense to my maths mind in the next few weeks.
Both these examples of an absence of “chains of reasoning” in my thought process highlighted the irrational truths we tell ourselves. “I really do need those new trainers” or “If I don’t go to this party tonight, I’ll feel so lonely” are examples of emotions and biases taking over3 the workings of our mind.
Emotions drive most of our behaviour. As Khe Hy says in this wonderful article (linked at the bottom as well), after all, we are human beings. When our rational human tries to steer ship, it sometimes unknowingly wears glasses called biases. Here are some of the more common ones:
Confirmation bias - we favour information that matches and strengthens our existing beliefs. We like to think we are right and so if we are shown to be right, we feel good. So we go out seeking people, facts and opinions that prove us true (this is what makes Twitter so toxic and tribal for example). For me, this came in the form of scouring for reasons as to why Cambridge was better, in my research in the summer.
Negativity bias - I’ve got a whole post about this but as it says in the name, it’s our mind's tendency to obsess over what goes wrong. A recent example would be getting a question wrong on my Maths test. It was just one, but I felt rotten for the whole of lunch time.
Projection bias - this is an interesting one. “A self-forecasting error, overestimating our future selves” and how much they can do or what they would believe. This is why when we procrastinate, we say “I’ll have the willpower to do it tomorrow, it’s fine if I don’t do it today”. An interesting by-product of this is making decisions that end up not suiting our future selves. This is also known as ‘The End of History Illusion’.
“At every stage of our lives we make decisions that will profoundly influence the lives of the people we’re going to become, and then when we become those people, we’re not always thrilled with the decisions we made.” - Daniel Gilbert, Harvard psychologist
Knowing about these biases doesn’t mean we’ll immediately avoid them and make choices that are perfectly sensible: I’m a living example of that not being true! What we should do, armed with this information, is question our assumptions and explain our decisions to an external, whether it’s your journal or another person.
Warren Buffett offered this advice to university students a few years ago, a practical example of this.
Any time you buy a stock, you should be able to take out a sheet of paper and say “I’m buying [company] stock at [price] because…” and you should write down the reasons. You have to have a reason for thinking it is an intelligent investment. You can go back a year later and see whether what you thought would be true turned out to be true.
Sadly our actions are affected by more than pure factual knowledge more than we think. To face this, we must be aware of our tendencies to (re)act in certain ways, mitigate against these and train our rational mind to notice these.
P.S. seems like psychology has gripped The Sun’s Out - 2 posts in 2 weeks!
Book of the week 📖
I’ve borrowed the first of the 3-part series, The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, to enjoy on the coach down to London on a trip to kick off the week.
Podcast of the week🎙️
WIRED Gadget Lab: I Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me
Favourite quote - “For a lot of people, their closest relationship is with their phone” 🤯
Article of the week 📰
Why your goals are missing the mark
An article on RadReads about the 2 kinds of goals we need in life
Quote of the week 💬
Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength. - Arnold Schwarzenegger
Hope you have a wonderful week, or at least one that your biases make it seem good 😉
Adi
I am happy to report that I am not a weirdo with standing desks
That ended up linking to the rest of the article about biases - not intended!
I don’t like the use of ‘hijacking’ - seems too extreme and destructive