Being smart makes our bias worse: Life is Poker not Chess - 3

 

Abridged and adapted from Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

We bet based on what we believe about the world.This is very good news: part of the skill in life comes from learning to be a better belief calibrator, using experience and information to more objectively update our beliefs to more accurately represent the world. The more accurate our beliefs, the better the foundation of the bets we make. However there is also some bad news: our beliefs can be way, way off.

Hearing is believing

We form beliefs in a haphazard way, believing all sorts of things based just on what we hear out in the world but haven’t researched for ourselves.

This is how we think we form abstract beliefs:

1. We hear something

2. We think about it and vet it, determining whether it is true or false; only after that

3. We form our belief

It turns out though, that we actually form abstract beliefs this way:

1. We hear something

2. We believe it to be true

3. Only sometimes, later, if we have the time or the inclination, we think about it and vet it, determining whether it is, in fact, true or false.

These belief formation methods had evolved due to a need for efficiency not accuracy. In fact, questioning what you see or hear could get you eaten in the jungle. However, assuming that you are no longer living in a jungle, we have failed to develop a high degree of scepticism to deal with materials available in the modern social media age. This general belief-formation process may affect our decision making in areas that can have significant consequences.

If we were good at updating our beliefs based on new information, our haphazard belief formation process might cause relatively few problems. Sadly, we form beliefs without vetting most of them, and maintain them even after receiving clear, corrective information.

Truthseeking, the desire to know the truth regardless of whether the truth aligns with the beliefs we currently hold, is not naturally supported by the way we process information. Instead of altering our beliefs to fit new information, we do the opposite, altering our interpretation of that information to fit our beliefs.

The stubbornness of beliefs

Once a belief is lodged, it becomes difficult to dislodge. It takes on a life of its own, leading us to notice and seek out evidence confirming our belief, rarely challenge the validity of confirming evidence, and ignore or work hard to actively discredit information contradicting the belief. This irrational, circular information processing pattern is called motivated reasoning.

Fake news works because people who already hold beliefs consistent with the story generally won’t question the evidence. Disinformation is even more powerful because the confirmable facts in the story make it feel like the information has been vetted, adding to the power of the narrative being pushed.

Fake news isn’t meant to change minds. The potency of fake news is that it entrenches beliefs its intended audience already has, and then amplifies them. The Internet is a playground for motivated reasoning. It provides the promise of access to a greater diversity of information sources and opinions than we’ve ever had available. Yet, we gravitate towards sources that confirm our beliefs. Every flavour is out there, but we tend to stick with our favourite. 

Even when directly confronted with facts that disconfirm our beliefs, we don’t let facts get in the way.

Being smart makes it worse

Surprisingly, being smart can actually make bias worse. The smarter you are, the better you are at constructing a narrative that supports your beliefs, rationalising and framing the data to fit your argument or point of view.

Blind spot bias - is an irrationality where people are better at recognising biased reasoning in others but are blind to bias in themselves. It was found that blind spot bias is greater the smarter you are.  Furthermore, people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them. 

Dan Kahan discovered that the more numerate people made more mistakes interpreting data on emotionally charged topics than the less numerate subjects sharing the same beliefs. It turns out the better you are with numbers, the better you are at spinning those numbers to conform to and support your beliefs.

Wanna bet

Imagine taking part in a conversation with a friend about the movie Chintavishtayaya Shyamala. Best film of all time, introduces a bunch of new techniques by which directors could contribute to story-telling. ‘Obviously, it won the national award’ you gush, as part of a list of superlatives the film unquestionably deserves.

Then your friend says, ‘Wanna bet?’

Suddenly, you are not so sure. That challenge puts you on your heels, causing you to back off your declaration and question the belief that you just declared with such assurance.

Remember the order in which we form abstract beliefs:

1. We hear something

2. We believe it to be true

3. Only sometimes, later, if we have the time or the inclination, we think about it and vet it, determining whether it is, in fact, true or false.

‘Wanna bet?’ triggers us to engage in that third step that we only sometimes get to. Being asked if we're willing to bet money on it makes it much more likely that we will examine our information in a less biased way, be more honest with ourselves about how sure we are of our beliefs, and be more open to updating and calibrating our beliefs. The more objective we are, the more accurate our beliefs become. And the person who wins bets over the long run is the one with the more accurate beliefs.

Of course, in most instances, the person offering to bet isn’t actually looking to put any money on it. They are just making a point - a valid point that perhaps we overstated our conclusion or made our statement without including relevant caveats.

I’d imagine that if you went around challenging everyone with ‘Wanna bet?’ it would be difficult to make friends and you’d lose the ones you have. But that doesn’t mean we can’t change the framework for ourselves in the way we think about our biases. decisions and opinions.

Justice and security bill is designed to stop disclosure of intelligence secrets

After recent embarrassments, the government wants to ensure no intelligence information emerges in civil court hearings again

• Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Cobain
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 September 2012 14.38 BST

The government has tried to assuage opponents by keeping the relatively liberal Ken Clarke in charge of the bill. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

The justice and security bill is the direct result of evidence that emerged in court supporting allegations that MI5 and MI6 knew about the torture or inhuman and degrading treatment meted out by the CIA to terror suspects, including British citizens and residents, notably Binyam Mohamed.

The high court, later backed by senior judges in the court of appeal, ruled that information the CIA had passed to MI5 and MI6 should be disclosed. Washington was furious. The British government, and in particular David Miliband, the foreign secretary at the time, was deeply embarrassed.

There was a danger of further incriminating evidence emerging in court as UK citizens and residents who were held at Guantánamo Bay demanded compensation. To avoid disclosing what MI5 and MI6 may have known about the secret transfer of the detainees to the US military prison on Cuba and about their treatment, the government offered them expensive out-of-court settlements.

Under pressure from the security and intelligence agencies – and the US – the coalition government decided to introduce a statute designed to prevent any intelligence information from being disclosed in civil court hearings ever again.

The government argues that the bill would allow more intelligence information to be heard in court than hitherto, even though it would be heard in secret. A judge would decide whether the information should be kept secret. The bill's critics say that the way it is drafted means it would be extremely difficult for a judge to challenge any minister's claim that information should be kept secret on grounds of national security. The fact that a hearing would be held in secret could itself be kept secret.

Critics say the bill represents a creeping move towards more and more secret courts, based on the model of the special immigration appeals commission, where any evidence can be withheld from a defendant and his or her lawyers. Evidence of British collusion in the abuse and rendition of terror suspects to places where they risked being tortured – including evidence of MI6's role in the rendition in 2004 of two Libyan dissidents into the hands of Muammar Gaddafi's secret police in Tripoli – might never have seen the light of day had the bill been in place.

The government has tried to assuage opponents by keeping the role of steering the bill through parliament in the hands of the relatively liberal former justice secretary Ken Clarke, rather than his successor, Chris Grayling. Liberal Democrat ministers have sought credit for excluding inquests from the bill, an element of the original draft that had provoked strong opposition from armed forces families and the British Legion.

But senior Liberal Democrats have not all been persuaded and will express their concern about the bill at their conference in Brighton this month. A motion says the bill's proposals for "closed material procedures", as they are called, form no part either of the Liberal Democrat or Conservative manifestos in 2010, or the coalition agreement.