7 ms·
This is a whole class of problem - I wonder if there's a name for it. More examples include: talking about welfare being unnecessary because no one is starving
by sbov 9y ago
This is a whole class of problem - I wonder if there's a name for it. More examples include: talking about welfare being unnecessary because no one is starving. Or people on medications stopping because they feel better (while still on them).
- nkrisc 9y agoThe "It's Working" problem.
- moufestaphio 9y agoLike when people say to IT: "Everything's working, what am I playing you for?!"
- mistersquid 9y agoI think this is actually a version of confirmation bias since > Confirmation bias, also known as Observational selection or The enumeration of > favorable circumstances is the tendency for people to (consciously or > unconsciously) seek out information that conforms to their pre-existing view > points, and subsequently ignore information that goes against them, both > positive and negative [0] [0] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
- taneq 9y agoYou'll find confirmation bias everywhere if you look hard enough for it.
- qubex 9y agoI'm looking hard enough to see what you did there.
- dmichulke 9y agoI think it's selection bias because you sample from the set of perceived problems which are the ones that actually occurred relative to the ones that could have happened.
- nashashmi 9y agoA more relevant way of putting it for me: Why do we have to have so many different corporate rules and processes when everything is working anyways?
- LanceH 9y agoThe flip side is the confirmation bias of "it's working because of our rules."
- Karunamon 9y agoI think the "availability heuristic" is what you're looking for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.
- Sonorous 9y agoFor a pop-culture name, I'd call it the Head & Shoulders Problem, after those old shampoo commercials: "You use Head & Shoulders? But you don't have dandruff!" "Exactly!"
- thaumasiotes 9y agoI wish. I do have dandruff (depending on where in the world I happen to be). Head & Shoulders does absolutely nothing.
- Jedd 9y agoNot merely an insightful repository of analysis and explanations around the more profound aspects of our world, John Ralston Saul's exquisite Doubter's Companion includes some answers - acerbic accusations bundled free - to the more pedestrian issues: "DANDRUFF: The ANSWER is usually vinegar. To some problems there are solutions. "What we call dandruff is often the result of a PH imbalance on the skin, which shampoo exacerbates. Wash your hair with a simple non-detergent shampoo, soap, olive oil, beer, almost anything. Rinse. Then close your eyes and pour on some vinegar. The extremely cheap but natural sort—apple cider, for example—is probably best. The smell will stimulate interesting conversations in changing-room showers and your explanation will win you friends. Wait thirty to sixty seconds. Rinse it off. The smell will go away. So will your dandruff. "All dermatologists, pharmacists and pharmaceutical companies know this simple secret. They don’t tell you because they make money by converting dandruff into a complex medical and social problem. By most professional standards this would amount to legally defined incompetence or misrepresentation. "Dandruff shampoos that promise to keep your shoulders and even your head clean are harsh detergents and may promote baldness, which ought to constitute malpractice."
- yamaneko 9y agoI suffer from dandruff, tried a bunch of shampoos but they didn't work well. I saw this tip about vinegar, which I tried a single day then I gave up thinking this could be popular saying. I'll try again and report.
- gooseus 9y agoThis makes me think of a hypothetical scenario proposed in one of Nassim Nicolas Taleb's books where-in some senator gets a bill passed in the weeks before 9/11 requiring reinforced doors on all commercial airplane cockpits. No parade would be thrown for this senator for having prevented 9/11 and likely he'd be castigated for having given airlines an excuse to raise prices due to restrictive government regulations.
- sooheon 9y agoThe silent wheel gets rode?
- sslayer 9y agoGreased wheels don't squeak.
- chrisweekly 9y agoHow about: "prodigal brother syndrome"? I suspect the parable it alludes to passes the cultural literacy threshold for comprehension, at least in the US.
- dopkew 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son for those wondering.
- avh02 9y agothat example (while i was reading the book) kind of stuck out with me - I think of it almost as preventative maintenance or good software dev practices - you'll get crap from others for 'wasting' time on it, but they don't realise it might just save your ass when you need it most.
- amrrs 9y agoThat's a very definitive bias we always hold. Praising a player who falls behind and achieves something while not paying much attention to one who does something normally. Chaos gets attention!
- acheron 9y agoI mean, yes, but from the outside some examples can look an awful lot like "my tiger-repelling rock works because we haven't been attacked by tigers".
- InTempWeTrust 9y agoI find your lack of heuristics disturbing.
- dj-wonk 9y agoThis reminds me of an essential but overlooked truth examined in this paper: "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened". It builds a simple system dynamics model and shows the long-term effects of working smarter versus working harder: http://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning=Sterman_CMR_su01_.pdf http://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/Repenning=Sterman_CMR_su01_.p...
- vacri 9y agoIt's a form of (inverse) Survivorship Bias. "None survived, therefore none started out" is an (inverse) extension of "The ones that survived were the ones that started out".
- rusk 9y agoI was going to say ... it's a corollary of survivor bias ...
- sowbug 9y agoMaybe the expression "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," discussed in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoWith the important caveat (described on the Wiki page) that absence of evidence sometimes is (weak) evidence of absence.
- mikeyouse 9y agoThe opposite of that is frustrating too.. I see it a lot in SF. Something like "We spend $100M/year on homelessness and we have 3,500 homeless. Why don't we just give them the money and do away with the social services!" As if the $100M isn't keeping many thousands more from living on the streets..
- pelario 9y agoYes, Daniel Kahneman describes this kind of cognitive bias as "what you see is all there is". A simple example given in his book* is to ask the members of any couple (or roommates) which percentage of the home duties he/she performs. The sum is always above 100÷ *"Thinking fast and slow", best good recommendation I got from the HN crowd