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‘Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_b

‘Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias We saw this at the start of the pandemic too.

Spivakov 5y ago
There is also "Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias No I do not appreciate it that the comments under this thread all expecting civilians to be well prepared for escalation of war.
ajb 5y ago
It can be that but there is also denial, which is a slightly different mechanism. From Jared Diamond's "collapse": "For example, consider a narrow river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a con- siderable distance downstream. When attitude pollsters ask people down- stream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam's bursting, it's not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam. Surprisingly, though, after you get to just a few miles below the dam, where fear of the dam's breaking is found to be highest, the concern then falls off to zero as you approach closer to the dam! That is, the people living immediately under the dam, the ones most certain to be drowned in a dam burst, profess unconcern. That's because of psychological denial: the only way of preserving one's sanity while looking up every day at the dam is to deny the possibility that it could burst. Although psychological denial is a phenomenon well established in individual psychology, it seems likely to apply to group psychology as well."
- deleted 5y ago
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- asdf3243245q 5y ago
  In this specific example, it could be that people who chose to live under the dam were already unconcerned with the dam bursting. People who had concern have moved farther from the dam.
  - ajb 5y ago
    Yeah it could be. Diamond doesn't seem to have given a citation, and unfortunately I haven't found his source, so not sure if there is evidence about that.

Spivakov 5y ago

There is also "Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias No I do not appreciate it that the comments under this thread all expecting civilians to be well prepared for escalation of war.

ajb 5y ago

It can be that but there is also denial, which is a slightly different mechanism. From Jared Diamond's "collapse": "For example, consider a narrow river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a con- siderable distance downstream. When attitude pollsters ask people down- stream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam's bursting, it's not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam. Surprisingly, though, after you get to just a few miles below the dam, where fear of the dam's breaking is found to be highest, the concern then falls off to zero as you approach closer to the dam! That is, the people living immediately under the dam, the ones most certain to be drowned in a dam burst, profess unconcern. That's because of psychological denial: the only way of preserving one's sanity while looking up every day at the dam is to deny the possibility that it could burst. Although psychological denial is a phenomenon well established in individual psychology, it seems likely to apply to group psychology as well."

deleted 5y ago
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asdf3243245q 5y ago
In this specific example, it could be that people who chose to live under the dam were already unconcerned with the dam bursting. People who had concern have moved farther from the dam.
- ajb 5y ago
  Yeah it could be. Diamond doesn't seem to have given a citation, and unfortunately I haven't found his source, so not sure if there is evidence about that.