What You See Is All There Is

I continue reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. There's so much food for thought that my reading is slow. But I'm learning a lot more about how our minds work.

Our intuition about statistics is terrible. And we tend to jump into conclusions after very small hints. Things that we have clear memories or that have an emotional factor are easily exaggerated. And availability and easiness of retrieval from memory also play a significant role.

After each plane crash people begin the question the safety of flying. Images of burning planes and lives lost come to our minds. They get a lot of media attention. This forms a vicious circle. Newspapers write about things that the crowd is interested in. And the more we read about these things the more we will get. But it doesn't change the fact that the probability of a plane crash is really small.

Our minds want to see patterns and purpose in our environment. We are not that eager or willing to pick our brain for real data and facts if there's a coherent story available. Linda problem is a classical example:

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Which is more probable?

1. Linda is a bank teller.
2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

Majority of people select the second alternative. It fits to the mental image. But if you think about it, or create a Venn diagram, you will understand that the second alternative is a mere subset of the first alternative.

In many cases the form of the question and availability of examples you can (easily) think of also affect the result. Consider the following:

List three things that you'd like to change in your co-workers.

I was first going to ask about kids, but maybe this is easier. Well, it's not that hard to come up with three things. Boy, your colleagues must be really irritating. But let's try another one:

Give 15 examples of situations where your work environment didn't fill your needs.

Hopefully that wasn't as easy. First couple of things probably came easy but then you started to slow down (assuming you kept on after that). The outcome of this would be that things aren't really bad after all. The easier things come to our mind the more probable we think they are. And vice versa. This is in many cases rather confusing and even contradictory. People who are asked to find big list of positive things about some subject they like end up being less impressed about it. Even though they now actually know it has so many positive things!

Unfortunately I see the effects in software developers. (Same applies also to police.) When they are constantly dealing with only the negative sides (sw devs with bugs and police with crime), they get blind to the positive sides. What you see is all there is. Even if you have thousands of users and only a fraction experience problems. But if that's the only contact with the customers then it's really hard to resist the conclusion.

How much would you bet for each of these sets in an auction?

I tried to draw two sets of objects. One contains only nice, clean and unbroken things. The other one also has some flawed ones. If seen separately, people would probably put a lower price tag for the second set. Although it does contain all the elements from the first set plus a few extra. Logically thinking the second set is more valuable.

In software business one can easily get carried away with this. From developer point of you all you see are things that should be either fixed or improved. But you might also possess a huge asset that customers love. Otherwise you wouldn't probably even be employed.