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Comment by joshmarlow | Hacker News Reader

Sample bias: I feel that so many subtleties are lost because people don't generally realize that their observations/anecdotes/experiences are biased.

If I see a steak on my plate, I can't conclude that there is no world hunger. If I see a snowball, I can't conclude that there is no global warming. If I've never experienced racial bias against me, I can't conclude that it does not happen to other people.

Edit: for clarity.

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> Sample bias: I feel that so many subtleties are lost because people don't generally realize that their observations/anecdotes/experiences are biased.

This one is so odd to me. There's plenty of logical errors and shortcuts the brain takes that I had to learn to consciously think around, but the idea that my experience isn't necessarily representative of the entire world was something that was blindingly obvious when I was literally a child. I'm still taken aback for a second when I see people say things like "most of the people I know do X" or even "everyone in my family has Y", without giving any thought to whether their sample even approaches representativeness.

Hah!

You have to realize that a lot of people understand sample bias. Those people (myself included) simply don't care about global warming, global hunger, racism, etc.

Or maybe most people do care, and your extrapolation is an example of sample bias :)

That's not sample bias, that's bias blind spot.

The most insidious type of bias, and the least noticed, is researcher bias.

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