Comment by cm11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cm11 | Hacker News Reader

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These are forms of adjusting for bias and one should be cautious when they (or anyone) think they're good at accounting for them. That said, there are times we do feel justified in our decision because we feel we have adequately looked at "all sides."

At times the process of taking a neutral approach and/or vocalizing that neutrality demonstrates weakness. "Plan X makes sense because of A and B, but it does have this trade off D. That said, Plan Y could make sense if we really value D." In meetings, another person often lays out a single POV strongly and wins. Ideally, this opinion is strong because it's well thought out (and bias-adjusted), but sometimes it's strong simply because it's stated as such. "Plan Y is right. Because D, which I didn't even consider until now. <No mention of A or B.>"

Here, one would hope the group or group leader checks and balances this type of behavior so that a single biased-person doesn't carry a generally clear-minded group, but of course that doesn't always happen.

Considering one's biases is a very good thing, but I wonder if the pragmatics of group dynamics render it something good for the soul, but poor for action.

I think the post was referring to individual projects, not group dynamics, but your point is certainly true of group situations. Sometimes aspects of the group harm the group's ability to reason or behave rationally.

I'd argue that even in a one person project, information becomes available gradually and one must learn to re-consider old conclusions again in light of new information, even to re-consider old questions that might have been easily dismissed earlier.

Human rationality is biased by our use of the heuristics that take a few milliseconds of brain time and work pretty well, but have failures when trusted too much when we have the luxury of more time to consider the information. Even things like a member of the group asserting something confidently can throw off the rational faculties a bit.

Agreed. I use qualifiers far too often. It's good to be open to being wrong, good to not convey over-confidence, but when you are the one operating outside the social norm it dilutes whatever point you were making.

I am trying to get in the habit of providing an overarching qualifier so that I'm not deceiving my audience and then making the rest of my statements without any qualifiers that would be covered by the overarching one. It is definitely a hard habit to change, however.

These techniques are more general psychological tools than specifically about controlling bias. They're also meant to be internally-facing, not necessarily for sharing outside yourself. In the context of the original question about "brain hacks" (not necessarily group dynamics) the underlying thread is finding ways to change your perspective in order to gain insight, which is a very useful "brain hack" indeed!

You're right, but for many people it's difficult to become a thought leader until they have first improved their skills in reserving judgment and combating bias. I've met people who seem to have a strong opinion on everything, and they convince some people, but their opinion meets an unfortunate end when they present to a more discerning group.

I agree 100%. In theory it’s good to consider all perspectives and not acquire hyperfocus/tunnel vision on any one plan or destination. But I n practice, people seem to find leaders with tunnel vision far more convincing and worth following than those who take a more multi faceted/ less focused approach to leadership IMO

Maybe that’s because, it seems like the practical reality of discussing ones attempts to be bias-free always comes off as disengenuous no matter how genuine those attempts may be. So fuck it man. Embrace bias :)

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