The IKEA Effect – Why managers fall in love with their own ideas

I feel a sense of accomplishment for few hours after having completed assembly but it's not really much more if any more than the sense of accomplishment I feel when I've finished vacuuming and dusting my apartment.

And maybe this study should be taken with a grain of salt too.

Sure but we don't even know what an optimal result is. And many of the solutions evolution has come up with we can't even reproduce. So in a sense evolution, though not maximally optimal, in many cases is far MORE optimal then anything we can come up with and thus for all intents and purposes evolution can be quite optimal relative to any solution we can cook up. There's nothing logically preventing human biases from being part of this optimal group given that we aren't completely sure why these biases exist.

>If there is no evolutionary pressure either for or against biases, what you get is essentially random chance. That's the null hypothesis: "we just happened to wind up with biases, because evolutionary pressure didn't care either way".

Don't try to pretend to do science here. Unless an actual experiment is run, we're going to use logical assumptions to figure things out rather then scientific testing.

Anyway logically speaking your "null hypothesis" has a flaw. Random mutations don't coalesce into an identical features across all humans. Individual humans will acquire different random mutations. That's what random means. If all humans acquired the same mutation it wouldn't be random anymore.

So something like different heights is something that there's not that much selection pressure for, so there's variability in height. Not all humans are the same height. However, something without variability that is identical across all races, according to the theory of natural selection... means that there is selection pressure.

For bias, there are certain biases that are literally identical across all races. This is very different from varying heights. The IKEA effect is one example of an identical bias. The fact that, this bias is identical across most people shows that SOMETHING is selecting for it.

I'll caveat with some detail here... There is a secondary outcome in evolution when there is no selection pressure. With enough breeding the random mutations can coalesce into a singular feature but this feature is not what you think. You see this with blind fish who live in caves. Over time those fish lose their eyes. This is because they don't use their eyes so eventually random mutations that render them blind accumulate to the point that the fish don't have eyes anymore. But these random mutations accumulate into a lack of a feature... not a random identical feature on all fish. If you see that all cave fish are growing wings out of their eye sockets, it's not because of lack of selection pressure... something had to have made it happen. This is what we see with biases. Many biases are not only identical, but very a very specific feature set.

>if it was only useful to avoid being eaten by lions, great, but then dropping it now that we don't regularly confront lions isn't meaningfully "bad for you".

How is the ikea effect only meaningful for avoiding getting eaten by lions? You're probably talking about fear. This theory of lions applies to fear and is about how certain phobias are no longer applicable to the modern world.

But how does this apply to the ikea effect? If you think all bias has no relevance in the modern world then that in itself is biased thinking. There's no evidence for this. In fact it's quite unlikely. Maybe some biases are no longer relevant, but certainly it's not clear whether the Ikea effect is some vestigial feature that no longer applies. There are tons of biases that, in fact, still help you survive.

>because I'm not seeing it.

Now do you see? Because if you don't... that might be a sort of stubborn bias talking. Maybe you're not trying to understand me here. Maybe you're trying to make me understand your point and vice versa. Maybe it's rare for people to ask a genuine question on HN...and everyone's just so biased that they're actually just trying to mouth off their own ideas, and that's likely what we're both doing.

  p = 101.5

>But this kind of biases may make us racist.

Depends on what you mean by racism. Being "against" anything or "for" a part of a team is part of group think. You buy into the current woke culture and that in itself is bias. But it's a good bias, it helps you.

Let's think of race logically. If genetics can describe the way races look... from darker skin on Africans, smaller eyes for asians, and lighter skin for Caucasians... Then by what black magic does it suddenly cause all mental faculties and behavioral tendencies to be equal across races? There is no logic behind behavioral equality at all, yet it is culturally insensitive not to believe it. In fact if you state you don't believe it, you will get attacked.

This black magic pervades our thinking and biases and we assume it to be true. If someone says black people are more likely to criminals because of inherent higher aggression, according to modern culture, that statement is bad and racist. Yet according to the logic of pure rationality the statement has enough validity to be considered for study. The statistics show higher correlation with crime and certain races, the logic of genetics don't deny it as a possibility either; the final logic is thus inescapable and the overall assumption is worth looking at.

If you're extremely rational, and extremely logical. Researching for the fact that genetics can influence behavior between different races is a valid research subject. But to do this you have to be above the biased group think. And if you're above the biased group think, you're going to get attacked for being a racist.

I bet this post will be flagged for even mentioning genetics and racial behavior, EVEN if it is a logical possibility. And that is a real example of how biases protect you. By being biased, by being completely unaware and buying into the current group think you're protected from attack and group self selection. By existing on a higher rational and unbiased plane you open yourself up for reactionary attacks. I likely will automatically get compared to the KKK for believing that racial differences across physical aspects and behavioral aspects are real.

Even believing that "rationality and unbiased-ness is great" is buying into biased group think. Everybody thinks rationality is better, everybody thinks of themselves as rational when in reality neither statement is completely true.

>Biases are tools for fast thinking.

This is your "bias" talking. We aren't clear what they're all for. Some could be for fast thinking. There's no definitive scientific evidence for what all our biases for, so logically you're being biased for making such an assumption. It's typical. People have biases that make them try to simplify the world around them. There's huge complexity here but you simplified it into a singular talking point: Biases are just things for fast thinking.

Another biased talking point: Racism is bad.

My guess is that some biases are for fast thinking. But not all. There's a potpourri of thousands of reasons for each of the multitudes of biases we have.

Personally, to be truly unbiased, to be truly emotionally uninvested into anything is a curse. It's the fruit of knowledge. You don't want it at all. Once you eat that fruit, there's no going back.