Bias (written March 2011, published Dec 2021)

Bias is bad

In the scientific literature, bias seems like something to overcome. See cognitive bias. It is a systematic distortion where we want no distortion. An example: why should women or minorities have to overcome a systematic distortion in the job market? In this case, the biases are collectively known as prejudice and for the interviewer may include framing bias, self-serving bias, belief bias... among others. Where we can, we'd certainly like to make life fair.

Or is bias bad? Optimism > Pessimism

• "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"
• "Keep your heart open"
• "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty"
• "Continue being you because someone out there will love you for you"

We sort of know that every interview isn't going to get us an offer, but we go them anyway. As long as you are going to take your expected value and add a bias to it, it would seem that optimism is better. eg: (Philosophy (western), and Philosophy (eastern), and SelfHelp, and Sciencey-Health). It seems a little silly to calculate an expectation and then purposefully fudge the numbers. The main power of optimism is that it gives you strength (motivation) and the main weakness of pessimism is depression, the state where you do nothing. So we learn to appreciate failure because that means we are trying, executing, learning and above all, living.

And yet: Not every failure is okay. Pessimism > Optimism

• It's not every day that your child will drown in the swimming pool. (Safe link)
• You don't expect to die from your next cigarette.
• What's the chance your sexual partner has aids?
• Driving drunk doesn't cause an accident a majority of the time

There are two types of risks -- ones that add up (cigarettes) and ones that don't need to (Russian roulette). But in both cases, it is just a matter of time.

It's not expectation, it's expected value

Is one mindset is right over the other? They are used for different things, so next time you are an optimist during planning or a pessimist during action just have a good reason to deviate from the obvious benefit of natural fit (perhaps older people won't try anything unless you are optimistic). You can be more than a happy-go-lucky-idiot or party-pooping negative-nancy. Just one man's opinion here, but you could plan when you are supposed to plan and act when you are supposed to act.