The Biased Thinking - III

Question is does our brain have such capabilities to perform such analytics then answer is no but we have one thing that these machines don’t have and that is mind. As I said earlier mind is very powerful. Mind has its own working style. Mind can carry out 1000 times more than such analytics but only drawback with mind is that it is biased. If we can keep it away from biasness then it’s very easy to predict such judgments(Sherlock Holmes had amazing control on his mind). It was the biased mind that was gripped by magic of Messy but completely overlooked Thomas Muller who was more consistent than Messy.

In India, 1950 to 2014, out of 64 years more than 50 years were ruled by Indian Congress Party. Opposition parties accused many time that most of the news media in India is either pro congress or pro left parties. Congress ruled the India from 2004 to 2014 and that time lot of privileges was given to media person. 2014 elections were very influential in term of media coverage. Opposition NDA alliance was giving tough fight to ruling Congress led alliance in the leadership of Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state and many time accused Indian Media for their biasness. He hit very hard on Indian media many times for wrongly defaming him. He was very critical to most of the influential journalists of that time though he never accused them openly that they are pro congress pro left but it was general in public that these journalists are pro congress pro left. So when an anchor asked the question to those journalists at 7:55 AM, 16 May 2014 “who is going to win today?” what was going in their mind? 

Few of the scientific exit polls had predicted the victory of Modi in elections and logically their judgement must have been Modi also but at the same time their mind hijacked their brain. They had associated feeling of prejudice against Modi so they could not want to see him win. Question was asked to them “who was winning that day” but they didn’t answer that question. Their mind changed the question from "who was winning" to "who should have won" and they all predicted hung assembly and later their all judgements went wrong. Same thing was repeated in 2017 UP election also and same journos made same mistake. Same thing happened in US elections also. Most of the influential media persons belong to liberal ideology while Donald Trump has a strict anti-liberal image. So they didn’t want to see winning Trump so their mind convinced them that Hilary Clinton was wining. Fortune wrote on November 9, 2016 -

“How is this possible when every poll and prediction site said that Hillary Clinton would win? How could everyone have gotten it so wrong?

The inescapable fact is that most of the mainstream media got it wrong because they simply couldn't believe that Americans would elect someone like Donald Trump. Denial can be a powerful drug.

In part, that's because much of the East Coast-based media establishment is arguably out of touch with the largely rural population that voted for Trump, the disenfranchised voters who looked past his cheesy exterior and his penchant for half-truths and heard a message of hope, however twisted.”

Editor of Cracked put it in an article: "If you don't live in one of these small towns, you can't understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers involves moving to the city, and around every city is now a hundred-foot wall called 'Cost of Living.'"

The simple process to predict the election result is to take the relevant sample and then analysis the sample. But media person were so much confident on their brain that they could never realized that when they were fooled by their mind. One of the important property of mind is that it is always ready to jump to the conclusion. They focused on the weaknesses of Donald Trump and jumped to the conclusion that this man can never become the president of USA and completely ignored the outlook of voters who was actually responsible for selecting their president.

Mind hinders our rational thinking since it’s designed in such a way that its always eager to jump to the conclusion. How many times you made judgement about someone by their looks, cloths, personality? How many times you have made mistake by considering a good looking leader as a good human being also? How many times you presumed that a lady who is good looking must also be honest? How many time you just judged the speech of a speeker by his speech ? We have tendency to generalize the whole picture just on the basis of one fact and completly igore other essential facts and make judgement.s Since those judgments are biased judgement so these are supposed to be wrong. In psychology this phenomena is called “Halo effect” where you just consider one aspect and makes whole picture. It was named by psychologist Edward Thordnike in reference to a person being perceived as having Halo. 

Edward Lee Thorndike (August 31, 1874 – August 9, 1949) was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. Edward Thorndike originally coined the term referring only to people; however, its use has been greatly expanded especially in the area of brand marketing. Every day lot of advertisement messages bombarded our mind to influence us and to make the judgement in favor of them. Normally when we have enough time and enough information available then we can use our brain and try to stop mind in judgement making but what to do when we don’t have enough time and we are in completely blind situation. At that time we have to make decision by using only our fast mind. Mind is fantastic tool to make judgement if it is not biased that means if there is no pain or pleasure attached with the mind and its repetitive action (that means you are expert of that field). But it’s very difficult then we don’t have any biases in our mind. Either we have pain or pleasure associated with something in our mind or if we are not expert of that field. So how do we make decision when we are not expert of that field and we are neutral. Simply mind makes the decision on the first impression it receive (The first thought that comes in mind at that time). 

Who is the most talented actress? Probably you will answer the name of actress which comes first in your mind. After few second you will realize that there are more talented  actress than her, after few minutes you would realize there are more talented than her so when you have to make decision in limited time and you don’t have any pain or pleasure associated with the outcome and you are not expert then you make the decision on the basis of first thought that come in your mind.

What will you do if you received information that some crime event is going on street. You go there and you see a black person Charles Kinsey is sitting on street with a white person. His behavior is suspicious. You took out your revolver and aim on him and you observe that Charles Kinsey is shouting “don’t shoot, I am behavioral therapist and I am unarmed” and suddenly you see person sitting with him is taking something out. It may be pistol or it may be something else. If it is pistol he will shoot you. So you have fraction of second to make the judgement and it is the situation of life and death and same thing happened with that Florida’s Police Officer. He had fraction of second to make the judgement and what all information he had that time is a black man lying on street and shouting that he was behavioral therapist. He could not use his brain to make the decision due to unavailability of time. It was amygdala hijack moment. Being a police officer and since he had passed the police training I can assume that he was neutral that means he didn’t have any pleasure or pain associated with it. Though it was repetitive work for him but time was so less that mind lost its expert decision making abilities so he made the judgement on the basis of first impression that he received from the mind and that was a black person might be criminal (Apartheid still prevails) and he shot Charles Kinsey.

We are prone to make biased judgement. Our mind is designed in such a way and it’s nothing to do with intelligence, knowledge, experience or time. In my next article, I will explain the difference among, intelligence, rationality and wisdom and how to make unbiased judgement.

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The Biased Thinking - II

As explained in previous chapters we have two decision making units in our head. One is brain and another is mind. Brain is a gross entity and responsible for logical decision making. Brain stores the information in memory as fact and figures and when we need to make some judgement through brain then it retrieve the information from memory and process that information and present the suitable judgment. This retrieving the information process of brain is time consuming and energy consuming. On the other side mind store the information as impressions and whenever mind store any information it attaché some emotions with that impressions. Emotions are the byproduct of cognitive process of mind. So whenever mind process any information it attaché some emotions with that information and store the information as impression in subconscious mind that is memory of mind. Mind is a subtle processor. You can’t see it. You can’t find it but it controls your automatic reactions, It control your internal processes like heart rate, endocrine system, respiratory system etc. 

Unlike brain where it need to retrieve the information from memory mind doesn’t need to retrieve the information from subconscious mind because subconscious mind keep sending the information stored as impression to mind and mind keep executing it again and again and every time keep attaching emotions with them. So mind’s process is automatic. It keep running 24x7 and you can’t turned it off so if you see something horrible then impression stored with horrible things automatically comes in our mind and emotions attached with horrible thing (in the case fear) automatically comes in your mind and everything happens automatically that means you cant control it. Mind keep working automatically 24x7 while for brain you have to use it that means it works on demand.

All of the emotions can be classified in two categories- one that make you feel pleasure and other that make you feel pain. So whenever mind receive any information and store that information as impression in subconscious mind it attaché some emotions that may be pleasure emotions and painful emotion. So if you see a beautiful girl you store her in your mind with pleasure emotions so when you close your eyes and think about her you feel pleasure. Same with your favorite food, your best friend, your happy moments, in all these cases you feel pleasure and the things you don’t like you attaché painful emotions so whenever you recall something dirty, some tragic incidents you feel pain. 

Pain and pleasure plays very important role in understanding the judgments made by mind. Mind makes only those judgments where it feels pleasure and where it avoids pain. Mind likes pleasure and Mind doesn't like pain. Basically pain and pleasure are nothing but hormones in our brain. Certain emotions induce pleasure hormones and certain emotions induce pain hormones. Our behavior is controlled by our hormones. Hormones are responsible for everything that happens in our body and influence our behavior.  Hormones are used to communicate between organs and tissues for physiological regulation and behavioral activities, such as digestion, metabolism, respiration, tissue function, sensory perception, sleep, stress and our mood. Hormones are controlled by our emotions, emotions are attached with our thoughts and thoughts are processed by mind so basically hormones controls the mind and mind controls our decision making.  

Namita just had a painful break up with her boyfriend. She is an independent girl, good looking, educated and employed in a good company at New Delhi. She was in a relationship with a guy from last three years and recently came out from relationship. She wanted to forget all painful memories of past and wanted to have fresh start. Speed dating is gaining popularity in Indian metro cities these days where two youths of opposite sex meets particularly in restaurant and spend some time, talks and if both find it suitable then proceed further in relationship. Through speed dating Namita met to three boys and now she wanted to make judgment that with whom she wanted to proceed further. I talked to her and asked the details of all the three boys. Let’s name them A B and C. After listening details of all those three boys and as much I know about her likes and preferences I predicted that she must have selected B but at my surprise she told me that she rejected B and now confused between A and C. That was big surprise for me since logically B was best choice then why she rejected B and after lot of discussion I got to know very surprising reason. At the time of dating with Namita, B ordered Pineapple shack and Pineapple shack was favorite beverage of Namita’s old boyfriend so it reminds her about painful memories of old boyfriend so she rejected B. Her boyfriend used to like Pineapple shack. He was bad for her so can we generalize that all the guys who like Pineapple shack will be bad with Namita ? Answer is No. It will be biased judgement if we think in this manner but this is the way by which we all most of the decisions.

We make judgements by using both processors – Brain and Mind. Normally when details are available and there is sufficient time then brain takes the lead and makes the decision. Brain goes through all the possible alternative solutions and check the facts and present the suitable solution and mind doesn’t interfere in it but if there is any alternative among available all alternatives in which mind has associated pain or pleasure then mind automatically takes control on brain and present that solution that induce pleasure in mind or reject those solution that induce pain in mind. For example if I ask you today is a soccer match between Portugal and Greece and who will win it. If both the teams are equal for you that mean you don’t have associated any pain or pleasure with both of the countries then probably you would go through their past performance, their team combination and you will give the logical answer. That answer will be by your brain, an unbiased judgement and most probably it will be right judgement but suppose you are die-hard fan of Greece or Portugal then probably you will overlook all the details and if someone asks you who will win the match you would probably answer not on the basis on “Which team is better” but on the basis of “Which team do you like” and in that case that answer will be from your mind. It would be a biased judgement and there is very high probability that it will be wrong. We don’t make the judgement on the basis of what is right while we make the judgement what do we like, what pleases us, what gives us immediate sensual gratification. So the real culprit is pleasure hormone that control our all decisions.

When it is about Soccer then people all around the world loves Argentina since  Most of the sports journalist who were covering 2014 world cup soccer were those who  born between 1965 – 1980. 80s was the decade when Argentina’s greatest player Diego Mara Dona ruled the international Soccer so from the childhood all those persons who born in 70s have some attachment with Argentina. Many soccer fans believes that Messy is second Mara Dona and he had guts to do same that Mara Dona did in 1986 so lot of the soccer fans were thinking that 2014 world cup soccer would be the rematch of 1986 world cup final where due to magic of Mara Dona Argentina defeated Germany and lifted the cup. Messy have lot of similarities like Mara Dona. He is good looking like Mara Dona, energetic, enthusiastic. His game is classy and stylish and more important he is apple of the eye of Media. In 2014 he was the highest paid sports person of the world and undoubtedly the best footballer of the world. People love Messy and have unconsciously associated pleasure hormone in their mind. 2014 world cup final was billed as Messy vs Germany. So when the question was asked to major sports journalists and football fans then actually they were supposed to analyze about both the team’s strengths and weaknesses and then supposed to present the judgement but they were ditched by their mind. They were unaware that they had unconsciously attached pleasure hormones with Argentina and Messy and when they were asked the question who would win the final their mind immediately controlled their judgement making and told them the answer Argentina. It made them feel pleasurable. They didn’t answer the question who would win the final they answered to whom they would want to see wining and it was obviously Argentina. It was biased judgement then ultimately went wrong and Germany defeated Argentina and won the cup. Its ok with common people but ultimate question is how experts failed in prediction? 

Mind is very powerful. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are or how experienced you are. Important is what is the state of your mind at the time of decision making. How much control do you have on you mind. Everything happens unconsciously in our mind and we even could not realize that we were wrong. We live under illusion of mind. Biasness is in our inherent nature but it doesn’t mean that everyone went wrong in the prediction of 2014 cup final.

“I would love to have Paul the octopus to help me, but he already died, poor thing. So I cannot predict anything for this Final.”

This was the reaction of Shakira, the Colombian musical mega-star when asked about predicting the world cup final winners and she was very right since for her it was the decision under uncertainty because she doesn’t know much about football she gave very judiciously reply. Football is not the game of single person; it is dependent on other variables also. There were computer programs also that were predicting the world cup results. Google, Microsoft and Baidu (among several others) have put in their data analysis and cloud capabilities to predict the world cup 2014 battles. While Google's Cloud Platform has got 13 out of 15 predictions correct, Baidu trends and Microsoft's Cortana have proved to be a little more accurate with 14 out of 15 predictions setting right. While most of the experts were predicting victory of Argentina over Germany, Google’s cloud algorithm predicted the victory of Germany with 55% chances. As per Google cloud – “Both teams have had excellent tournaments so far, but the model favors Germany for a number of factors. Thus far in the tournament, they’ve had better passing in the attacking half of their field, a higher number of shots (64 vs. 61) and a higher number of goals scored (17 vs. 8)”. Google cloud’s prediction was accurately right. Match was almost equal throughout the match and Germany won the match in extra time. Microsoft's artificially intelligent digital assistant, Cortana responses to "who will win the Germany Argentina match" include: It's too early to say for sure, but I'd give Germany the edge over Argentina. Germany seems to have a slight edge. But don't card me if I'm wrong", and "Probably Germany. But you never known what can happen in the beautiful game. Baidu trends shows that Germany has 58.6% chances of lifting the trophy as compared to 41.4% of that of Argentina.

 When experts failed in prediction, almost all the software made excellent prediction why did it happen? Reason is computer program doesn’t have mind. They are free from hormonal biasedness. So they don’t make the decision that please them they make the decision as per available data. As Google explained the methodology used for predictions, "Using data from Opta covering multiple seasons of professional soccer leagues as well as the group stage of the World Cup, we were able to examine how activity in previous games predicted performance in subsequent ones. We combined this modeling with a power ranking of relative team strength developed by one of our engineers, as well as a metric to stand in for home team advantage based on fan enthusiasm and the number of fans who had traveled to Brazil. We used a whole bunch of Google Cloud Platform products to build this model, including Google Cloud Dataflow to import all the data and Google BigQuery to analyze it."

........to be continued  Click here to read Part III

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The Biased Thinking - I

16^th May 2014 was the big day for India. Voting for 36 days long general elections had been finished and it was the day for counting. While ruling UPA alliance was defending their 10 yearlong rule, Opposition NDA that was contesting elections in the leadership of dynamic Narendra Modi was giving tough competition. Just 5 mins before the 8 AM that was scheduled time for beginning of counting of votes, an anchor of a news channel asked about the expected result of elections from around 15-20 senior journalists. All journalists were very experienced and rigorously did the coverage of election. Almost all journos predicted hung assembly and NDA as single largest alliance with 180-220 seats in the parliament of 543 members. Then he asked to same question to common public and less experienced reporters and most of them predicted around 260-280 seats for NDA. The judgement of experienced Journos seem more powerful since from last 30 years no party was able to win majority in general elections. Results were out after few hours. NDA won 320 seats and got clear majority. All predictions of professional journalists went wrong while prediction of common public were more close to real figure.

Same story was repeated in the state election of Uttar Pradesh that is the largest state of India and have population of over 20 million. Counting of state elections were about to begin at 8 AM on 11^th May 2017 and just 5 minutes before the counting anchor asked same question to same journalists and almost all predicted an hung assembly with BJP as single largest party with seats around 160-190 in the assemble of 403 MLAs. When results were declared BJP won 325 seats.

The 2016 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Before the declaration of results, entire media was predicting the victory of Democrat Hilary Clinton over the Donald Trump who was candidate of Republic party when results were declared every political pundit went wrong and Donald Trump won the elections. It was not only the defeat of Hilary Clinton but also it was defeat of media persons of all around the world who used to feel proud on their prediction abilities. Next day entire media was busy in analyzing what went wrong in their judgment making process. On 9^th November, Fortune wrote an article “Here’s why the media failed to predict Trump’s victory”. New York times wrote an article “where the predictions went wrong”

13^th July, 2014 was the day when entire world was going crazy in the fever of Soccer. Three time champion Germany was colliding with two time champion Argentina. Earlier no European country could win the cup in South America. It was the time when Messi magic was gripping entire the world. Messi was in amazing form and scored 4 goals in the tournament. This match was declared Messi vs Germany. British newspaper the telegraph asked to its lot of journalists who was covering soccer from long time that who would win the final. Most of the journalists favored Argentina. As per them Messy was unstoppable and will definitely win the match for Argentina. An online poll was conducted for common public of all around the world and majority of people predicted the victory of Argentina. Billed as Messi versus Germany, the world's best player against the best team, the final was a repeat of the 1990 final featuring Diego Mara Dona.  Within the first half-hour, Messi had started the play that led to a goal, but it was ruled offside. He missed several opportunities to open the scoring throughout the match, in particular at the start of the second half when his breakaway effort went wide of the far post. Substitute Mario Gotze finally scored in the 113th minute, followed in the last minute of extra time by a free kick that Messi sent over the net, as Germany won the match 1–0 to claim the World Cup. So all predictions went wrong and Messi magic could not win the world cup for Argentina.

Charles Kinsey is a black American lives at Florida USA. He is a behavioral therapist and cures the patients who are suffering from Autism. On July 20, 2016 he was sitting on a street with his patient. He was doing some therapy on him. The patient was all having a toy truck. North Miami police got the complaint that some suspicious activity was going on and an officer reached on the site and put pistol on Kinsey. Kinsey shouted that he is behavioral therapist and he and his patients are unarmed. While lying on his back in the street with his arms in the air, Charles Kinsey told police that he was a behavioral therapist caring for the autistic patient who sat next to him. Kinsey shouted don’t shoot we both are unarmed. Despite this, Kinsey left the scene with a gunshot wound to the leg. Yes !!! officer shot him because he thought that Kinsey is a criminal and pretending to be a therapist and he was armed so he could shoot him but after checking Kinsey and his patient both were found unarmed. The officer was not ruckus. He was experienced and trained officer then how he could make such a wrong judgement?

We keep making decisions, judgements, predictions every time and every day. We meet to people and we make judgment about them on the basis of their color, build, cloths body language. We visit the place and we make judgement about them. We analyze the facts and make prediction on the basis of fact. We associate ourselves with event and make the judgements. We keep evaluating the things that are all around us and its nonstop process. You are sleeping on your bed in the night and you heard the voice and you immediately make some judgement.  You are having general conversation with your friends and you realize that on the same event different people makes different judgements and obviously all judgments can’t be true. There will only be one judgement true and other judgements bound to be false. The big question is why we make wrong judgments. Why we are not able to think rationally all the time? Some of the decisions are your conscious decisions like buying a stock and some of the decisions are unconscious decision like liking the Facebook post. So can we say that cautious decisions are right and unconscious decisions are wrong? Answer is No. 

Sometimes we make wrong conscious judgements also and sometimes we make excellent unconscious decisions also. In some of decisions we have supporting data available like to predict business growth or to predict the time travel to reach destination. Sometimes we need to make the decision under uncertainty like tossing the coin or predicting the match result or predicting someone’s behavior by his cloths (Unless you are Sherlock Holmes) This all decisions fall under decision under uncertainty. So can we say that former types of decisions are correct and later types of decisions are incorrect? Answer is again No. We miserably failed in some straight forward situation where data was available and sometimes we make excellent decision under uncertainty.  Sometimes we have enough time to make decisions and sometimes we have to make instant decision as it happened in Kinsey case. 

So can we say that decision made under sufficient time are correct and decisions made instantly are incorrect? Again answer is a big No.  Sometimes we have lot of time to think but we make wrong judgment and sometime we make exceptionally brilliant decisions under the fraction of second. Malcolm Gladwell talked about in detail in his book ‘Blink” about such snap judgments. So the conclusion is we are prone to make wrong judgements irrespective of what type of judgement it is. But why does it happen ? lets talk about it.

..........to be continued 

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