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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