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