Source: Farnam Street
We make up stories in our minds and then against all evidence, defend them tooth and nail. Understanding why we do this is the key to discovering truth and making wiser decisions.
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Our brains are quirky.
When I put my hand on a hot stove, I have instantly created awareness of a cause and effect relationship—“If I put my hand on a hot stove, it will hurt.
” I’ve learned something fundamental about the world. Our brains are right to draw that conclusion. It’s a linear relationship, cause and effects are tightly coupled, feedback is near immediate, and there aren’t many other variables at play.The world isn’t always this easy to understand. When cause and effect aren’t obvious, we still draw conclusions. Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman offers an example of how our brains look for, and assume, causality:
“After spending a day exploring beautiful sights in the crowded streets of New York, Jane discovered that her wallet was missing.”
That’s all you get. No background on Jane, or any particulars about where she went. Kahneman presented this miniature story to his test subjects hidden among several other statements. When Kahneman later offered a surprise recall test, “the word pickpocket was more strongly associated with the story than the word sights, even though the latter was actually in the sentence while the former was not.” 1
What happened here?
There’s a bug in the evolutionary code that makes up our brains. We have a hard time distinguishing between when cause and effect is clear, as with the hot stove or chess, and when it’s not, as in the case of Jane and her wallet. We don’t like not knowing. We also love a…
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