Confirmation favoritism

If you are on a weight loss program, you adjust our diet and every morning you will check your weight on weighing scale.

If you notice your weight less than before, you give a pat on your back and you consider diet is working well.

If you notice your weight shows increase you consider it's a normal fluctuation and you tend to write-off and put a notice 'forget it'.

The next day and for the coming days, similar things happen, the weight does not show any significant change from before and you live in an illusion that the diet is working well, although the weight remains almost constant.

This is known as 'confirmation favoritism.'

'Confirmation favoritism' is the origin of all misconceptions for us.

It is nothing but a tendency to interpret new sets of information so that it becomes compatible and falls in line with our existing theories, beliefs, and convictions. If we have to say in other words, we tend to filter out any new information or signals that contradict or do not agree with our existing set of theories or views.

This is dangerous because you dismiss or ignore the 'exceptional' or 'special cases' information which is basically disconfirming evidence.

To get out of  'Confirmation favoritism', look for disconfirming pieces of evidence and signal, note it down and try to work upon it.

Confirmation favoritism could be an intellectual offense that can't be ruled out easily.

Survivorship influence

Behind every successful best-seller author, there are authors whose books are never sold. Behind them, there are authors whose unfinished manuscripts are still lying in one corner of a writing table collecting dust. Behind them, there are authors who dream of one day- writing a book. We only hear about the successful authors and would not know about many of them who could not reach that stage. Knowing about such authors tells us how unlikely literary success actually is.
This holds good for photographers, artists, painters, athletes, musicians, beauty queens, ramp walkers, television show presently, architect and entrepreneurs, and many more....!!!
All these unsuccessful people are somewhere in graveyards and mind well the media and publicity people are no longer interested in digging graveyard to pull out these unsuccessful people.

This is called 'survivorship influence'.
If you have to elude the survivorship influence, you need to do digging yourself.

Survivorship influence can become extremely harmful and can cause significant damage when you start assuming yourself as a member of a winning team. What it means, even if your success is just popped up by mere coincidence, you will start comparing yourself with other winners and discover similarities with them and you will be tempted to believe theses as success factors.

Survivorship influence means you systematically start overestimating your chances of success.
It's important to guard against it by frequently, visiting the graveyards of those unsuccessful but promising people.

The term 'Availability bias'

Recently the term 'availability Bias' made me curious to know more about it.

What is availability bias?

 It means we create a picture or an image of the world using the examples or the information which comes easy to our mind.

With availability bias, we tend to travel with incorrect risk in our heads.

What it means really?

It means, we systematically overestimate the risk of being the victim of a plane crash or head-on car accident or getting murdered or killed.

On the other hand, we underestimate the risk of fatality from less spectacular ways such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, or cancer.

The chances of enemy fighter plane crossing our borders and doing bomb attacks on us are much rarer while the risk of suffering from depression is much higher.

Why we don't understand this simple fact? Maybe because we attach too many possibilities to spectacular outcomes. Anything, silent or low profile or invisible we don't register importance in our mind.

That is because we think dramatically more than quantitatively.

We need to overcome this 'availability bias' mindset the soonest.

You need to oil your hinges.

" Big doors swing on small hinges."

I find this thought so wonderful.

It so happens that we don't see the hinges on the door. Either we don't notice or we overlooked them. Although they are small in size yet without them the door will not swing.

Our attitudes, too are kind of our hinges on which our life doors swing.

The wrong or improper attitude will cause wear and tear. If not taken care of at the right time it will drop the door down or hang it in between, unsafe.

We can't control life's happenings whether negative or positive.

Those are life's variables not in our control. What we can do is how to cope up with them.

To keep our attitude intact, you need to oil your hinges.

It's time to take lessons

This time a virus has reminded all of us that the enemy will not necessarily come in the form of soldiers, fighter planes, or a warship crossing our borders.

Nations have to change their mindset and prepare themselves to deal with this. If not then the damage that would cause will be beyond our comprehension.

The world spends trillion dollars on their defense budget however their spending on medical research looking at the problems humankind is facing would be very low.

We haven't learnt this before, however, it's still not late to correct our mistakes and can build upon from the basics.

Ethical contamination

Recently I came across the term 'Ethical Contamination'.
Ethical Contamination is something -  you found out the unethical behavior of a person whose work you admire or you appreciate.
You may condemn their behavior but still admire their work.
That is because people are mixtures of qualities that you can admire and other qualities that you condemn.

Take the Ferrari out from the garage.

Ferraris are more than a dream car.

You need to qualify to dream of having Ferrari.

It has everything of superior class much above than any luxurious car- phenomenal power, brilliant handling, and amazing sporty looks.

And that is why people who possess Ferrari keep it in the garage.

They don’t use it like a normal car.

They always afraid of getting damaged in traffic or scratched or to the extent perhaps it might even get stolen, so people are too anxious to drive it on roads.

What we call this – a sheer waste? To have a Ferrari and keep it in the garage like a showpiece.

Well, it would be also waste if we also behave like those Ferrari owners.

It would be a sheer waste if we had skills, talents, capabilities, experiences, and passions but we were too afraid to use them.

It would be a waste if the dreams and aspirations that we have are never realized and remain in our heads.

It would be a waste if we have lived a life of unfulfilled potential because we were hesitant to do what we could have done.

Don’t let this happen. Take charge, explore your talent, skill, capabilities, and experience to succeed.

Take the Ferrari out from the garage!