Once there was a couple who had married a few years ago. They were living in a metropolitan city. The husband was working in one of the top firms and the wife took care of the chores. Both of them were living a happy and contended life. The husband's office was situated a few miles away from his home. He went to his office by public bus. One day the bus was too crowded. While returning back from the office, his wife had found the long thick black hair on his shoulder. His wife started crying very loudly and accused him of having an extramarital affair. She called her relatives and told them about the entire incident. The relatives convinced her that she had gone pessimistic about it. Somehow she calmed herself but the seed of pessimism had taken the root in her mind.
Relations are very soft and delicate like a thread. Once broken it is very difficult to revert them to their original shape. Relatives gave a piece of wise advice to the husband to inspect himself before entering the home. The husband took their advice seriously. The next day before entering the home he inspected everything. After entering the home, his wife checked everything. To her surprise, she hadn't found anything. She started crying more loudly than yesterday. "Honey, What happened", asked the husband in confusion. The wife replied, "Now you have started dating the bald girls."
The gist of the story is how pessimism bias will ruin the relations. Did you notice something? I have mentioned the word bias. What is the meaning of psychological bias? Where does it come from? Why do human beings are biased? How to overcome bias? Let's find it.
A brain is a tool used by human beings to solve worldly problems. Life is full of problems and our job is to solve them in an effective and optimal way. The human brain uses two kinds of sub-brains to solve any problem.
Reflexive Brain
Reflective Brain
Reflexive Brain: Reflexive brain is very fast, automatic, and solves problems instantly. What is the answer to 2+3? The answer instantly flashes on your thought screen provided you know the counting and algebra. The answer pops into your mind without any effort. Humans are relying upon the reflexive brain to perform day-to-day activities like reading, talking, walking, etc.
Reflective Brain: Reflective brain is very slow, effortful, and takes time to solve any problem. What is the answer to 24 * 67? If you are not a math wizard then you definitely need a pen and paper to solve this problem. The reflexive brain becomes blank to this problem. Therefore, the problem is delegated to the reflective brain. It is mostly used to solve the complex problems of life.
When the complex activity is repeated enough times then the task is delegated to the reflexive brain. For example, when you are learning to drive a car it seems like a very daunting task. With enough practice, you can perform multiple activities like taking over the phone and driving a car simultaneously. When one skill is mastered then the cognitive resources of the reflective brain are utilized to learn other skills. The fundamental reason for the advancement of civilization.
Read out loud the sentences given in the below figure.
The chances are very high that you haven't noticed the appearance of twice the in the first sentence. The same is the case with the third sentence and the appearance of twice a in the second sentence.
Why does this happen?
The reflexive brain takes the command, reads the sentence, and gets the essence of it. It is very fast and jumps to conclusions without giving a second thought. Surprisingly the brain gives an endorsement to the answer produced by the reflexive brain. The reflexive brain is very fast but inaccurate. It serves us well in many tasks. Under specific circumstances, it yields an error that becomes catastrophic to life.
The tasks that will be directed to the reflective brain but instead the reflexive brain takes the command and generates the systematic error known as psychological biases. A downside to the over-dependency on the reflexive brain. It is very tedious to use the reflective brain to perform every task because it takes lots of energy and cognitive bandwidth. Learn to recognize the high stake decisions and consciously engage the reflective brain to do those tasks. It will improve your decision-making capability. A serene life is the outcome of optimal decision-making.
The human brain is evolving for the last two and a half million years. The majority of the time is spent in the savannah(hunting-gathering environment). Let's go back to the hunting-gathering days. Adam and Eve were living in a forest. They were searching for some food in the forest. Suddenly they heard the sound in the bushes. Adam was an optimistic boy and Eve was a pessimistic girl. Eve told Adam that it was a sound of a predator who was trying to find its prey. Let's run away otherwise, we will become dead meat. Adam told her that you are a very pessimistic girl and ignored her advice and continue his search for food.
If Eve was right one out of a thousand times then Adam will become dead meat. The main reason behind reproduction is to pass on our genes to the offspring. Optimistic genes are inhibiting our survival whereas pessimistic genes are supporting our survival. According to Charles Darwin, only those genes will be passed on to the offspring that support our survival. As time went by, the optimistic genes will be lost to oblivion. In the contemporary world, humans are not living in the forests. Our brain is a gift of evolution to us. The environment has changed drastically but the brain remained the same. That is why we are so pessimistic about everything.
Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists. Thomas Friedman
From now onwards, don't give an endorsement to the negative thought produced by the reflexive brain. Withhold your judgment and rethink the situation to gain a clear picture and better perspective. Shower yourself daily with good books to disrupt the negative pattern of the mind. It helps in sabotaging ignorance and the removal of ignorance is the path toward wisdom. Enlightenment is the state of mind to find goodness in everything. Beware of the pessimism bias and don't let it affect your relationship with your loved ones.
Happiness is the outcome of having good relations with the people around us. Godliness is feeling the pain of others by looking into their eyes. We want heart-to-heart connections with everybody so that our loving glance will bring a cute smile to their face. Pessimism is an obstacle that comes in between relationships.
How to overcome pessimism bias?
Baye's theorem is an antidote to pessimism bias. It helps in forging happy relations with others. Thomas Bayes was an English minister in the first half of the 18th century whose famous work "An Essay toward solving a problem in the doctrine of chances" was brought to the attention of the Royal Society by his friend Richard Price after his death. The core idea of the Bayes provided the seeds for the great mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace to develop what we now called Baye's Theorem.
The theory of Probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient. Benoit Mandelbrot
Let's understand the fundamentals of Baye's Theorem.
Steve was in a deep sleep. He woke up in the middle of the night due to a horrifying dream. To calm himself, he went straight to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, picked up the energy drink, took its sip, and then put it again in the refrigerator. After that, he went back to sleep. He started feeling nausea in his stomach after some time. Suddenly a thought pops in his mind that in the refrigerator there are four bottles out of which three contain an energy drink and one contains poison!
The tragedy of the situation was that, like poison, energy drink also causes nausea sometimes. The label on the poison bottle said that seventy-five percent of people who takes poison will show nausea symptoms whereas the sticker on the energy drink reads that only ten percent of people would feel the symptoms after taking energy drink. What are the chances that Steve took the poison instead of an energy drink?
If Steve hadn't felt nausea in his stomach then the probability of taking poison is twenty-five percent because there is only one poison bottle out of four bottles. This is known as the prior probability or the base rate information.
Now new information is added to the repertoire that he is feeling nausea in his stomach.
The probability of feeling nausea when he takes the poison is seventy-five percent. Prob(Nausea/Poison) = 75%
The probability of feeling nausea when he takes the energy drink is ten percent.
Prob(Nausea/Energy drink) = 10%
The fundamental definition of probability is the sum of observations divided by the number of observations.
We are interested in finding the probability of taking poison when he is feeling nausea in his stomach.
Prob(Poison/Nausea) = (Prob(Nausea/Poison) * Prob(Poison)) / Prob(Nausea)
Prob(Nausea) = Prob(Nausea/Posion) * Prob(Poison) + Prob(Nausea/Energy drink) * Prob(Energy drink)
Prob(Nausea) = 0.75 * 0.25 + 0.10 * 0.75
Prob(Nausea) = 0.2625
Prob(Poison/Nausea) = (0.75 * 0.25) / 0.2625
Prob(Poison/Nausea) = 0.7142 that accounts to 71.4%
Did you get the core idea?
The idea is to update the prior beliefs in light of new evidence. In the above case, the prior probability is twenty-five percent. In the light of new evidence, the probability changes to seventy-one percent. There is no need to memorize the mathematical formulae. The underlying idea of the theorem is to keep updating your beliefs in the light of new evidence.
Knowledge is worthless unless it is applied in day-to-day life. Of course, we don't know the exact probabilities in the real world still Baye's theorem can be applied to forge good relations with others. Let's use it in the above story.
We are assuming here that ninety percent of the people are loyal to their spouses. The wife found thick long black hair on the shoulder of his husband. It raises suspicion in her mind. By applying Baye's theorem, the probability of loyalty should be decreased to eighty-five percent. The next day she hadn't found any evidence, so the probability should remain eighty-five percent. The flaw in human thinking is a failure to take into account the base rate information. People are overwhelmed by the new evidence and make errors in their judgment. Sometimes people discard the new information and failed to update their prior beliefs. A good rule of thumb is when the Probability(while interacting with others) decreases to less than thirty percent then stop putting any effort into the relationship.
Baye's theorem is an important mental model that forces us to think in terms of probabilities. It helps us to forge happy relations with others. Developing the habit of Bayesian thinking is an admirable quality. In fact, thinking like a Bayesian is a way of life. If you practice it, it will change you in many ways.
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Photo by Milan Popovic on Unsplash
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