6/15/2023 0 Comments Hindsight bias meaningFor example, the oil market is a level two chaotic system. We can make predictions about the weather tomorrow, but those predictions don’t have the ability to change the weather tomorrow.Ī level two chaotic system is affected by predictions we make about it. For example, the weather is a level one chaotic system. Not only is history chaotic, it’s a “level two” chaotic system.Ī level one chaotic system is not affected by predictions we make about it. One reason we’re vulnerable to the hindsight bias is that history is chaotic-it’s too complex to understand how all the variables interact. Conversely, it’s unnerving to realize that all the events leading up to this moment could have easily turned out differently and that it’s only a coincidence that most of us today believe in collective fictions such as capitalism and human rights. Why do we fall for the hindsight fallacy (hindsight bias)? We like to think that history is deterministic because it means that everything that has happened was supposed to happen. We can’t know if we’re out of the global economic crisis or if China will become the world’s leading superpower. This is a hindsight bias example.Īccording to the hindsight bias definition, for the same reasons we can’t explain why history happened the way it did, we can’t predict the future. It’s just that there are far more options than we realize. It’s not that anything is possible in history. Similarly, no one could have reasonably predicted that a tiny Russian faction called the Bolsheviks would take over their country in a matter of years. History often takes unexpected turns- what seems inevitable now was seen as extremely unlikely at the time.įor instance, if you were to suggest in AD 306 that Christianity, an obscure sect of Judaism, would become the religion of the Roman Empire, your contemporaries would laugh at you. The more we learn, the more we see all the roads untaken, some of which were more probable. The less we know about a historical period, the more we tend to think that the events of that period were inevitable and the more we’re vulnerable to hindsight bias. This is a hindsight bias example (also known as the hindsight fallacy). But he chose Christianity, which was actually an unlikely choice. He also could have converted to Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, or Buddhism, all of which were available to him at the time. We don’t know why Emperor Constantine chose to convert to Christianity when he could have continued to practice his own polytheistic religion. History Isn’t Predictable (or Explainable)įor example, we can detail the events leading up to Christianity’s take-over of the Roman Empire, but we can’t determine the causal links between these events. We’ll go in depth into the hindsight bias definition above and cover hindsight bias examples. But while today we can describe how history has unfolded so far, we can’t say why it’s turned out the way it has. Looking back, we think we could have predicted how history would unfold-it seems obvious in hindsight. Hindsight bias is the human tendency to believe that events that have already happened were more predictable than they actually were. What is hindsight bias? How does it influence how we think about not only the past, but also the present and the future? Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading. This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari.
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