A year ago, I moved. The new apartment is in a building right behind a train station. There’s just a very small park between it and the station, maybe 25 metres across. The park has a playground and a table with benches and a roof. It’s a fairly quiet suburb and a fairly quiet train station and the whole thing gets deserted at night.
In the first week, I was coming home later at night than usual — maybe midnight. Only two people took the exit towards the park: me and a man who looked a few years younger. I went in first and he was about fifteen metres behind me. Not a fan of having someone behind me in such situations, I sped up but halfway through the park I noticed he started to run. It was starting to drizzle but I definitely still perceived it as a threat. I went off the path and turned around to look at him. It was mainly to get him to pass, but I also had my hand inside my bag where there was an implement I was planning to use.
He slowed down and said something like the following: “I’m not going to do anything. But I understand — I was bashed with a baseball bat right here once.”
The reaction in my head was clear. “FUCK YOU!” I was thinking. “Now nothing’s going to get that anecdote out of my head. I’ll ignore the actual statistics of this being a quiet area. I’ll remember the anecdote instead each time I cross the park without my trusty implement; because I can’t help it.”
And sure enough, it happened. The anecdote trumped other stuff despite being completely unverified. I did have a few things going for me though that made it less annoying:
- I knew that the actual answer is that the likelihood of something happening is much better determined by statistics, so I had the correct answer.
- I knew that anecdotes have a disproportional effect on our perception of the likelihood of a scenario. It’s also going to be worse with a vivid anecdote — the kind the stranger “helpfully” provided — baseball bats being reminiscent of that scene in Casino and all.
- I knew that this bias was going to happen whether I like it or not, that I probably couldn’t do anything like debias myself.
And sure enough, what was needed was some time. After a few hundred of walks across that park, the number of anecdotes of nothing happening finally trumped the unverified anecdote of the baseball bat in the reptilian part of my brain. But the unfortunate facts remain. We often can’t debias ourselves or work against the stupid things our brains do, even if we know what’s going to happen. The most consolation that knowing about biases can give us in this case is knowledge that the bias might not be permanent, that soon other biases will pile on in the brain and potentially crowd it out. Incidentally that’s why it’s really bad to be exposed to misinformation in the form of anecdotes. It can have an effect even if you learn it’s false. But whatcha gonna do?
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