The Plague of Misidentification

Biases, Fallacies & Heuristics Part 7

In today's essay, I will cover a few more famous heuristics. It is a matter of fact that these heuristics will challenge how you think about every aspect of your life from now on if you grasp what it is that they are teaching us about ourselves. Get ready to have some fun, learn a few things, and be challenged by the truth of our reality.

Attribute Substitution Heuristic 

The attribute substitution heuristic happens when one is presented with a complex judgment or decision, and another problem that is less complex is substituted in its place. There can be a myriad of reasons we do this so frequently. In psychology, the current line of thought is that this happens at the unconscious level and that people are generally unaware that they are using this heuristic. I find that interesting and will certainly write more about that conclusion at a later time. For now, let me give you a famous example, and you will see how easily this happens. 

E.g., a bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Stop for a moment and give your answer. Then, take a minute to explain your answer to yourself. 

The answer is the ball costs .05 cents. Wait! How does this happen?

First, for those of you who got this right and have never heard or seen this before, congratulations! Now, for the answer to why this happens. 

People tend to substitute this problem for the original problem: A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00. How much does the ball cost? The issue, as I see it, deals with a few things. 

• The conflating of the "more than" statement into an "is" statement and thus the heuristic.

• The lack of attentive reading.

• The lack of desire to take time to ensure you get the correct response. 

• The problem's simplicity (perceived primarily by the given lower number values) makes one feel the need to get it right and not be tricked. This, in turn, presses the person into experiencing a bit of a pressure situation that regards their desires to get it right, get it right fast, be seen as being intelligent, and be seen as not being easily fooled, which manifests in a few ways, one of which is the avoidance of being or feeling embarrassed. This all causes the "unconscious" reaction of setting up a win by making the question more straightforward, thus substituting the "is" in place of the "more than" statement, and, therefore, another question altogether. 

To stop this process, one must become exceedingly aware that it exists and what psychological factors bring it about.

Let your guard down for a short time, and you can slip into this heuristic rapidly. If you want to attempt to train yourself out of falling prey to this type of thinking, consider the bullet points above and create a plan to calm your reactions to such situations. If you succeed in calming yourself, you will be a step closer. If you do that and work on thinking tools, especially the ones presented in this series of essays, you will be well on your way to solving these types of problems at first glance. 

Occam's Razor: Yep, it is a Heuristic

Occam's razor is a rule of thumb that states, "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” William of Ockham. Occam's razor operates as follows: when presented with competing hypotheses concerning the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions. 

E.g., you are sitting on your couch late at night, and you notice a little piece of red thread on the floor. The thread starts to move in almost human-like ways. Which of the following is the best explanation or hypothesis?

1. A ghost is in your house.

2. A demon is in your house.

3. An invisible crab is messing with your mind.

4. Your HVAC unit started generating airflow, which then moved the red string. 

5. God is trying to tell you something.

Answers 1, 2, 3, & 5 all require a form of supernatural intervention. This implies a deeper complex of why questions, all of which could become quite intricate or, in fact, are already quite intricate. If we follow Occam's razor, we will conclude that the HVAC is the source and get on with watching Netflix. Note that though the HVAC has a history (complexity), moving parts (complexity), and the like, it is far more plausible as a source due to the simple nature of its presence within your home and its presence being common within homes as well as the fact that air currents can easily move a small piece of string. Good news! There is no need to call an exorcist, at least not yet anyway. 

It is very important to understand that Occam's razor is not a law, as I have heard some state. It is a heuristic, and it has good and bad applications, like all heuristics. If you apprehend the environment well and you apply the razor, you will be right far more than wrong. That does not mean that there aren't outlier situations out there in this vast world of ours where the razor will get you in trouble. Those situations are also part of our reality, so be aware and remember: it is best-fit, rule of thumb thinking, and it is only as good as its logical agreement with reality.  

Fluency Heuristic

The fluency heuristic occurs when we accept ideas based on how easy they are to understand. The more easily comprehendible an idea is, the more likely people are to say that it is true. This is a monumental thinking error, and it causes an unbelievable amount of trouble in our lovely world. 

Consider that we have a debate going on between two politicians, and one of them is committing fallacy after fallacy but speaking in simple language. His explanations are non-sequiturs, but they are easily understandable. On the other side is the rare honest politician who could actually help matters. He speaks the truth and refuses to dumb answers down into talking points. He answers the questions directly, but the answers are more complex. Some of them push against already held errant positions established through years of hearing political thought rife with abhorrent logic. When it comes time to vote, the majority of the populace picks the politician who communicated in incorrect but digestible sound bites. The next thing we know, we are one step closer to a reoccurrence of the intellectual dark ages. 

Social Proof Heuristic or Principle

The social proof heuristic is ubiquitous. You will find this heuristic being exploited continually within the fields of advertising, religion, politics, all economic fields, professional sports, the music industry, you name it. If there is something to sell, this is one of the main pathways used to induce the populace into buying whatever it is at any given time via obfuscation. Whether it be an idea, concept, item, mark or tattoo, symbol, or anything that causes you to move into a thought or physical space without understanding why and how you got there, this heuristic is likely either the method of engendering you to those ends or is used in conjunction with other methods that are also known to be highly effective in this regard. 

The weaponized use of the social proof heuristic is unfathomably dangerous to a populace that would like to think well and choose out of intelligence rather than have choices made through them without their informed consent, awareness, conscious acceptance, or perceived acquiescence. 

This heuristic is generated through a weak area within the human psyche that engenders one to go along with the crowd for the sake of safety, popularity, growth, selfish means of all types, fear of being ostracized, and many others, which we will detail at a later time in this series. When this area is exploited, it induces within the individual the feeling that they not only need X or Y thing or to do X or Y thing, but that they will not be complete, accepted, or loved without it. Worse yet, that they will not be able to be part of their social group and thus will experience the inverse of being loved, appreciated, complete or whole, or thought highly of in commonly desired ways. They will be aware of their potential loss of all of those mentioned above as well as fear of loss of livelihood and future growth during their lifetime. 

While much of this is played out at light speed via the subconscious processing mechanisms, it is nonetheless a reality that we all must awaken to or remain utterly at the mercy of those who understand and use this weaponized heuristic to control the thoughts of individuals to whatever level is possible given all factors of reality being present at all times. What this means, in short, is that due to this heuristic and the weaponization of its presence within the individual against the individual's sovereignty of mind and thereby choice, you will thus provably have thoughts that are not your own, under your conscious control, nor will they be attributed to the source, but will in these cases certainly be attributed to yourself as the originator. If this fact doesn't make you desire to think better, nothing likely will. 

Note that the social proof heuristic can be applied along different layers of the matrix of one’s thought space in such a way that even the above examples will be dwarfed in both span and impact. There will be much more to come regarding this material and trajectory in later writing within this series. 

Peak-End Rule Heuristic

The peak-end rule heuristic occurs when we judge an experience based on our emotional state at its peak as well as at its end. This yields errant conclusions because it does not judge the experience as a whole and, therefore, cannot be concluded to appropriately. This is precisely due to the majority of what forms that experience being absent from the observational state of the perceiver or one concluding. 

E.g., a small child goes on a car ride with their parents. The parents narrowly escaped death on three occasions due to crazy drivers, bad driving conditions, and a hazardous road. The young girl, aware of all of this, recounts that the drive was "awesome!" because she saw a Clydesdale horse in a field, and she was profoundly impressed by its size and stature.

Let's do one more: An athlete gives a stellar performance. They trained for years, and it all came together for them in the clutch moment. The performance was not perfect, but it was stellar. When they proudly walk up to their coach, the coach high-fives them and says, "Great job!" then proceeds to instruct them on the few tiny points of error. The athlete then perceives their performance as a total and complete failure. Say what you will about the coach, but it is their job to help the athlete grow, focus, and learn to continually perform at a high level. There was both high praise and critical feedback present. The whole was not ruined by the pointing out of its areas of needed improvement. The performance was still stellar. The peak-end rule heuristic can cause a lot of dysregulation when none needs to be present. 

I picked the last example to show how specific environments and prior feelings can play a significant role in interpreting the example and, thereby, the peak-end rule. Tell me, what was your experience of the above paragraph, and did you fall prey to the peak-end rule heuristic? Think about how you experienced the little story. Now, go back and reread it carefully and see how you experienced the first time vs. the second time. Have you had an example of a criticism that was ill-timed, or otherwise perfectly timed, and ill-received? If so, did it sway your opinion of how the story was perceived? If so, did that swaying contain or generate the peak-end rule heuristic?

Familiarity Heuristic

The familiarity heuristic occurs when we favor that which is familiar over that which is unfamiliar. Unfortunately, that which is unfamiliar is often perceived as being strange. This errant misperception tends to operate as an oppositional driver for the familiarity heuristic in that it aids one in deciding that the familiar is the better choice. The familiar is also seen as being safe, comforting, and, most importantly, survivable—all of these help to aid one in making errant choices from this thought space.

This heuristic occurs frequently and is often present during oblivious or significantly ignorant choices. I do not venture this forth as being causative within the following examples but only as being factually present. 

E.g., person X has been abused in Y way all of their childhood. This abuse was hated by person X. They tried very hard to get away from this type of life as they entered adulthood. Over the years, they meet several potential mates, but nothing seems to be the right fit for them. After a few years, they meet person Z, who seems to feel like home to them, and they end up choosing this person as a lifelong mate even though there are many red flags that person Z is not mentally healthy and is, in fact, abusive. The reason, in part, as to why the other healthier mates did not "click" for person X was that they did not duplicate the familiar patterns of the individual's childhood. They were, in effect, unfamiliar and therefore perceived as being strange, foreign, not like home, and also potentially threatening in a way that could be fatal as the unfamiliarity leaves open the potential for the unknown. At the same time, the familiar abuser closes that potential in the decision process due to person X's having survived the prior abuses from their childhood. Though the childhood was horrible, and the person wanted to get away from that type of life, they ended up with a core duplicate of the parental abuser. Familiarity is undoubtedly one of the factors that play a role in this type of behavior, though I do not think it is causative, as mentioned above. People often choose the familiar over far better choices, generating much suffering over their lifetime. 

A core motivator of human psychological choice is the fear of death. If what you have gone through, though immensely horrific, did not kill you, it still seems the safer choice than what is out there that can kill you. I will write a lot about this in upcoming essays. Please note it as it is truly a core driver and is, therefore, logically speaking, one of the generative states from which to understand and gain proper analytical perspectives and trajectories. 

Coming Next

In the next essay, I will be doing a review of what we have covered so far, along with furthering our understanding of a few key drivers and core motivators. It will be eye-opening if you are just learning this material and possibly even if you are well-versed. From here on out, there will be a multi-disciplinary component presenting itself more intensely. This will be a necessity of properly learning to perceive reality as a single discipline will not get you there in any way, shape, or form. 

I can't wait to hear from you all concerning your thoughts and questions!

We will continue. 

B.S.R.