The bitterness of doing nothing

When we should really challenge our own, and other people’s omission bias

Biases (cognitive and behavioural tendencies) and heuristics (mental shortcuts) are often associated with bad decisions, but it is worth bearing in mind their evolutionary origins before we label them as unconditionally problematic. Whether we are thinking of risk aversion, confirmation bias, the representativeness heuristic, or hyperbolic discounting, there are good reasons why we have been carrying these tendencies for thousands of generations.

For our evolutionary success is in part the fortunate result of these biases. Imagine how well our ancestors would have fared if none of them had been risk averse, and they’d encounter a sabre tooth tiger as they went for a stroll in the woods after lunch. Before they’d have been able to utter “Hmm, interesting!” they’d have been lunch themselves. Without confirmation bias, they’d have constantly got lost on the way to the stream, incapable of establishing there was enough evidence ( “I didn’t see that leaf yesterday, did I”) that they were (literally) on the right track, and died of thirst. Without the innate predisposition to group things (predators, streams) together based on stereotypical similarity, they’d have naively walked straight into the path of any wild animal they had not encountered…