Humans are Fools

"What do you believe, your own eyes or a bunch of statistics?"

Humans make perception errors and judgement errors.  We all do.  It is built into our brains and we are stuck with it.

A and B are the same size.  Really.

The above is such a strong statement, and we resist internalizing and acknowledging it so strongly that I want to demonstrate it a moment.

In the two shapes both A and B are the same size.  Measure them if you like.  Our eyes are seeing things but our brains are adjusting to "make sense" of what our eyes are objectively seeing.

Blue and Green are the same color.  Really.

In the color chart here the blue color and the green color are actually exactly the same color.   We perceive them as different because we see colors in the context of other colors and make automatic adjustments in our brains to "make sense" of the colors since in life we are constantly adjusting what we objectively see to put it into context of ambient light, shadows, etc.

I cite these two perceptional errors to remind and prepare readers to accept the simple notion that we make errors unconsciously while we are making sense of the world.  We also make judgement errors.

Routinely in my financial advisory practice I saw the "endowment effect."  Simply it means that people attach much greater emotional attachment to the value of something once it is possessed at that value than if the same thing simply had the potential of such a value.  A person who bought a house for $250,000 and then learns that it was appraised at $400,000, or who has been offered $400,000 for it, now perceives it to be "worth" $400,000 regardless of market conditions, and any price less than $400,000 is perceived as a "loss" that is psychologically painful to accept.  This is true even if the $400,000 value was presented in ignorance or by mistake.  Once $400,000 is "on the table" in the mind of the owner then the owner is attached to that value.  

Neighbor fence line disputes are exacerbated by this problem.  Each neighbor perceives the discovery that a fence was mis-placed as a threat of painful loss of something they once possessed.  

Another error is the "saliency effect."  People pay attention to information that has emotional impact at a significantly greater level than information that has mere rational significance.  This is true even when people openly acknowledge the truth and significance of the rational data.   The truth doesn't matter.  Or to be more precise, the emotional truth is what matters, not the rational truth.

The commonplace example of this is the problem of airline safety.  Passengers are essentially helpless when traveling in an airplane.   The "safety drill" at the beginning of the flight fulfills regulations, it has a remote possibility of being of use in an accident, but most important it gives passengers a feeling of agency.   They aren't helpless.  They can put on oxygen masks.  They can make their way to an exit over a wing.   Feeling like one has influence makes people feel safer; they supposedly aren't helpless after all.

Brave, brave man.

But the real thing that makes them safe is the airline and traffic separation systems of the industry and the FAA.  Airline travel is statistically very safe, but accidents are dramatic and visible, so people feel air travel to be risky while the drive home from the airport is safe.  Traffic accidents, even fatal ones, are small events.  Airplane accidents are big news.  The information is salient--in our faces.  So we fear it.

We are disproportionately afraid of certain things, including snakes.  I placed this sign along my property on the Rogue River to discourage boaters from landing and using my property as a toilet or camping area.   Statistically, boating on the Rogue is dangerous.  People die from boating accidents on the Rogue River every year, particularly downstream at famous rapids at Blossom Bar.  Standing on shore is not very dangerous.  Snake bites at my property are unknown to me.  But snake bites are disproportionately frightening.  They are sudden and unexpected, and it takes place by the volition of the snake.  One could be mindlessly voiding ones bladder on my property, minding ones own business, when from out of nowhere a snake bites their exposed parts.  Frightening!  The snake had agency, not the boater, the consequences are serious and painful.  Something to think about if you trespass on my property.

Trump had better instincts on what would motivate people than did President Obama.  Statistically, native born Americans do far more criminal acts than to undocumented people here, but news organizations, especially Fox, highlight the newsworthy examples of criminality by the undocumented.  Obama's speeches after the terror murders in San Bernardino, at Fort Hood, at the Boston Marathon were emotionally inadequate.  Obama spoke calmly and rationally.  He appeared saddened but resolute.  Americans watching the breaking news headlines were angry and fearful.  

Obama did not share our anger.  He should have.  Trump did.  Trump appeared to "get" the situation.  Obama, and then Hillary Clinton with her campaign that spoke to the value of immigration and inclusion, didn't address the emotional effect of the crimes that were in our faces and visible.  The crimes are salient.  The statistics are not.

Trump proceeded his Boca Raton speech that I witnessed, and multiple others I saw via the media, with a tearful speech by the mother of a victim of a crime by an undocumented person.   Terror events are theater.  They are designed to be newsworthy, and they are important because they are in fact newsworthy.  The murder of a person by an undocumented immigrant is not national news, so Trump brought the mothers to his speeches and put them right in our faces.

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A person with a surprise snake bite on the bare bottom has a right to be angry with the snake.  Yes, the snake was just doing what a snake does and one cannot make a rational, moral objection to the snake bite.  The rattlesnake is a rattlesnake.  But a response of anger is natural and human.  On reflection, in repose, a rational calculation of the relative risks of snake bites make sense, but in the moment of helpless surprise and pain, while rushing to the hospital, anger at that damned snake is pretty human.

The salient is more significant than the rational.   Democrats who insist on being sensible, rational, objective--and who contextualize the snake, explaining that the riverbank is its home, that it is just defending its young--will win the argument in graduate school philosophy discussion groups, but they will lose elections with voters.