[HN Gopher] Eight studies reveal a bias in human imagination
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Eight studies reveal a bias in human imagination
Author : saikatsg
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-12-25 07:23 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (experimentalhistory.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (experimentalhistory.substack.com)
| bhk wrote:
| But what about the _mundane_ explanation? It 's not about
| imagination but motivation. When people are asked a question,
| they generally assume that a "stupid" answer is not what is
| desired.
|
| Where is the nearest grocery store? "Earth."
|
| How can your phone be worse or better? "It could not work."
|
| There are endless ways, most of them uninteresting, to make
| something worse. Making something better is interesting.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The way to test this might be to ask about something that's so
| bad there are fewer (hence more interesting) ways to make it
| worse than to make it better?
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Exactly. When asked about how something is, people generally
| don't think anyone wants ideas on how to make it worse.
| int_19h wrote:
| They eventually rephrased the question to specifically say
| "... better or worse". It didn't change anything.
| ilyt wrote:
| Of course it didn't. Why would it ? Making stuff better is
| more interesting, unless you're holding "pick the most
| comical way to make something bad".
| solarmist wrote:
| My understanding is that all perceptions are done by temporal
| diff. So comparison of what has changed since the last sample.
|
| So using comparison is probably our default way of looking at
| things. Which is what the studies say.
| lgessler wrote:
| You might be curious to know that philosophers and linguists
| would see your (good) examples as violations of the Gricean
| maxim of quantity. More:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
| hacker_9 wrote:
| There is a simple explanation for why humans tend to say how
| things could be 'better', when you ask them how things could be
| 'different'. It's even one of the core beliefs of buddhism: life
| is suffering.
|
| To unpack that statement, think about someone that does nothing
| with their life. Literally nothing. They'll quickly suffer
| hunger, starvation and finally a slow death. These are the
| defaults of life, you cannot sit still. It is not a choice. Even
| us who feed ourselves, and live a life, will still suffer old age
| and death. All one can do is take action in their life to reduce
| their suffering now, and in the future. You can apply this model
| to all facets of life, from relationships, work, gym, healthy
| eating, art and so on.
|
| So really the study has just thought about it from the wrong
| angle. It's not people thinking 'how things could be better', its
| the brain naturally thinking 'how can I reduce my suffering
| further'.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Somewhat counterintuitively, people are often more creative when
| they have more restrictions in place. Being limited in what you
| can do can make people more likely to find creative solutions.
|
| I suspect that this is an example. There are a huge number of
| ways things could be worse, and a far smaller number of ways
| things could be better. So it may actually be easier to come up
| with examples from the latter set, since your options are more
| restricted.
| jbotz wrote:
| It might be interesting to check if this effect correlates
| (inversely) to gratefulness / religious practice. I mean, if you
| only think about how things could be better you might not be so
| grateful for the things you have, but if you think at least
| sometimes about how they could be worse, then you might!
| causality0 wrote:
| This is not mysterious. A preference for imagining improvements
| is evolutionary beneficial.
| meekstro wrote:
| [dead]
| scotty79 wrote:
| > For instance, why do people hate Congress and love their
| phones? Obviously the answer is "Congress is bad and my phone is
| good," but what's actually happening in people's heads when they
| say that?
|
| Congress is a clique filled with old inside traders that hoard
| money like dragons while the phone is a device which enables me
| to even know about that. That's what's going in my head.
| syzarian wrote:
| It seems to me that very wealthy people hoard money like
| dragons. Congresspeople generally aren't very wealthy. Instead
| it seems like prostitution is a better analogy. Congresspeople
| quite often have their votes swayed for relatively small
| amounts of money.
|
| I'm being pedantic on the analogy because I think it's
| important for people to have the right framing on a major
| problem with American politics. Namely, too much money going to
| campaigns and PACs influencing politicians. Congresspeople
| generally aren't super rich.
|
| Your point about what goes on in your head still stands.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Congresspeople regularly outperform the market with their
| investment which is called "insider trading" and is forbidden
| for anyone else but them. I'm not saying that's the biggest
| issue with them, but that was what came to my mind first.
| geysersam wrote:
| Maybe they're smarter and more knowledgeable than the
| average trader?
| danaris wrote:
| This doesn't pass the sniff test.
|
| There's nothing about being a Congressperson that lends
| itself _better_ to the kinds of knowledge or intelligence
| that would increase the chances of betting well on the
| stock market...
|
| ...except the knowledge that comes from a) knowing what
| legislation will be ahead of time, and b) getting "paid"
| in insider knowledge from companies that want favorable
| treatment. (And possibly other kinds of insider-trading-
| type knowledge; I'm not particularly familiar with the
| specific methods they use.)
| geysersam wrote:
| > There's nothing about being a Congressperson that lends
| itself better to the kinds of knowledge or intelligence
| that would increase the chances of betting well on the
| stock market
|
| How do you know that? Their outcomes indicate otherwise.
|
| They're clearly in some regards quite exceptional people.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| How do their exceptional investment insights fare after
| they leave Congress (and, for completeness, the Senate.)
| bardworx wrote:
| Or they use a professional that routinely outperforms
| their specific benchmark.
| ilyt wrote:
| At glance making money at non-engineering is more
| correlated with sociopathy than above average
| intelligence...
| syzarian wrote:
| I understand and agree that this is a great corruption but
| they don't have Smaug levels of wealth and so your analogy
| fails. They are prostitutes that sell their votes/souls for
| money in order to influence outcomes.
| bardworx wrote:
| Right...why is this nonsense becoming normalized?
|
| Congress folk are highly likely to have an investment
| professional managing their money, who usually outperform
| "the market" (whatever that means, considering most don't
| benchmark S&P for obvious reasons).
|
| What I really don't get is that most insider trades make
| less than 70k before going to jail and even with inside
| information, a large percentage of insider trades don't
| make money (but you still go to jail). Yet folks think it's
| some kind of cheat code.
|
| Folks need to stop reading WSB.
| brookst wrote:
| Are you under the impression that it is illegal for
| members of Congress to engage in insider trading, so
| therefore the absence of prosecution proves it is not a
| frequent occurrence?
|
| The laws are literally different for them:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/it-illegal-
| lawmake...
| bardworx wrote:
| It is illegal: https://www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ105
| /PLAW-112publ105.h...
|
| SEC, that prosecutes insider trading, is a civil
| regulatory body and cannot send people to jail, which the
| article mentions for some odd reason. And I'd put the
| odds at 100:1 that any prosecutor in the SEC would love
| to go after a Congress person to further their career.
|
| Lastly, not sure most are aware, insider trading is
| usually spotted by SECs internal AI/algo that is
| connected to all brokers, clearing houses, etc. they are
| very good at finding folks.
|
| Edit: another thing that is missing from this discussion
| is the SEC awards a portion of the proceeds to the
| whistleblower of any case. I just can't believe no one
| ratted out a Congress member for retirement money and all
| members are security masterminds.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| >Congresspeople regularly outperform the market with their
| investment which is called "insider trading"
|
| Have you considered the selection bias going on as an
| alternative explanation. Maybe the people with the
| competence and skills to get to Congress are just smarter
| than the average person with an investment account.
| brookst wrote:
| It's a fair theory but given the long track record of
| proven insider trading, their connections to people with
| insider information, and their repeated refusal to enact
| prohibitions on insider trading (it is in fact perfectly
| legal, despite efforts to apply the same rules that
| everyone else plays by), I think there is a lot of
| evidence _for_ systemic corruption and against "they're
| just better investors".
| bardworx wrote:
| By your theory, auditors should be put into jail on a
| much higher rate as they have WAY MORE insider
| information, yet they don't.
|
| Also, there is a law prohibiting senators from trading on
| insider information, which kinda goes against your whole
| point.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ105/PLAW-112publ10
| 5.h...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There are also laws against rape, murder, and jaywalking,
| yet they happen daily.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Congress and its foibles are organizational behavior writ large
| and expensive.
|
| We've reverted to a quasi-aristocracy and there is scant will
| to leverage tech in order to realize the ideals of the
| Constitution.
| int_19h wrote:
| Reverted? That seems to be the inherent arrangement in
| representative democracy without an imperative mandate.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| We could probably replace Congress with an app. That's what is
| going through my head.
| int_19h wrote:
| I kinda wonder now... if you took a language model like
| ChatGPT, and additionally trained it on, say, public votes,
| statements, speeches, publications etc of some particular
| politician, how reliable would it be at predicting future
| votes of that politician?
| yucky wrote:
| For sure, I nominate TikTok so we can accelerate the
| inevitable app based government debacle.
| gauddasa wrote:
| Almost all cultures lay emphasis on using positive words than
| saying negative words. Long ago there was a superstition that
| spoken words might become true. It is not completely superstition
| as words do have psychological effects on the listener or
| thinker. So when encouraged to talk in certain way, it encourages
| to think the same way.
| karmakaze wrote:
| The 'possibly universal' came from also conducting a survey with
| English speaking Polish and Mandarin speaking mainland Chinese
| people. But what might the results have been if the experiment
| was done with paranoid people which likely wouldn't have been in
| these samples? 'Cross-cultural' would be a better description.
| prettyStandard wrote:
| https://archive.vn/2XkG3
| unity1001 wrote:
| Side info - here is the major recent revelation about human
| nature that is backed by the largest social study of its kind:
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-...
| int_19h wrote:
| This isn't new - ethologists have been making similar
| conclusions about altruism for a long time now, including
| studies on very young children (which show that it kicks in
| somewhere around 2-3 years of age).
|
| The catch is that said altruism is rather strongly affected by
| parochiality, meaning that it's weaker towards the outgroup,
| and conflict of interests between the ingroup and the outgroup
| tends to override it.
| twayt wrote:
| This is about language, not thinking. When you use the word
| could, it usually implies a positive spin on things.
| xvilka wrote:
| It's not a bias, 99.999999999% of things in the Universe could
| have been better.
| richardjam73 wrote:
| I don't think you can get possibly universal measurements on
| humanity by relying on services like mechanical turk for results.
| danaris wrote:
| This is why they deliberately went out of their way to get some
| non-WEIRD[0] subjects for the later studies.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
| phkahler wrote:
| I was heading to my mom's for Christmas when my kid said "we
| forgot grandma's present". I said I'm glad you remembered now and
| not later. I could have imagined it differently but worse "wish
| you remembered before we left". So in this case different was
| worse for me.
| b3morales wrote:
| Interesting observation. There are some people who would have
| responded in the latter fashion. They're generally quite
| unpleasant to be around, and perhaps that points to another
| "cause" for this apparent positivity bias. Persistent
| negativity might be selected against in both cultural and
| genetic evolution.
| phkahler wrote:
| It may be that I wanted to make my daughter feel better in
| spite of her (and my) mistake, rather than blame her.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That's interesting to read. I find that I do imagine how things
| could be worse in specific situations, the usual example being
| right before I get what I might want.
|
| But in that case I'm almost always comparing hypothetical to
| hypothetical, i.e. bracing myself before trying someone's first
| homecooked meal. I imagine that I'm about to eat literal dirt,
| and this makes even lightly-seasoned sludge taste somewhat fancy.
| Sakos wrote:
| Before all the nitpicking starts I want to point out this part,
| which I found most interesting:
|
| > Everybody knows about the hedonic treadmill: once you're
| moderately happy, it's hard to get happier. But nobody has ever
| really explained why this happens. People say things like, "oh,
| you get used to good things," but that's just a description, not
| an explanation. Why do people get used to good things?
|
| > Now we might have an answer: people get used to good things
| because they're always imagining how things could be better. So
| even if things get better, you might not feel better. When you
| live in a cramped apartment, you dream of getting a house. When
| you get a house, you dream of a second house. Or you dream of
| lower property taxes. Or a hot tub. Or two hot tubs. And so on,
| forever.
| kodah wrote:
| Anecdotally, my brain is pretty wired for making plans. When I
| didn't have a house and security my plan was that. Every move I
| made was connected to those plans in some way.
|
| When I got a house, I spent a bunch of money and it was during
| a recession, so my two adjacent plans then became derivative. I
| already have plans for when I'm secure, but they're mostly
| around optimizing for cost, efficiency, and reliability.
|
| I used to not have a lot of money, and for a time, was stuck in
| the poor cycle. Plan making let me escape that thinking/action
| cycle.
|
| Now, I don't think I'd be less happy without optimizations to
| my house unless they violated some ideal I had like living
| frugally. I was definitely unhappy watching my chances to get a
| house slip away but I turned that into some happiness by
| realizing that every time I walked away from a deal I had a
| little more money, which increased my odds of not only getting
| a house, but getting the _exact_ one I wanted. By the time I
| bought a house I basically dictated the terms because I had
| cash in a recession.
| danaris wrote:
| > Before all the nitpicking starts...
|
| ...because we can all imagine how the article could be better!
| Sakos wrote:
| Touche
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Because there's an evolutionary advantage to thinking you could
| be happy, not for actually being happy.
| bardworx wrote:
| Can you expand on why you think that?
|
| (Btw, I agree with you but want to check my priors)
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I'll let the depression turtle elaborate on my behalf. Now
| You Happy Always Maybe
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWkq7btSQvs
| bardworx wrote:
| If that video is accurate does that imply tool use in
| other mammals is because they weren't happy? For example:
| ravens use sticks, does that imply that they will evolve
| with unhappiness?
|
| Then how come other animals like orcas and dolphins that
| show signs of a mood didn't keep evolving their general
| intelligence?
|
| Kinda hand wavy video but maybe that's the idea? Not
| sure.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Are ravens ever happy with what they have? I legit don't
| know. What I do know is that the innovation of a
| permanently unsatisfied brain is an incredibly recent
| fork. So close we don't even separate it from modern
| humans. So close that you could reasonably argue if its
| actually biological evolution or if its the principle of
| natural selection applied on a sociological level
| instead.
|
| The industrial revolution and the great windfall of
| wealth that came with it didn't make people happier (to
| the extent we can measure it). But there is one group
| that does seem to find happiness: the small pockets of
| civilization which took a different road, never bothering
| to switch from hunter-gatherer to farming.
| bardworx wrote:
| First, thank you for actually discussing this because I'm
| interested in this topic and appreciate your point of
| view.
|
| I do not know if any animal is "happy" but this[0] is the
| paper (and there are quite a few that are similar in
| nature) that have empirical evidence that "happy
| chemicals" aren't only there for happiness.
|
| Another point is that the "happiest" and longest living
| pockets of civilization are actually farmers[1]. Costa
| Rica and CA should be discounted as there is a 20 year
| average age discrepancy between Japan/Italy/Greece(90s)
| and CA/Costa Rica (70s).
|
| In my opinion, I would say that happiness is evolutionary
| and it is driven by desire to get better/explore, etc.
| This fits your thesis but I fork at the notion that it's
| a driver. My hunch is that happiness is kinda like candy
| or weekends -- intended in small doses as reward for
| survival. Since "happy chemicals" are responsible for
| such a large swath of human bodily functions[2], a high
| release can have detrimental effects (dopamine is
| responsible for movement and memory, for example, in
| addition to motivation).
|
| Basically, I agree with the video that we're not suppose
| to be always happy and our search is actually a by
| product of understanding "happiness". Kinda how pigs will
| purposefully knock apples to the ground and eat them a
| week or two later to get drunk[3].
|
| [0]:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720267/
|
| [1]: https://time.com/5160475/blue-zones-healthy-long-
| lives/?amp=...
|
| [2]: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22581
| -dopamin...
|
| [3]: https://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/drunk-pigs/
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Emotions in general are hard to define, let alone pin to
| a particular chemical. If I were wearing my contrarian
| cap I would question the extrapolation from "happiness
| correlates" in humans to other animals.
|
| Sadly, that's about all the time for in depth effort
| posting I have today. Maybe if I had more time I'd be
| happy...
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I mean, we have a physiological answer to the question,
| dopaminergic circuits control desire and goals, putting us on
| the treadmill, whereas serotonin circuits avoid that and bring
| contentment.
| tantalor wrote:
| > How could X be different?
|
| This is great prompt for ChatGPT. I had fun exploring its
| internal biases. Examples:
|
| guns -> add safety & tracking features
|
| drug abuse -> decriminalization, safe injection sites
|
| national defense policy -> fewer nukes, more cyber & space
| defense
|
| interrogation techniques -> more ethics & sensitivity training,
| more psychological & non-coercive techniques
|
| environmental regulation -> prevention, penalties,
| accountability, global approach
|
| cryptocurrency -> scale up, security features, regulation,
| integration
|
| abortion -> increase access, funding, legal protection
|
| racial justice -> more academic, employment & leadership
| opportunities, intersectionality
|
| It clearly has a bias towards lefty, pro-government, pro-
| regulation positions. I would assume because its training inputs
| came more from academia, less from right-wing rants.
| b3morales wrote:
| It seems more pertinent to ask it about more general or even
| neutral items, like the study did, rather than inherently
| political and controversial ones.
| kaoD wrote:
| I suspect its fitness function was not only explicitly
| rewarding lefty rants, but also punishing righty rants.
| isitmadeofglass wrote:
| I really doubt the claim that this is independent of the phrasing
| of the question.
|
| I assume strongly that if you phrase the question as "how might
| your life be worse or better" people will also thing of negative
| alternatives.
|
| The thing is when you only ask "how might your life be different"
| people will pull on what they have already thought about and most
| people have plans and dreams for improvements already in their
| mind.
| int_19h wrote:
| "... worse or better" was one of the phrasings that they've
| tried, per the article, and didn't see any changes in their
| studies.
| np- wrote:
| Not directly related to the conclusion but I did find it
| interesting how they claimed the Mandarin study was identical but
| also clearly omitted some of the most initially "negatively"
| viewed topics like coronavirus, government, and politics
| (probably for obvious reasons, but also seems like it might
| affect the results too keeping things squarely in the positive
| category to start).
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