Feelings vs Facts? Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions - FutureIQ

6,802 views Wait, is this logic right? • Feb 21, 2025

Slog Reference: The Science of Incorrect Decisions

Description

In this episode, we will talk about why we make wrong decisions without realizing it—and why we stubbornly stick to them! Have you ever made a choice, felt totally confident about it, and later realized you were missing key information? Turns out, most of us do this all the time! A study from top universities reveals how overconfidence, bias, and selective information shape our thinking—and why even when given the full picture, 2 out of 3 people refuse to change their minds.

We’ll break down how these mental traps work, how they’re used to manipulate us, and—most importantly—how to outsmart them. You’ll also hear real-life examples of how misinformation spreads and how to make smarter, more informed decisions. If you’ve ever wondered why people believe things that aren’t true (or if you might be doing it too!), this episode is for you!

Get your copy of Tim Urban's "What's Our Problem" at this link - https://tapthe.link/timurban

Related videos:
From Instinct to Insight - How Do We Really Decide? Bayesian Thinking - Future IQ: https://youtu.be/9_Ffrs0YyX0
ChatGPT Can Make You Dumb OR Smart - You Choose: https://youtu.be/McdWSLWQUkA
Dunning Kruger Effect: https://youtu.be/GtmcY3t5hB4?si=BWsduTjQKJVSZYaD
Illusion of Explanatory Depth: https://youtu.be/_ak0k7GNCjM?si=I6xJ1LbPDQ4fMgyl
Preference Falsification: https://youtu.be/Pwh90BkWRt8?si=qGO7Lr8IskMD9ZBP
Group Conformism: https://youtu.be/_XhIECCt_P8?si=FIG0_Xdbwe6dzqoE
System 1 vs System 2: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4?si=M-oY4JfWa5Y4O4Lx

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Sources cited -
Research paper: The illusion of information adequacy https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0310216

Chapters:
00:00 3 Scientific reasons for making Stupid decisions
01:15 How does Science prove this?
04:38 Am I also Stupid? Or am I.. Confidently Stupid?
06:28 IT GETS WORSE?!
09:00 But.. What about the Backfire Effect then?
12:00 THIS is how NOT to be Idiot :)

#futureiq #incorrectdecision

Related Slog Matches

The Science of Incorrect Decisions

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Transcript

- why are there so many incorrect decisions around us why are so many people idiotic right science has the answers that will surprise you science shows three things okay first it shows that we and I'm including you in this including all the idiots okay that we take decisions even though we do not have enough information okay we feel confident in taking the decisions without realizing that we don't know the whole story okay second we feel that everyone else will reach the same conclusion as us projection yes projection and third that when we have taken such a decision and then later on we find out all the extra information that we didn't have the first time which

0m 54s might have caused us to change the decision we do not change our mind because we get attached to our first decision okay ah red Corning group conformism preference falsification so many episodes we've done on this and now it seems like uh there is one single scientific whatever that ties everything together right Enlighten us yes let's look at how science proves these things right so there's a great new research paper by researchers from John Hopkins University Stanford and Ohio State okay okay what they did was they got a lot of participants and participants were told that they have to decide whether a struggling school should merge with another school or it should continue on their current course okay now they had

1m 45s an article giving seven different Arguments for and against merge or stay separate okay okay out of these seven arguments three arguments were Pro merge okay three arguments were anti- merg so stay separate okay and one argument was neutral okay okay and the participants were broken up into three groups okay the control group was given a paper with all seven arguments in it and told to take a decision all right group two was given only the paper with the three PR merge arguments and the neutral argument okay okay the three anti- merge arguments stay separate were not included in this paper all right and group three we did the reverse which is give them a paper with the three anti-

2m 37s merge arguments and the one neutral argument and the three PR merge arguments were left out of this so this was a randomized controlled trial correct and now let's look at the results okay right the control group 55% of them voted to merge okay group two which was the pr merge arguments group 88% voted to merge and group three the stay separate group only 23% voted to merge now this result seem obvious right because the control group saw a balanced set of arguments so they are in the middle the pr merge groups only saw PR merge arguments so they are at 88% and so on right yeah but if you are consistently shown only one side of the

3m 21s argument shouldn't you realize that there is something wrong in that because you aren't seeing the other side so that is is a good point right and you as an intelligent person feel that that is what should happen right and you also as an intelligent person that you go through life like that but we know that in real life if you look around you you look at politics that this is not how the world works and the science did prove it okay the participants in the three groups were asked before they gave the decision they were asked do you feel you have enough information to make a decision in the control group 81% said yes in group

4m 06s two uh 81% said yes and in group three 80% said yes so the amount of information and how one-sided it was made no difference to how many of them thought they had enough information to make a decision okay and if you think about it for a little while you will realize that the world actually works like this everyone around you is like like this and you should also worry a little bit that you probably don't think you are like this you think you are the only exception but you know think about it I mean if all three groups had the same level of confidence about the information given to them being enough then how are we sure that we are which

4m 49s group we are in yeah so this is problem number one with the world right if one-sided arguments or a combination of one side and neutral arguments are given to us without the other side we feel well we know everything about this thing now and we are convinced yeah right okay but there's one more problem okay these people were also asked after they took the decision they were asked how confident are you with your decision okay I am interested in hearing what they have see there's a slight difference between do you have enough information for a decision and how confident right you might have all the information and you say well it's still middle 50/50 and so on right yeah

5m 35s because I would I would assume that people who have only one side of the information or one type of information might say I have I probably have enough information but I'm still not confident because something feels off about it results control group people were on an average 65% confident of their uh result okay groups two and three were 71% confident of their decision okay okay so problem number two with the world not only are our decisions wrong but they are confidently wrong and the people with less information are more confident where do they get this Confidence from this is the Dunning Krueger effect right we have done an episode on this yeah the less you know

6m 20s the more confident you are right yeah D krer strikes again but it gets much worse how much more worse can it get three groups were asked okay you reach this decision but not necessary that everyone thinks like you corre or that everyone is as convinced with this arguments as you right so what fraction of others will reach the same decision as you control group felt that on an average 62% of the others would agree with them okay group two 68% and group three felt that 63% of the others will agree with them right okay so that's problem three with the world not only are we mistaken but we think that ours is the majority opinion okay and that anyone who doesn't

7m 07s think like us we feel that they are like a minority okay which is a weird combination of projection and uh uh Dunning Krueger yes wow so recapping all the problems so far problem number one we don't realize we don't have enough information problem number two we are confidently wrong and problem number number three we think ours is the majority opinion but here's my question if I were to give each of the two groups that are not control if I were to give the opposing view to them would their opinions change there is a chance right right so in this experiment huh after the decision groups two and three were given the missing information right okay

7m 51s and they were asked will you change your decision majority of them did not 64% of group two and 68% of group three did not change their decision 2third of the people stuck to their original decision which was made with incomplete information okay yeah because now it's a hill that they want to die on now it's not just a random decision in a random study well it's not that bad okay okay in this particular case Okay the good news is that their confidence in the decision did reduce a little bit okay from 7 1% it went down to 67% okay okay that's a bit of good news right that dent in confidence is is necessary yeah except that you know what

8m 41s is it telling about the world that people with less information are more confident right Charles Bukowski has said the problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubt and the stupid ones are full of confidence we actually use that quote also in another episode which we did on the ding krer effect go check that after you finish watching this but here's my question how does this reconcile with the backfire effect because the backfire effects says that uh if your presented facts in opposition to what your views are then you get entrenched in your facts correct whereas here the confidence reduced and we have done two episodes which sort of point in the

9m 21s opposite direction one is believing is seeing yeah where once you believe something you start ignoring to the contrary and looking only at idence in favor of it corre and the other is group conformism where if everybody in your group believes something you will believe that even if you get evidence to yeah you'll rcon everything into believing that right now that is where we I have bad news okay the experiment I talked about where there was this little sliver of hope that people can change their mind was intentionally created to have a very new neutal problem okay the problem of should the school merge or not is not related to any religion or to any politics or basically anything that is

10m 10s tied to your identity people do not have strong emotional views about this right which is why there was a little bit of change in opinion but which is also depressing because the change in opinion was so small and the majority of the people did not change their opinion so if that is what is happening for such a neutral and local topic yeah imagine what will happen to a topic where people have strong views on right and where people are tribalistic about that particular topic like politics like climate change like vaccines like any number of things you can imagine we've just come out of uh a an election that had Global repercussion so that is also

10m 52s in effect right now as we speak not as you are seeing this but yeah you know what I mean but here is here's the little bit of hope that I have from this study which is that there is evidence that uh this Behavior this change in confidence this dent in confidence can be used for good right ah except that it can be used for evil also and that is being done all the time right Cherry stats is the most common form of persuasion right yeah you just go out looking for all the statistics throw away the ones which are opposed to your point of view keep the ones which are for your point of view and then present

11m 36s that to the world and this experiment shows that whomever you give this data to are going to think well this is very convincing information and they're not going to ask oh is there opposing data right I am trying to look for something good in this paper man and all I'm getting is depressing bad news from the good news is that you watch future like you and now you know right so you can improve at least your belief systems and how you do this right so I would say first always seek out more information right true true very rarely does someone give like all the points of view right very few people do that most people are

12m 21s trying to give you just one point of view to try to persuade you correct second seek out more information especially information opposite of what you are seeing usually whenever information reaches you right it is because someone is trying to persuade you and they will give you only one side it is very rare for someone to give information for both sides there are lots of people who pretend that they're doing both sides but they will have very strong Arguments for one side and pretty weak Arguments for the other yeah strong Arguments for both sides the easiest way to get that is to follow two different people one person who believes this one person who believes this but both should

13m 07s be smart people right yeah both sides have a lot of idiots right and the person here points to the idiots there and says how that side is bad the person here points to the idiots here and says how this side is bad yeah stay away from that discourse follow this person here who's giving the best Arguments for this side find a different smart person here who's giving the best Arguments for this side and after that you can take your decision correct absolutely correct right in fact we do that often for episodes on this channel as well yeah uh we conduct very heavy research and one of us is always red teaming the episode on on on the research not just that but

13m 50s there's a whole bunch of episode ideas that we had to cancel after we found that the opposing side also had convincing views and so we didn't have enough material uh for one site right correct correct so uh the most important thing that emerges from here is that the important skill you need to develop today in this age of information overload is whom to follow yeah okay point isn't to follow people on your side follow the smart people on both sides yeah and unfollow the idiots on both sides but actually I am using bad language it's not smart versus idiots right there are smart people down here who are making bad faith arguments right yes what you want to do is follow the

14m 44s good people on both sides the one who are making good faith arguments right and unfollow the people who are doing bad faith arguments right Tim arban the wait but why guy who has written a book called what's our problem in that he calls this the high rung versus low rang okay so you shouldn't think of your tribe as left or right you should think of high rank versus low rang you want to be on high rank and that's what you should do ruthlessly unfollow the low rank people from your social media and follow the high rank from both sides even if you don't agree with the Hing people on the other side yeah and don't

15m 26s trust the algorithm to find these highing people for you you have to constantly curate your follow lists unfollow people who are making bad faith arguments and what are bad faith arguments remember he said people cherry picking the worst of the arguments from the other side those are bad faith arguments those are the ones you should be unfollowing that is misinformation and check out our episode on fighting misinformation that will be a good companion to this one there are in fact five questions in that episode that all of you and all of us in fact need to ask every time we come across something that is suspicious what are those five questions you've lined up the

16m 05s episode check that out shrikant naen future I do