The Failure Bias
Those industrious little freetards over at Wikipedia list a whole bunch of flaws in the way that people think, "cognitive biases". Are these useful when attempting to understand how noobs think? Today I review the works of Kahneman, and conclude that he wasted his life.
About To Drop The Bomb
Confirmation Bias is a good starting point to illustrate his categorization – given some incorrect hypothesis (chicks dig iPhones), your average noob will only need a single smile from a fat chick to confirm it. On the other hand, the usual hypothesis I advance to the noobs I work with (“you are doing it wrong”) is constantly confirmed by the chaps in QA. Not just occasionally, but a handful of new critical bugs every damn day confirmation. I would expect this to confirm that they should listen to what I am saying – so much so that there should be a fucking Cult Of My Goddamn Awesomeness by now. Statues, virgins, offerings…
Bow Down
Sadly there doesn’t appear to be a cult developing, and the golden statue of my testicles in the boardroom is not present. So I conclude that it is not useful to identify a whole bunch of cognitive biases; people just do shit wrong. They do it wrong in all sorts of directions. Their failure only needs to be categorized and documented because its usually hilarious. They miss the target every damn time, and this is not due to a Left Bias, Down Bias, or Shot Self In Own Nuts Bias – they are just terrible at what they do.
The only real bias is the Failure Bias, because winning is hard. Leave aiming to the professionals.
