okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Sunday, April 01, 2007
"You look at your map but your mind plays tricks..."
You look at your map but your mind plays tricks on you - confirmation bias - because you see only the landmarks you expect to see and neglect those that should tell you that in fact you're still at sea. Your skewed reading of the map "confirms" your mistaken assumptions that you have reached your destination.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The quote is from a book I'm reading called How Doctors Think (by Jerome Groopman). It is really about how people think but the author uses medical decisions and mistakes as the context for explaining the ways people think.
If you've read Malcolm Gladwell, you might like Groopman's book. You can read a New Yorker article by Groopman here (I think it is an excerpt from the book).
And for something completely different, here is a snapshot from today's training.
