[SEQ RERUN] Hindsight Bias

Title: [SEQ RERUN] Hindsight Bias

Tags: sequence_reruns

Today’s post, Hindsight Bias was originally published on 16 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Hindsight bias makes us overestimate how well our model could have predicted a known outcome. We underestimate the cost of avoiding a known bad outcome, because we forget that many other equally severe outcomes seemed as probable at the time. Hindsight bias distorts the testing of our models by observation, making us think that our models are better than they really are.


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was One Argument Against an Army, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.