The Most Important Source of Noise

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We are not surprised that we all have different personalities, he says. We don't go through life imagining how i could have seen things differently tan the way i do see them. That's when that's very difficult to rap o. In our mind, we see one thing, we understand one thing, and we basically expect other people to agree with us. And that expectation of agreement is incorrect.

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients. Now imagine that the same doctor making a different decision depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. This is an example of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.

Shermer speaks with Nobel Prize winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman about the detrimental effects of noise and what we can do to reduce both noise and bias, and make better decisions in: medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection.