Is There a Source of Error?

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There are more judicial errors produced by noise than by bias. Noise is different source of error, the variability across judges. If we do see a cemetries in the hiring of people of color, women, or whatever, it may not be systemic racism. It may be some form of noise. There may be both systematic criticism and noise te you know, they're independent of each other.

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.