Hindsight Bias Quotes

The worse the consequence, the greater the hindsight bias. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Imagine taking a test knowing the answer. While we know that history flows forward, it is difficult to realize that we envision it backward. Why is it so? We will discuss the point in Chapter 11 but here is a possible explanation: Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but, rather, to get out of trouble rapidly and have progeny. If they were made for us to understand things, then we would have a machine in it that would run the past history as in a VCR, with a correct chronology, and it would slow us down so much that we would have trouble operating. Psychologists call this overestimation of what one knew at the time of the event due to subsequent information the hindsight bias, the "I knew it all along" effect. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Between hindsight bias, fake causality, positive bias, anchoring/priming, et cetera et cetera, and above all the dreaded confirmation bias, once an idea gets into your head, it's probably going to stay there. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

So long as we trace the development from its final outcome backwards, the chain of events appears continuous, and we feel we have gained an insight which is completely satisfactory or even exhaustive. But if we proceed in the reverse way, if we start from the premises inferred from the analysis and try to follow these up to the final results, then we no longer get the impression of an inevitable sequence of events which could not have otherwise been determined. ~ Sigmund Freud

Reality looks much more obvious in hindsight than in foresight. People who experience hindsight bias misapply current hindsight to past foresight. They perceive events that occurred to have been more predictable before the fact than was actually the case. ~ Hersh Shefrin

This simple inability to remember not the true sequence of events but a reconstructed one will make history appear in hindsight to be far more explainable than it actually was - or is. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I think, one thing that I've really come to appreciate about my parents as I've got older is you know, how wise they really were. As a kid when I was growing up, as any kid, you think you know every thing and I was no different to that. I had different opinions on a lot of different things then them but the way they raised me, in hindsight, they were right. ~ Tiger Woods

Knowing that one may be subject to bias is one thing; being able to correct it is another. ~ Jon Elster

Have you ever had that moment when you looked back on something and said, 'Well, gosh, that seems obvious now ... why didn't I see it then?' I like to call this the Face Palm Epiphany. Oh, hindsight, you magical, humbling thing. ~ Alethea Kontis

Conversion turns the bias of the WILL both as to means and end. The intentions of the will are altered. Now the man has new ends and designs. He now intends God above all, and desires and designs nothing in all the world, so much as that Christ may be magnified in him. He counts himself more happy in this than in all that the earth could yield, that he may be serviceable to Christ, and bring Him glory. This is the mark he aims at, that the name of Jesus may be great in the world. ~ Joseph Alleine

I've fought for religious freedom and I can tell you that anti-gay 'religious freedom' bills aren't it. ~ DaShanne Stokes

It's the arrangement of events which makes the stories. It's throwing away, compressing, underlining. Hindsight can give structure to anything, but you have to be able to see it. Breathing, waking and sleeping: our lives are steamed and shaped into stories. Knowing that is what keeps me from going insane, and though I don't like to admit it, sometimes it's the only thing. ~ Carol Shields

Central authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. And without a central authority, there are lots of little authorities, and we learn which ones to trust. ~ John Stossel

... Whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases. ~ Max Weber

We may be grown-up biologically, but in terms of a spiritual journey, we are children. When you were a child, you probably felt much more grown up with each year that passed. But with hindsight, it is easy to see that at each age we were still immature in ways that we did not suspect. The same thing with our spiritual maturity: it is a lifetime-project! ~ Dana Williams

One editor during the Civil War got a grievous message to meet his brothers corpse, only to find out that the telegraph operator had garbled the message to meet his living brother's CORPS. ~ Harold Holzer

The human tendency toward confirmatory thinking - all of us are bias to seek information that fits what we already believe. ~ Valerie Tarico

There's a socialist bias to the consensus of the literary world: a '30s mentality that says factory workers are more worthy of our attention. ~ Jay McInerney

they seem unable to retain this very simple truth for long, although they have been told again and again, and this is because of another and most powerful feature of their thinking, which is that anything they are told is distorted to fit their own particular personal or group bias and then added, like another pebble to the pile of the half-truths they already cherish. ~ Doris Lessing

He taught me early in life to take people one at a time, based on their individual qualities and never as a member of a group. That led, he said, to hatred and bias; that was what the Nazis had done. ~ Robert M. Gates

When I look at a person, I see a person - not a rank, not a class, not a title. ~ Criss Jami

...the modern bias in contemporary Western scholarship (which has spread to the rest of the world as well) insists upon focusing all attention on the formation of the modern world and 'modernity.' By directing attention to a time period rather than to a region, Western scholars can place the West at the center of any discussion, and subordinate backward Asia to Western history, without explicitly condemning Asian cultures and polities or arguing for a narrowly Eurocentric view of the world. Nevertheless, modern history is effectively a racist pursuit that not only elevates white Westerners above all others, but also actively denigrates Asian history. ~ Peter A. Lorge

Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept? ~ Bernhard Schlink

Jiu Jitsu opened up doors in my mind that public education had bolted shut. In hindsight, I see just how superficial my thoughts had been prior to this art. It is no coincidence that my efforts in reading and writing have run parallel with this craft. I began training Jiu Jitsu at twenty-two, and at the time of this writing I am about to turn thirty. I have learned more in the past eight years than the previous twenty-two, and have no doubts that Jiu Jitsu opened up my mind in a way traditional organized education never could. Jiu Jitsu gave me a life when I didn't know how to live. It is the best thing I have ever done, and is the foundation upon which all I will do. ~ Chris Matakas

Hindsight is common and bland as boiled potatoes. ~ Maureen Howard

There's a sorry history of these kinds of charges of bias being leveled at women and judges of color, and also gay and lesbian judges. The theory being that they're going to be incapable of a disinterested judgment on matters that involve their own identity groups. And it came up famously for Constance Baker Motley who was one of the first African American federal judges in a case involving sex discrimination. ~ Deborah Rhode

Such vows . . . strike one with a sort of horror at what happened afterwards. ~ Anne Somerset

That's stupid, that's bias.. they lied, they don't wanna gift credit for anything ~ Michael J. Jackson

A major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one's own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason. The study of history can help to counteract this natural human bias. ~ Raymond Geuss

Oh! the wisdom, the foresight and the hindsight and the rightsight and the leftsight, the northsight and the southsight, and the eastsight and the westsight that appeared in that august assembly. ~ John Adams

I know what you must be thinking: What a bitch. And you'll get no argument from me on that one. I was pretty messed up back then. I loved Elias with all my head, and that scared the hell out of me.
But I should get something out of the way before I dive into the excuses of why I was the way I was. I'm sure Elias sugarcoated me with his bias and all, but if this story is going to be told, then it needs to be told in its truth and entirety, without Band-Aids and training wheels.
I was fucked up. ~ J.A. Redmerski

Hindsight plays tricks on our minds. ~ Jeremy Siegel

With hindsight, we see that the Soviet Union never had a chance of world domination, but we didn't know that then. ~ Ken Follett

I think that there is a bias in the current literary climate, which is not only very Western but very male. ~ Gish Jen

We talked about it. An assistant coach suggested fouling, but I rejected it because I was afraid we'd foul them shooting and get beat that way. Hindsight couldn't have been worse than what happened to us. ~ John Whisenant

The systemic bias for continuity creates tolerance for the substandard. ~ Clay Shirky