Life's confirmation biases

Meet Matthew. Matthew is a normal guy in every dimension, but in the fact that he is an extreme optimist. He only knows how to look at the bright side of things, so much that sometimes his mates think he is a bit delusional. For example when their luggage was lost and they had to attend an award ceremony in flip-flops Matthew kept saying how positive the experience was, as not only did they get to be more comfortable, but also got the perfect ice-breaker to establish conversation with other participants of the venue. This uncommon perspective extended to every aspect of Matthew’s life. When everything was dark, he held to this optimistic vibe by feeling grateful that he could experience sadness. He tended to always downplay bad situations, and overestimate the positive outcomes.

This way of facing the world made of Matthew a very friendly guy. People enjoyed Matthew’s company and stuck around him just because it felt good. Some people were envious of the way his life was developing, just because everything seemed to be working out, but little did they know it was just a matter of perspective. Others saw luck where there was only this change of frame. It was not that Matthew’s life was perfectly suited to his persona, but rather that he constantly adapted to accept any event in the most favorable way. This constant adaptation was a dance between Matthew and the destiny, where he always attempted to find the best move so that everything was harmonic and fluid.

Matthew consciously decided not to focus in the bad things, but rather think of them as positives, invest the energy that so many others spent complaining into tilting the balance to the other side. It was an addictive feeling, the more that he did it, the better he became at doing so, so the easier it became to keep doing it. He was a firm believer that complaining would make things worse because the sole fact of thinking about the bad thing would make it more solid, and by complaining constantly about it, it would become a reality, so much rooted into one’s life that getting rid of it would be as hard as getting rid of a behavioural trait.

Because of this posture, Matthew’s life seemed to him that it was perfect, that any change would eventually derive in things being different, and consequently worse. He convinced himself that his life was the best possible one at all stages. In other words he often commited confirmation bias, where he thought his life was the best possible one just because it was the life he was living. This would make him slightly change-adverse, as he would rather convince himself of things being good rather than exploring better alternatives. This situation creeped into every corner of his life, from career choices, to relationships, to the place that he lived or the food that he ate.

This could spiral down into a situation where Matthew was living an objectively bad life, but he had convinced himself that it was a good one. This self-imposed blindness was something that he was aware of, and from time to time he tried to look at it from afar just to be certain that his life was not significantly worsening.

Also sometimes, the destiny would give Matthew a little help into optimizing some of his life aspects, for example when his girlfriends broke up with him, he looked for someone new with many different traits and qualities to those of his exes. Somehow he was conscious that it would be better for him to have a partner with such new traits, but he was only capable of seeing this once the relationship was over. While in it, he convinced himself that his partner was the optimal one, or at least he tried to make it work to the extent where he felt that no one else could do better in her stead. When freed from defending one option over all other candidates, he could see it for what it was worth, and then stop convincing himself of the positivity of some questionable traits, but just seek objectively better ones.

These forced life optimizations were bittersweet, as he could see how much his life would improve when freed from this self-imposed restrictions. He could now find a job, girlfriend, house, city, hobby that would maximize his preferences from the very start! But at the same time he pondered on how many things he takes as optimals, when in reality could be improved with very little effort.

The fear of ending up in a worse spot when attempting to improve would normally keep him from trying altogether, but in times where other optimals were revealed he felt bad of his conservative posture.

Living with these confirmation biases felt easier than letting go one sure thing for a potential improvement. Doing otherwise felt like gambling, and this lack of control was not something that Matthew enjoyed. Reflecting on this was scary, because how much better could his life actually be if he did not act this way? But does it really matter if Matthew truly believes that his life is close to the optimal either way?

I’m a lot like Matthew, in fact Matthew is nothing other than a prosaic reflection of myself and (one of) my limitations. I am conscious of convincing myself that the different aspects of my life are very close to optimals, even when that might not be true. In other words, I also commit confirmation bias constantly in different aspects of my life. And same as Matthew, I get to realise this when life imposes on me a change that I had not previously anticipated, and I surprise myself wanting for things that are very different from what I had before.

This incapacitating fear of worsening the situation when taking action is a very real thing, and impairs the judgement on when life-conditions are worsening or makes low-hanging improvements seem sketchy and possibly not worth the risk. I believe it is very easy to optimize life when optimizing just a very narrow dimension, for example optimizing for money in a career choice, allows to set an objective metric that you can always compare against, and decide whether or not to go for the change. It all becomes harder when looking at the bigger picture and introducing uncertainty, will this new exciting job give me the same flexibility that my current job offers? Is the marginal improvement worth the friction of knowing the team and the tools?

I find this kind of questions very hard to answer, and I would often adopt a conservative strategy until life takes me out of my comfort spot, and I no longer have no safe option to compare candidates to. This causes me to find a true global optimal, without having to think on the downside of giving up the former.

But yet again, is it really a big deal as long as I’m convinced that my life is close to the optimal at all points? I.e. as long as I’m satisfied with my life.