3 powerful illusions created by thought

Which horizontal line is longer? Chances are high you have seen this picture before. And you know that this is a trick question. The truth is that both the lines are of the same length. However, every time we see the picture, the upper line looks longer.  This is an example of an optical illusion. Similar to optical illusions, we are also subjected to illusions created by thought and they are called cognitive illusions. “Cognitive illusions can be more stubborn than visual illusions” says Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman in his best-seller “Thinking, fast and slow”. In this article, we will look at three powerful cognitive illusions – illusion of understanding, illusion of experience and illusion of truth.

Illusion of understanding¹: In the movie Queen, the protagonist Rani tells her friend, “I listened to my parents and teachers all my life. Anyone you can think of, I have listened to that person. I never wore a mini-skirt. I never misbehaved. Still I got dumped (by my fiancé).” As we make sense of the world around us, we form certain cause-and-effect relationships in our mind. For example, “listen to parents” and “things will be good in future”. “Study well” and “you will be successful” etc. They get reinforced by the success stories we are told in school, at home and in media. One thing we tend to ignore is the role of luck or chance. We study the personality traits of successful people such as Steve Jobs or Ratan Tata and conclude that if I imbibe these traits, I will be successful. At work is a rule called WYSIATI – What You See Is All There Is. We treat the available information as all there is and derive our inferences. I like the way Kahneman puts it: Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance².

Illusion of experience³: Shopping online? I am sure you have your favourite shopping site – perhaps Amazon or Flipkart or Snapdeal etc. Grocery shopping? You know where to go – your local shop or the Mall. One factor that is influencing your decision is your past experience. Perhaps you trust your experience more than anything else. And yet the memory of the experience may be fooling you. I heard following story from a workshop participant, “I and my wife visited China recently. The whole trip was great except on the last day I forgot to wish my wife on her birthday. Now nobody talks about the China trip at home.” Kahneman mentions that the memory of an experience follows the Peak-End rule and duration neglect. We remember only the peak events and the ending and we ignore the total duration of the experience. If the end is bad then the memory of the experience is bad like the China trip even if most of the trip was fun. This is an illusion of experience. Kahneman calls this the ‘tyranny of the remembering self’⁴. Whenever you shop or make any decision, you believe you are trying to ensure a better future experience. However, what you are doing is trying to ensure better anticipated memories. 

Illusion of truth⁵: This is the most subtle and perhaps the most dangerous form of cognitive illusion. A few years back I and my wife, who teaches Physics, were discussing psychology. And she said, “Psychology is not a science.” To which I said, “Have you studied psychology?” She said, “No. But I know it is all fluffy stuff. You don’t have rigor in Psychology.” Then I asked, “How can you be so confident about something you haven’t even studied?” This caused some emotional outburst and we stopped the discussion⁶. We are constantly trading beliefs for non-negotiable truths and we are not even aware of it. For example, when one of the jurors in “Twelve angry men” says, “You can’t believe a word they say. They are born liars.”, he is not even aware that he has treated a belief as an absolute truth. I remember when Aarushi Talwar murder story came out, my mom instantly knew that Arushi’s parents had committed the murder. Unfortunately, our beliefs are largely based on “how the thought-created story makes sense” or what Kahneman calls “associative and emotional coherence” rather than logical reasoning based on facts⁷. Due to our tendency of treating “belief-is-the-truth” we go to war, break relationships and commit all kinds of atrocities.

OK, you might say, so what is one to do? Well, the first step is similar to what we do when we encounter a picture with two arrows (optical illusion).  We tell ourselves, “This could be a trick. I need to be careful here.” Every time we draw a cause-and-effect relationship, judge a past experience or treat a belief as truth, we should treat the situation as if we are entering a cognitive minefield⁸.

Watch your step.

Image sources: Snapshots from the movies: Queen (2014), Tweleve angry men (1997), Behind enemy lines (2001).

Notes:

1.  Kahneman explains “Illusion of understanding” in chapter 19 (Thinking, fast and slow) which has the same title.

2.    WYSIATI rule and the quote on “unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance” are from chapter 19 page 201.

3.   “Illusion of experience” is explained in chapter 35 titled “Two selves”

4.   “Tyranny of the remembering self” is mentioned in chapter 35 page 381. Kahneman presents this topic in the TED talk “The riddle of experience vs. memory”

5.   “Illusion of truth” is a section in chapter 5 titled “Cognitive ease” and is on page 61.

6.   While we stopped our discussion, my wife (Gauri) ended up auditing a 20 lecture “Introduction to Psychology” course (available free on YouTube) the same year during the summer holidays. Last year we took a courser course titled “Buddhism and modern psychology” together. And she is now using “Thinking, fast and slow” for teaching cognitive biases to grade 11 & 12 students in Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class. Last year she became Head of the Dept for TOK. She continues to teach Physics.

7.   Associative coherence is mentioned on page 64.

8.   Kahneman uses the term “cognitive minefield” on page 417.

12 Angry men and 2 movements of thought

By now I have watched the movie “Twelve angry men” at least a dozen times. Past few days, the audio of the movie is being played in my car whenever I am driving alone. It is the only movie I have watched twice in a single day. The movie is used in MBA schools for teaching negotiation skills. My wife uses it to teach sources of knowledge in her “Theory of Knowledge” class for grade 11. However, in this article, I would like to use this movie to explore a topic I have been fascinated about – movement of the thought. “Do Maggi noodles in India have Lead in unhealthy proportions?” Before you know the question has triggered a train of thought in your head. This train is what I refer to as “movement of thought”.  Like your heart, the thought is constantly and involuntarily moving from place to place – many of them imaginary. There are two movements of thought which are of particular interest to me – belief-is-the-truth movement and belief-as-a-possibility movement. Let’s see these movements in “12 angry men” first and then see what its implication is in our life.

About “12 angry men”: This movie is set entirely in a room where 12 members of jury are deliberating the fate of a teenager who is accused of murdering his father by a knife.

Belief-is-the-truth: Whether we know it or not, each of us carries a set of beliefs. Sometimes we treat these beliefs as unshakable truths. Here are a few examples from the movie:

Juror no. 10 is passing a judgment on the accused based on the boy’s race. “They are born liars” is how belief-is-the-truth expresses itself here. The juror has perhaps finalized his vote the moment he saw the boy in the courtroom.

Juror no 8 says, “I’m just saying that it is possible that the boy lost the knife and somebody else stabbed his father with a similar knife”. To which juror no 3 responds, “And I say it’s not possible” Once you believe something to be absolutely true, you treat every contrary idea as “not possible”.

Juror no 7 is telling no 8 without even hearing the other person’s side that he has made up his mind and he won’t change it.

Belief-as-a-possibility: Here are some scenes where belief-as-a-possibility gets presented:

Juror no 8 is asking, “Could the witnesses be wrong in their interpretation?” Open ended question is a hallmark of “belief-as-a-possibility” movement. Here is another question:

This is one of those questions which results in creating doubt on the eye sight of the key witness in the case.

What is also interesting is to see the transition from “belief-is-the-truth” movement to “belief-as-a-possibility” movement. Following two scenes depict the starting of such a transition:

Juror no. 3 who is stubborn about his opinion, ends up triggering a shift of focus from “It is not possible” kind of statements to “Let’s look at the knife” suggestion. Subsequent discussion creates the first turning point in the movie.

Juror no. 7 has already declared that he would not change his opinion. However, in a spur of a moment, he asks a question. This results in jurors carrying out a small experiment to validate whether the old-aged witness could have walked from his bedroom to the front door in 15 seconds.

A creative mind treats a belief as a possibility. And a closed mind treats a belief as the truth. Unfortunately, most of us get confused between the two (belief and truth). There are two fun exercises you may want to try. One, in any conversation at home or at work, try to separate belief-is-the-truth statements from belief-as-a-possibility statements. Two, try to observe your own thoughts and catch yourself treating a belief as the truth. The first exercise is easier to get started. And the second one can be life changing.

Image source: All the images are from the 1997 adaptation of the movie.

Mindfulness on the go: My first workshop experience

Last month I got an opportunity to facilitate a half-day workshop titled “Mindfulness on the go: Meditation in the cycle stealing mode”. It was a first of its kind for me. The workshop happened as a response to a suggestion made by my friend Zunder Lekshmanan. The participants were Zunder’s team members / colleagues mostly in their 30s and 40s. The objective was to explore practices that may enable accessing stillness, a place from which creative potential may flourish. We were particularly interested in looking at ways which don’t demand dedicated time and space e.g. meditation 30 minutes in the morning in the corner of your bedroom. Most of the executives found dedicating such a time/space impractical. Instead, we focused on those few minutes which we can steal while we are waiting for the elevator etc. The presentation summarizes what we explored.

Saying ‘hello’ in the primary language of the land: Every terrain has a primary language. In Karnataka, it is Kannada. For some people it is a sign language and for software engineers, it is a programming language like C or Python. The primary language for the terrain which we explored is stillness and is found in the gaps between two consecutive thoughts. Hence, we began our workshop with a short exercise by getting familiar with these gaps.

The key challenge - thought: Upfront, we decided to confront the chief villain in our story – our thinking. The root cause of all of our suffering – worry, anxiety, anger, lack of creativity, relationship problems – is our thinking. What is wrong with thinking? Well, it creates & sustains powerful illusions – gaps between perception & reality. For example: (1) illusion of control: I can control my destiny or my organization’s destiny by taking certain actions. The action could be studying hard, following a moral code of conduct, going to temple, executing a strategy to defeat my opponent etc. (2) illusion of experience: We believe we know our experience. However, in reality, what we know are peak and end memories of our experience. And we routinely substitute the average of peak-and-end experiences as the whole experience.

Leprosy of mind: When I visited Anandwan last year, I witnessed a daily ritual at the leprosy hospital. At 6 o’clock in the morning there is a long queue of lepers to get their foot wounds dressed. The neural feedback mechanism that tells most of us how much pressure we are putting on our feet is damaged for lepers. Hence, a leper ends up putting too much pressure and damages his feet realizing it much later. Thought also creates & sustains a gap between perception and reality similar to a leper. Hence, sometimes our situation is called leprosy of mind.

Two states and three practices: All of us keep transitioning between two states of mind – relatively undisturbed state and disturbed state. Disturbed state is emotionally charged – due to emotions like anxiety, fear, worry, anger, guilt, blame etc. Relatively undisturbed state also contains thoughts but they don’t absorb us as much as the disturbed state. We explored the three practices: attention, alertness and acceptance that are useful in Relatively undisturbed state, during the transition from undisturbed to disturbed state, and in the disturbed state respectively.

Using metaphors: We used metaphors to get a feel of the practices. For shifting attention out of a stream of thinking, we used the metaphor of train and platform. It is like hopping off the train (of thought) on the platform and watching the trains come and pass by. Popular anchors which act like a platform are the movement of breath, abdomen, tingling sensations in fingers, surrounding sounds etc.

For alertness, we used the metaphor of “buttons”. Each of us has a few buttons, which when pressed, triggers a surge of emotions and transitions us to the disturbed state. A button could be a situation (lane cutting ahead of us), an accusation (“You don’t care about me”), an image (an accident), a thought (“I am a failure”) etc. Can we identify these buttons, become alert and catch ourselves transitioning from undisturbed to disturbed state? We called it playing a “catch me if you can” game with ourselves.

Acceptance feels like releasing your foot from the acceleration pedal. It is as if we stop feeding the fuel to the drama that is at the centre of our attention. The drama doesn’t vanish instantaneously. But it dies its own natural death just like the car slows down and comes to a half after you release the pedal. Note that releasing the pedal is more like going from effort to non-effort. Hence, acceptance feels more like non-action than action.

None of the content was original. It was borrowed from the teachings of various spiritual teachers like David Bohm, Ramana Maharshi, Eckhart Tolle, Mooji etc. The cognitive illusion related part was borrowed from Daniel Kahneman’s classic “Thinking fast & slow”. I stuck to only those practices which work for me. For relevant sources, please refer to the links given in the presentation above.

Confirmation bias: an innovator’s curse?

Take a look at the four card problem depicted in the picture above. Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other. Now, the hypothesis is as follows: “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side.” The question is: Which cards do you need to flip over to validate the hypothesis? Before you go ahead, please take a minute to answer this question yourself. I have asked this question to many participants in my workshops. And most of them have a clear answer i.e. the cards with letter A and number 4. Right? Wrong. The real answer is cards with letter A and number 7. Why? Because, if you find a vowel when you flip “7” card, then you disprove the hypothesis.  But why do most of us think of flipping over the “A” card and not "7" card? Because all we are trying to do is to find data that agrees with the hypothesis. 

This tendency to find and interpret data such that it conforms to our beliefs is known as confirmation bias – sometimes referred to as “the mother of all biases”. Due to this bias, we also ignore data that proves our belief wrong.  I feel that confirmation bias is an innovator’s curse because it prevents him from seeing evidence that is contradictory to his idea and creates an illusion of “my idea works!” in spite of contrary evidence. How does the confirmation bias manifest in real life? What can we do to mitigate its effect? Let’s explore in this article.

Gyanesh Pandey is a co-founder of Husk Power Systems based Patna, Bihar. HPS is in the business of providing electricity to rural India, especially off-grid villages. When Gyanesh first thought of pursuing the challenge of electrification of rural India, he had an implicit assumption (see the story in detail here). Rural India is not electrified because the right technology is not available yet. For the next four years, Gyanesh experimented with cutting edge technologies in the field – polymer solar cells, wind energy, bio-diesel etc. None of these experiments yielded viable solutions. By chance, he met a supplier of gasification based electrification systems and he got the seed idea of HPS from that. The core technology of the gasification based electrification is more than half a century old. And that contradicted the core assumption Gyanesh started with. i.e. You need a cutting edge technology to solve this problem. Gyanesh recalls making such an assumption “a big mistake”. That is how confirmation bias operates in real life. Once you believe that cutting edge technology is needed to solve a problem, you will only “see” data that corroborate your belief.

A few months back I was facilitating a workshop at a start-up accelerator. All the participants had quit their jobs and started companies. At the beginning of the workshop, I asked if participants had any expectations. One of the participants asked, “I am looking for a tool that can help me predict the revenue of my company”. I realized that the entrepreneur had implicitly assumed that it is possible to predict revenue of his start-up. I tried to tell him that it is not possible to predict the revenue especially when you don’t even have a single customer. My guess is, if the confirmation bias is really active, he would ignore my comment and look somewhere else for the tool he is looking for.

Is there anything we can do to mitigate the effect of confirmation bias? Well, here is something I find useful. Every time I become aware of my belief, I ask, “Do I have data for this?” I call this belief-as-an-assumption perspective. Shifting perspective from belief-as-the-truth to belief-as-an-assumption is the first step. It creates an opening for truth to enter. The next step is take contradictory data seriously. I feel that the first step is the key. It needs an alertness to observe your own repetitive thought patterns.

As a co-author of “8 steps to innovation” book, I am likely to carry a bias to find and interpret data such that “8 steps” framework works. Hence, I consciously try to reflect on data that may show that it doesn’t work or at least part of it doesn’t work. Blogs such as ‘Is “8 steps to innovation” approach predictive or non-predictive’? are result of such reflection. Can you catch yourself arguing with belief-as-the-truth perspective?

Image source: Social Psychology class from coursera.org taught by Prof. Scott Plous of Wesleyan University.

3 axioms behind “8 steps to innovation” framework

How is “8 steps to innovation” framework different from other frameworks? One way to answer this question is by articulating its unique features which I did in an earlier article. Another way is to understand the answer to the question: What are the key axioms behind the framework? In this article, I would like to present 3 key axioms behind “8 steps to innovation” framework.

1.      Innovativeness can be built like stamina: I remember meeting a CEO of an old family-owned business house at its headquarters in south Mumbai a couple of years ago. He mentioned two things about his half-a-century old business which I found interesting. He said: (1) These days our competition doesn’t even consider us a serious player and (2) We want to become like Apple and we don’t have much time. I told him that I don’t know how Apple innovates and I certainly don’t know any quick way to become “like Apple”. My experience tells me that building innovativeness is similar to building stamina. Long distance runners know that if you are a couch potato and if you want to run a marathon, you need a long term commitment to disciplined practice. No miracle can change your stamina overnight. For a long distance runner, the progress may be measured more by the distance (5K, 10K, 20K etc) and the timing of the run. Similarly, in “8 steps to innovation” framework we have identified the two dimensions of innovation maturity: creative confidence and incubation effectiveness. And we show how progress may look like as the organization goes from level-1 (Jugaad) to level-5 (Excellence). A typical transition from one level to the next takes typically one to three years, far from the expectation of the CEO I mentioned earlier.

2.      Humans can’t predict the future: I am now used to seeing the disappointment when a wannabe innovator hears my response “I don’t know” to his question “Will my idea work?” The confidence in our ability to predict long term success of an idea is a classic cognitive illusion. It was true when Johannes Gutenberg was working on his printing press in 1450. And it is true for your favourite e-commerce start-up in Bangalore today. What does “8 steps to innovation” recommend then? Well, it emphasizes identifying untested assumptions embedded in your idea and validating them at low-cost and at high speed (step-4). And it also recommends protecting your downside as much as possible by building a margin of safety (step-8). I have elaborated this further in the article: “Is 8 steps to innovation predictive or non-predictive?”

3.      Decisions happen through intuition-reason inter-play: Legendary investor Warren Buffett recounts how he made the decision to acquire the textile mill Berkshire Hathaway during 1964-65 in his letter shareholders published earlier this year. The decision was driven more by his emotion (he was mad at Berkshire’s CEO Seabury Stanton) than reason. In Buffett’s own words, “It was a monumentally stupid decision” The decision resulted in diverting $100 billion or so of Buffet’s fund to a collection of strangers. Notwithstanding our belief, human decisions are made by an inter-play of a strong a voice of intuition-cum-emotion and a weak voice of reason. Whenever there is a fight between the two voices, intuition led by emotion wins most of the time. This has significant implications for everybody – including innovators and investors. How does “8 steps” address this? Well, we borrow the metaphor of Elephant-Rider representing the voice of intuition and reason respectively from the book Switch by Chip & Dan Heath. And then propose interventions which can align the Elephant and the Rider to move in the same direction in order to become more innovative systematically.

Book review: “Recasting India” by Hindol Sengupta

“The world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not everyone’s greed,” said Mahatma Gandhi. However, in Independent India several hundreds of millions – so called “bottom of the pyramid” – have struggled to meet their basic needs. For the past sixty years, Indian Government has been making promises to alleviate poverty, educate people and failing miserably. Today, India ranks 101 out of 133 countries on Social Progress Index. Traditionally it was assumed in India that Entrepreneur and Enterprise are poor agents of social change. Hindol Sengupta argues in his book “Recasting India: How entrepreneurship is revolutionizing the world’s largest democracy” that this assumption is wrong and, in fact, entrepreneurs are playing a key role in addressing the needs of lower strata. Through numerous examples of socially-conscious ventures from Jammu & Kashmir to Tamilnadu, Hindol shows that enterprises are changing the lives of millions – from scavengers to maids. Unfortunately, the book is mostly silent on how enterprises are influencing the greed of everyone. Here are a few snippets from the book that stood out for me:

Pizza delivery ka koi jaath nahin hotha (Pizza delivery has no caste): This is from Prasad, a Dalit writer from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. According to him the revolution in India has already happened and all the upper caste intellectuals have not bothered to notice. The number of bullocks in a village on the Jaunpur-Azamgarh road has dropped from 1200 to 4 between 1995 and 2005. Why? Because there is no one to plough with the animals any more. Prasad says, “Landlord after landlord complained to me that the Dalits have left the village  and moved to the city with better jobs (like pizza delivery)”

Whose apple is that? Between 10 to 30 percent of Kashmiri apple crop gets wasted due to the lack of storage and processing facilities. Khurram Mir started Harshna Naturals in 2008 after returning with a management degree from Purdue University. The vision statement of Harshna says that the company should be used almost wholly by local farmers. A big poster at Harshna gives a warning – no one should be seen eating an apple within the compound. Mir says, “If someone is seen eating an apple and there are farmers around, they will immediately wonder ‘Whose apple is that?’ and raise an alarm. We are working to create an environment of full transparency which has been difficult here.”

Maid servant to Maids service: Anuradha, who lives in South City I, Gurgaon, pays Rs. 20,000 a month for the services of two employees of The Maids’ Company – one for twelve hours a day and another for six. If the maid is going to be late, she gets an SMS. The maid gets one day off every week. If a maid is absent any day, she gets a replacement. This is what Hindol calls – a complete renegotiation of social contract of domestic labour. Maids’ Company employees are regularly beaten by their husbands at home. The company employs a full-time nurse and has two rooms on top of the office for such women to stay for a day or two when they are thrown out of their houses. Where does it get money for these activities? The Maids' Company, started by Gauri Singh and Indu Bagri, has 20 percent of its equity in a reserved pool that is owned by a cooperative trust of the workers. The equity supports various welfare activities.

Getting out of the worst kind of catch-22: 750,000 odd manual scavenger families live the worst kind of life across India. They hand-pick human faeces and carry it in a basket. They have virtually no interaction with anyone who is not a scavenger. Project Azmat developed by Safai Karmachari Andolan and Shri Ram College of Commerce has identified 20 scavenger women from the village of Nekpur in Haryana and turned them into entrepreneurs.  They make detergent which is sold across Delhi with the brand “Neki”. Apart from money the work has given them social dignity missing for generations in their community. People in the village have started inviting them into their house.

The book presents these and many more inspiring stories of social change through enterprises and entrepreneurs. It is a must read for anyone who is a serious student of innovation, social change and social entrepreneurship.

When I read the story from Gurgaon which Hindol calls – a schizophrenic, dystopian soul of India, a place where everything has gone wrong and right at the same time – I wondered what caused the problems of Gurgaon in the first place? Is it the greed of the enterprises and entrepreneurs? That takes us back to the Gandhiji quote we started with. Which one needs more urgent attention: the need of the needy or the greed of the greedy? I don’t know.

Image source: npr.org

How to PIC a challenge area? A simple framework

What do you want to innovate around? Do you want to focus around a technology area such as mobile applications or do you want to solve a social problem? Or do you want to solve a specific customer problem? Answering this question is crucial. If you are completely blank, then a framework like pain, wave, waste helps you to generate options. Let’s say you have generated a number of options, now what? Which one will you pick for further investigation? Here is a simple framework I use called PIC: Passion, Impact and Chance of progress.

Passion: The most important parameter is passion – i.e. how excited you are about working on a particular challenge area. How would you know? Well, one simple parameter is to check if working on the topic creates or sucks energy. If it sucks energy, then it is unlikely to be your passion area. If you find yourself thinking about it, reading/browsing about it more often etc. then it is a candidate for your passion. Another test is time-test. Don’t do anything about it for a while say a week or a month and then revisit it. Now, check if the excitement is still there. Sometimes a topic may create temporary excitement and then the excitement may die down over time.

Impact: This is the trickiest of the three parameters. The idea is check how big of an impact a solution in this area can create. For example, mobile applications can create a huge impact due to the wide reach. In a country like India, areas like healthcare, energy, education pose a lot of challenges. Hence, a successful solution may create far reaching impact. The reason this is a tricky parameter because it is difficult to visualize the largest possible canvas related to your challenge area. Your vision may be narrow. And it is OK. James Watt thought that his improved steam engine may be helpful in the nearby mines for at least half a decade. It is only after a champion and investor like Bolton came along that the scope got expanded to “everything that moves.” In the initial days, Facebook scope was limited to hardvard.edu email address.

Chance of progress: This is the second most important parameter (after passion). Your chance of progress improves significantly if (a) you get a partner to work with you (b) you get a champion for your challenge – like an investor, a customer or an influential person and (c) you can prototype your ideas fast and show them to people.  You need to be lucky to get a good collaborator. However, your prototyping skills can be honed by you over time. Most successful innovators are good experimenters. In fact, showcasing your idea through prototypes increases the chances of getting a collaborator and a champion.

If you like spreadsheet approach, you may want to attach totally 4 points to Passion, 3 points to Impact and 3 points to chance of progress and evaluate each option.