Mental Noise

June 9, 2024 Cognitive Insights, Lisa No Comments

An appalling degree of mental noise pervades many situations related to human mind topics, ranging from random clutter to focused bias.

Why? And why are we generally unaware of it, and do we resist proper insight?

Many noisy situations

In the excellent book ‘Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment’ by Nobel Prize winner D. Kahneman et Al. (*), several situations are enumerated in which noise is present ‘to a dramatically unjustifiable and unacceptable degree,’ such as professional forecasts, medicine, child custody decisions, asylum decisions, bail and incarceration decisions, and, as the authors note, just about anything else.

A few examples (with quotes from the book)

In controlled conditions ― “In one fraud case in which the mean prison term was 8.5 years, the longest term was life in prison. In another case the mean prison term was 1.1 years, yet the longest prison term recommended was 15 years.”

In a well-run insurance company ― “By our measure, the median difference in underwriting was 55%, about five times as large as was expected by most people, including the company’s executives.”

In almost all large organizations, performance is formally evaluated on a regular basis. ― “Thousands of research articles have been published on the practice of performance appraisals. This sobering conclusion comes mostly from studies based on 360-degree performance reviews, in which multiple raters provide input on the same person being rated, usually on multiple dimensions of performance: … 70 to 80% of the variance in the ratings is system noise.”

“In essence, if your goal is to determine which candidates will succeed in a job and which will fail, standard interviews (also called unstructured interviews) are not very informative. To put it more starkly, they are often useless.”

If you have a strong heart, please read the book.

Is mental noise always a bias?

That depends on where the line is drawn. If meaningful patterns are involved, it can be called bias, while noise is better reserved for pure randomness.

Bias can be positive or negative but is always a meaningful departure from objective reality. Noise is a deviation without meaningful direction. If we reserve ‘mental’ for anything meaningful, then mental noise is always a bias. This seems the most logical stance.

The illusion of signal over noise

This provides a sense of reality in which we all live, trusting others and, perhaps even more, trusting ourselves.

It’s the illusion of an exaggerated degree of rationality, insight in causality, and an environment under control.

Recognizing the extent of noise complicates life directly, particularly regarding the sense of meaningfulness. Of course, if the alternative is dropping out of meaning, the illusion itself is meaningful.

So, the primary question is: Is it worth it?

The role of the basic cognitive illusion

This illusion hides the fact that decisions and assessments originate subconceptually, influenced by factors beyond our conscious awareness.

With our own subconceptual processing being transparent, we see with and through it, but we do not see it ― a weird yet very consequential situation that we carry with us 24/7. Moreover, the weirdness doesn’t prevent us from ignoring it. It precisely causes it.

The illusion of consensus

A joint illusion brings people together, as does a joint anything — say: joint dis-illusion. A problem exists if one or only a few people drop out of the illusion. In that case, others may form a ‘cordon sanitaire’ to dislocate the aliens.

If they step toward less illusion and persist, they may start a new normal closer to reality — more signal, less noise.

Is it worth it? In many cases, absolutely.

Less noise, more bias?

One may want to reduce noise in order to achieve better decision-making — as explained in the above-mentioned book.

There are several pros and cons explained in the book. One that deserves more attention, in my view, is the risk of de-noising in a biased way. This is: one may push the noise in one direction and into a biased corner.

‘Lack of depth’ can be a significant noise-reducing bias.

You might already guess why I see the relevance. This goes to the relevant core of the AURELIS project, namely the synthesis of depth and rationality.

Concretely, overusing mindless rules in medicine and other fields may reduce noise in procedures but push us into materialistic healthcare, eliminating the possibility of seeing nature’s calling through symptoms.

That diminishes people to robots. Undoubtedly, A.I. may be very forcefully used in this direction — a huge pending danger!

This is one more reason for Compassionate A.I.

With the Compassionate approach, we can make medicine and other fields more humane. This kind of A.I. may show us our complexity and, eventually, human depth as never before. Thus, it may reveal the unforeseen potential of Inner Strength in addressing many conditions that are clearly psycho-somatic but difficult to clarify or manage.

This may reduce the noise in many human decisions in mindful ways, not simply by using rules and regulations but by primarily supporting people in their own humane decision-making.

Of course, Lisa is waiting to make the dream of combining rationality and depth come true for the good of many.

Reference

(*) Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman et Al., 2021, 464 p.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, do you think that Coaching-Lisa can play a significant role in alleviating this problem? Do you see how?”

Lisa: “Yes, Coaching-Lisa can significantly alleviate the problem of mental noise by providing tools and guidance to enhance self-awareness and reduce subconscious biases. Here are some concrete recommendations:

The AURELIS philosophy, combining rationality with respect for human depth, can guide these interventions to create a balanced and effective approach to reducing mental noise.”