Bias

All my life I have wondered why people suffer what I call “hypotheses feedback bias”.

Basically it is when people make up a hypothesis, act as though it’s true, and then get some positive feedback.

This then convinces them that they were right and brilliant to guess it so in the first place.

Try and convince your average person with this feedback bias that there may actually be a more useful hypothesis than the first so guessed, and you are generally wasting your breath.

Medical practitioners and data analysts come to mind.