

Finnish EV Team Learns a $400,000 Lesson in Humility at Automotive X-Prize Race - sprinkle
http://earthandindustry.com/2010/10/finnish-ev-team-learns-a-400000-lesson-in-humility/

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StavrosK
Way to succumb to confirmation bias (EDIT: I actually meant __outcome __bias,
thanks for the correction), article. If they won, they'd lose 600k (I'm not
sure where the other 200k went, for a total of 2.5m). If they lost, they'd win
400k.

They would benefit from this only if they had less than a 40% chance to win,
which, from the looks of it, they didn't. From their view, it must have looked
like the other teams tried to get them (who were almost certainly going to
win) to hand out some of their cash to them.

It was a rational decision, and they did make the right choice given the
information available at the time. They could have been charitable, but that's
not mandatory.

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maukdaddy
This has nothing to do with confirmation bias and everything to do with the
prisoner's dilemma (game theory)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma>

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StavrosK
I disagree on both counts. The payoff matrix is nothing like the prisoner's
dilemma, and it's confirmation bias on the writer's part.

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scott_s
Confirmation bias is when you have a working theory, and only look towards
evidence that supports the theory. I don't see how that applies to this
article.

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StavrosK
Oh wait, you're right. The other bias, what's it called? The one where you
claim that a decision was right or wrong based on its outcome, not based on
the info you had when making it?

EDIT: Outcome bias, thanks. I won't remove the error above so the discussion
isn't altered.

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scott_s
I know it as hindsight bias: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/il/hindsight_bias/>

And, <http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/>

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StavrosK
Hindsight bias is when you think something is more predictable (after it
happens) than it actually was. It's slightly different.

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scott_s
It's fundamentally the same thing: using after-the-fact information to
evaluate the likelihood of an event. Taking it one step further - using that
evaluation to determine if something was "right" or "wrong" - does not change
what the actual error was.

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scotje
So, if they had signed the agreement and won, would they have learned an
$800,000 lesson in the evils of socialism or something?

They placed a bet on their car and it didn't pay off. Doesn't mean it was a
bad bet. (In fact, since it sounds like they were the consensus favorites
going into the competition, it was probably a good bet.)

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pavel_lishin
I would call it humility if they'd bragged about not signing the agreement -
without knowing their reasons, the headline is a little sensationalistic.

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iuytgfrdsza
If they didn't sign because they thought they would win and didn't want to
share the prize then it's a lesson in humility!

~~~
StavrosK
It still isn't. They bet on their car winning, and they lost. They didn't go
around trash-talking competitors or bragging, they just thought the agreement
was not financially sound for them.

