A weird incidence of status quo bias: Let’s say you step outside and it feels hot. You look at a digital thermometer you have outside and it says 95. The next day it feels hot again, and again the thermometer says 95. The third day you step outside and it still feels hot, but the thermometer says 88. You immediately think “Oh, that can’t be right, it must be on the fritz.”
I’ll bet it never even occurred to you that it might have been incorrect the first two days. That hypothesis never crossed your mind, even though you have no idea how accurate it was. You stepped outside that first day, felt the heat, and looked at the number “95.” Immediately your brain connected the amount of heat you were feeling with that number, and the next day solidified it. On the third day, therefore, you said “Oh, it can’t be 88, because it feels like it’s 95.” But you have no idea what 95 feels like!
With a sample size of only three events and zero actual testing, you don’t have enough information to decide which temperature reading is the accurate one. But almost universally we’ll go with the first one.
In other words, we don’t question the first piece of information we get nearly as much as we question subsequent information that disagrees with the first piece, even though we have zero reason to trust one over the other.
Just a quirk to be aware of – don’t default to believing something today just because you believed it yesterday. Unless there’s something deeper under that first belief, then it’s skepticism all the way down!
The Opportunity Machine 