4.5.1 Filtering

Which of these senses do you usually tune out? From birth we start learning to filter information out and to prioritise, label and classify the phenomena we observe. This is a vital process. Without it we literally could not function in our day-to-day lives. In our work lives, if we did not filter information and discard options we would suffer from analysis paralysis: the inability to make any decision in the face of the complexity and the ambiguity of the real world.

However, this filtering comes at a cost and introduces some significant biases into the judgements we make. One, which you came across in Activity 1, is overconfidence: we tend to be unduly optimistic about estimates and judgements that we make and filter out of our awareness many of the sources of uncertainty. Another problem we have already discussed is our tendency to be swayed by how a problem is framed.