Noise #4: Is Elimination even Desirable?
If decisions are so noisy, how come we rarely hear of it? The authors of Noise say: “The invisibility of noise is a direct consequence of causal thinking. Noise is inherently statistical: it becomes visible only when we think statistically about an ensemble of similar judgments.” Further, when something is statistical, one doesn’t have a clear target what one is aiming at: “Strategies for noise reduction are… what preventive hygiene measures are to medical treatment: the goal is to prevent an unspecified range of potential errors before they occur.” They compare it the habit of washing your hands – you should do it without worrying about which particular infection you might be avoiding. Unfortunately, such habits aren’t easy, because of the way we are wired: “Correcting a well-identified bias may at least give you a tangible sense of achieving something. But the procedures that reduce noise will not. They will, statistically, prevent many errors. Yet you w...