This was interesting Michał, thanks for sharing your story.
I like this topic because I learned a bit about statistics and probability.
It also made me recall something I'm dealing with right now while helping a friend.
In general, I try to stay away from wondering about what could have happened if this or that happened in the past. Learning from some recent medical complications and trying to recover from them, fantasizing about the different possible outcomes didn't help.
Let's say someone had an operation and now things are settled and they are recovered, but the operation also had a long-term effect, let's say it is a scar. They are bothered by the scar and think about alternative realities where a million things that now function in their body correctly, still do, they are well but the scar isn't there.
I see this as an example of the conjunction fallacy. There are simply too many things that had to be in a specific way to end up healthy and recovered. And thinking that "oh yeah, but if I could just flip that switch in the past" and get the same results, I think that's misleading because of the immense number of variables.
This was interesting Michał, thanks for sharing your story.
I like this topic because I learned a bit about statistics and probability.
It also made me recall something I'm dealing with right now while helping a friend.
In general, I try to stay away from wondering about what could have happened if this or that happened in the past. Learning from some recent medical complications and trying to recover from them, fantasizing about the different possible outcomes didn't help.
Let's say someone had an operation and now things are settled and they are recovered, but the operation also had a long-term effect, let's say it is a scar. They are bothered by the scar and think about alternative realities where a million things that now function in their body correctly, still do, they are well but the scar isn't there.
I see this as an example of the conjunction fallacy. There are simply too many things that had to be in a specific way to end up healthy and recovered. And thinking that "oh yeah, but if I could just flip that switch in the past" and get the same results, I think that's misleading because of the immense number of variables.
Thanks for the mention!
Hey Akos, the mention was well deserved, great article! + Thanks for your kind words.
I completely agree — focusing on "what ifs" often ignores the countless variables that had to align for a positive outcome.
Great article and as always great job connecting it back to working in tech. I have 2 thoughts about Regression to the Mean:
1. It's pretty hard to know or measure your mean.
2. Your mean could trend up.
The further we move away from simple statistics, the harder it becomes to measure.
It was much easier to measure productivity (and average) with physical labour, where it was clear how much could be accomplished in a day.
When we work using our brains, it becomes more complicated.
These are great insights — thank you for your perspective, Suresh!
Nice article Michal, easy to read.
I was not aware about this "Regression towards the mean". I will take it into account in the future!
Thank you, Marcos, I'm glad you liked it!
I’m seeing 'regression towards the mean' everywhere at the moment, but this tends to happen with all concepts right after I publish an article.
I hope that being aware of it will be helpful to you in some way.