After an outcome is known, people feel it was predictable all along, which makes them overconfident

the gist

Hindsight bias is the tendency to see past events as more predictable than they really were. Once we know how something turned out, we tend to believe we could have foreseen it, and we forget what we actually thought beforehand. It is also called the knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism. The bias can distort memories of what people knew or expected before an event. It is a major source of overconfidence in predicting future outcomes, because we judge our past foresight too kindly. It appears in historians' accounts of battles, in doctors' recollections of clinical trials, and in courts, where people often assign blame for accidents as if they had been obviously preventable.

how it works

After learning an outcome, the mind rebuilds its earlier beliefs around that outcome, so the result appears to have been the natural conclusion. This quietly overwrites the memory of uncertainty, making the past seem more predictable than it was.

so what

Hindsight bias matters for investors, doctors, judges and historians, because it makes past decisions look more reasonable than they were. It can lead people to blame individuals for accidents that were hard to foresee, and to overrate their own ability to predict what comes next.

fun fact

Psychologist Baruch Fischhoff studied the effect in 1975 by asking people to estimate the probability of outcomes before and after learning the results of historical events.

Hampi was once one of the world's largest cities, until its Vijayanagara capital was destroyed in 1565

the gist

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.

how it works

The city was built around a fortified core with temples, markets and water structures along the river, supplied by an extensive network of roads and waterworks. When the empire fell, the city was not rebuilt, so its stone monuments were left standing.

so what

Hampi shows how quickly a great city can vanish after a military defeat, and how a ruined capital can remain sacred. Its ruins give historians a view of medieval South Asia that few other sites can match.

fun fact

The name Hampi comes from Pampa, an old name for the Tungabhadra River.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · text CC BY-SA 4.0

Image: Wikimedia Commons

source: Wikipedia ↗

2 min

politicsshortCNA2:01

False allegations about Singapore’s hand in Indonesia’s markets and a made-up meeting

from CNA

CNA Verify has found close to 400 posts pushing falsehoods tying Singapore to Indonesia’s stock market rout and to a secret meeting that never took place. Together, they drew nearly 12 million views, and some were circulated by accounts that appeared to be working in concert, across multiple social media platforms.

Here’s how the disinformation campaign targeting Singapore was uncovered.

on YouTube: CNA ↗