"Keyser S?ze" and the basis of "Bias"
Vivek Sharan
Head of Marine-UAE | Marine Insurance | Ex-Mariner | Doctoral Student-Economics & Public Policy
PART 1?
Last Scene: "The Usual Suspects"
"Moments later, Kujan?realizes?"Verbal"?apparently fabricated his entire story by piecing together details from random items in Rabin's cluttered office. At the same time, Baer interrogates Kovash in his hospital bed, along with a police artist creating a sketch. Meanwhile,?Verbal?walks outside, gradually losing his limp and flexing his supposedly disabled hand.
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As Kujan pursues Verbal, a fax arrives at the police station with the artist's facial composite of?S?ze.?The picture resembles?Verbal, revealing that he was?S?ze?the entire time.?Verbal/S?ze?enters a car driven by Kobayashi?and leaves moments before Kujan arrives on the scene."
"The Usual Suspects" is a must-watch. It's rated 8.5/10 by IMDb.
If you have already seen the movie, but long ago, let me refresh your memory with a two-line summary without going into detail.
Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), a con artist, is one of the two survivors of a burnt ship with 27 dead onboard. LAPD is interrogating Verbal, who is describing the events in flashback. LAPD eventually releases Verbal for cooperating and revealing what happened onboard. After Verbal is released, LAPD finds the long story told by verbal was all cooked from a bulletin board with news clips and chits that were there in the police station.?
There is a one-word explanation to these?"Biases."?
We all suffer from a certain level of?Delusions, and most of our thinking is?Prejudiced.?
"Verbal" played on the Biases of the LAPD.?
LAPD gets fooled by their own Bias which clouds their imagination to think that criminal of the repute of "Keyser S?ze" must be a giant and physically strong person; in other words, he should be:?
"The Usual Suspect."?
PART 2?
From choosing between Apples and Oranges to Tea or Coffee to selecting stocks for investing, all our decisions are Biased, including the decisions about people whom we like or dislike to things we desire or don't.?
Biases don't stop here. It goes on into our choices of what we study, the organizations we work for, and even whom we marry.?In our Bias laden choices, occasionally we get lucky, but predominantly we suffer.?
Why is it then that we don't attempt to overcome our deep-rooted Biases? Because it is hard!
Making unbiased decisions requires analyzing multiple data points and looking at your own shortcomings.?
If you know a bit about Machine Learning models, you may know that If a machine learning model is performing very poorly on a set of data because it is not generalizing to all your data points, it means that your model has a high Bias. Oversimplification could be one of the primary reasons for a highly biased model.?
In a complex and painful world, people try to oversimplify things.?
Like,?
When we over-simplify, we exclude our rational and objective thinking. Analytical thinking is difficult because, to reason, you need to consider multiple factors.
And, because of this over-simplified thinking and flawed decision-making:
An unbiased decision is not only complex but rare. We can't overcome our bias because, many times, we are not even aware of it. Our Biases make us who we are.
In that way, a person who is questioning her Bias is questioning herself.
The way we see things are unique to us. We live in the world of our subjective reality that is formed by our biases. We can't overcome this distorted reality ( unless we are enlightened ) because this is the only reality we know. We can't see what is wrong with that, so we continue with our prejudices. Our Biases are built right into our hallucinated models.
The insidious thing about our Biases, Errors, and Prejudices is that they appear as natural to us as the delusions of someone else appear to him.?
In the book "The Science of Storytelling", Will Storr mentions that "it seems as if everyone else is 'biased' and only you see reality as it is".?
We make opinions about people at lightening speed. When we meet a new person, our brain has formed an opinion even before we blink. Once that opinion is formed, whatever a person does only confirms our Bias. That's why people say the first impression is the last.
Our decision-making process is heavily influenced by our primary, innate biases, which operate in a parallel world to our rational and logical thought processes. Unconscious Bias is rife in the workplace and our personal life, where our background, previous experiences, societal stereotypes, and cultural context directly impact our decisions without us even realizing it.
In his book "Blink", "Malcolm Gladwell" explains how an expert's ability to "thin slice" can be corrupted by their likes and dislikes, prejudices, and stereotypes (even unconscious ones).
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At the workplace, Bias influences recruitment, retention, performance management, promotion, client relations, and the allocation of work assignments.
In personal space, Bias impacts our friendships and close relations. Biases are the single most important deterrent to having harmonious relationships. The fights between any two people are primarily between their biases. Had these Biases not been there, there would be perfect harmony.
Some common Bias:?
Having understood all these Biases, the question that comes to mind is where does Bias come from??
Bias comes from the way our brain is wired.?
In his book, "Brian Bug", Dean Buonomano mentions Bias as one of the fundamental flaws of the Human Brain. The brain makes associations based on what we learn first. For example, if we tell a child that people who look a certain way are bad. Brain permanently wires and connects " Bad" with that ethnicity.?Next time when a child meets a person with that ethnic background, neurons that are associated with bad and that ethnicity will fire together.
The famous saying about this phenomenon is "Neurons that wire together fire together."?
Once our brain has made an association, it is tough to break those wirings. Only a dramatic event or a good argument, supported by many facts, can change our opinion. And even to change our mind, we must first come with an open mind!?
Another reason why we are biased is that we like familiarity and dislike the unknown. This way, Bias became a survival technique. However, even after 200,000 years, we still fear a change or new ideas. ?
We are Biased toward familiarity.?We are Biased against unfamiliarity. ??
PART 3?
How does then one avoid getting conned by the likes of Roger "Verbal" Kint??
How does one avoid making foolish decisions driven by their own biases??
The starting point to be aware. ?
I would go even so far as to say that before taking any small or big decision, first assume that you are indeed biased! Consider this as putting the spotlight on yourself. Then ask what biases are at play here. Ask as many questions to probe your thinking. Once you have plotted which biases are influencing your decision, try to gather more information to make a more qualified decision. It is hard work, but it pays off. It will save you from much pain in the future because reality eventually catches up!
Everyone is biased. That makes it possible for good people to use it against the bad ones.
You might recall the small "rock hammer" from "The Shawshank Redemption."?
Andy Dufresne uses the Bias that you need a proper Axe and Spade to dig a tunnel.
Indeed, how can anyone dig through?10 feet of concrete with a rock hammer??
"The Shawshank Redemption" is rated 9.2/10 by IMDb, the highest-rated movie ever.?
Artists also use biases to create illusions. Humans are biased to look at the left side of the face. In Monalisa's smile, Leonardo da Vinci uses this Bias to create the mysterious smile of Monalisa.?
Concluding comments:
The real evil is not someone out there like the mythical "Keyser S?ze"; it is right within us as our own Biases. It feeds upon our complacency and lethargy to go into detail. Most importantly, it has managed to convince us that it does not even exist.
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist": Kint (Verbal).?A line borrowed from Charles Baudelaire.
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