HACKER Q&A
📣 tomiant

What heuristics have changed the way you think?


What heuristics have changed the way you think?


  👤 rualca Accepted Answer ✓
It might not fit the topic very well, but studying evolutionary algorithms made me realize that in the grand scheme of things individual success is always the aggregate result of pure chance instead of some intrinsic quality of the individual.

In hindsight the optimal solution can be neatly tracked through its ancestors to the initial population showing a deliberate pattern. In the real world this is used and abused by our confirmation bias to try to associate individual traits or effort to the outcome. However the algorithm shows that the interpretation is bullshit, that it was always pure chance from the start, and that it only looks like the deliberate result of an action if we ignore all other individuals which were also generated by chance but also didn't succeeded by chance.

Also, evolutionary algorithms show that success is only relative, and that access to opportunities is in the grand scheme of things the realization of a few random variables. You are hired by chance, you are passed on by chance, you find other opportunities by chance. Thus you don't need to stress about the outcome because it's always largely out of your control.