Why Patience Matters

The New Orleans New Year's truck-terrorism massacre produced the usual deluge of "leap to conclusions" posts, on my social media feed, on news channels, and from the government itself. As is always the case, many if not all of these were made with limited and sometimes incorrect information, but many of the many were presented with a tone of certainty that did not match the degree of informedness.

This is, of course human nature in action. Born of evolution and wired into our DNA, leaping to worse-case conclusions has long served to keep us alive in the face of the unknown and perilous. Unfortunately, human nature doesn't always serve us best in the modern world, where such leaps-to-conclusion are neither necessary nor beneficial.

In the first ( and brilliant) season of the HBO series True Detective, Detective Hart (played by Woody Harrison) cautions Detective Kohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) against letting predilections or presumptions interfere with rational analysis:

You attach assumptions to a piece of evidence, you start to bend the narrative to support it, prejudice yourself.

Humans have a cognitive bias toward consistency over accuracy, and once we go public with a statement or conclusion, we instinctively prefer to defend it even when presented with new or contrary facts, or refutations of whatever bits of information prompted us to it. Even when we recognize this instinct, we are still apt to bias our thinking in its favor.

The perverse incentives of modern information sharing, via "likes," comments, and shares, make us think that being first to a conclusion matters.

Unless you're part of a 24 hour news source that relies on 'scoops' and eyeballs for its very existence, it does not. Being the first to voice what is often a wild-ass guess gets you nothing real. Yes, you could brag "I called it," but if you were speculating off a few crumbs, you just got lucky. Meanwhile, you risk the potential embarrassment of getting it wrong and the unease of being corrected.

But, you might ask "what's wrong with starting a conversation?" Why not throw some speculations around the sandbox and get dialogues going?

Read the quote from True Detective again.

A dialogue is one thing. "I wonder if it could be X, Y, or Z?" "Have you heard any facts I haven't?" "Can we trust the facts that we have been told at this point?"

A conclusion is another. "Will we find out how he got across the border, or will they hide that from us?" "The Vegas guy was also from Fort Bragg - this sounds like a coordinated plot."

Again, there's no prize for being first, but trying to be first comes with the risks I mentioned here. Why not simply wait a few more hours or a couple days before telling everyone what you think? Heck, you might even get better feedback from your socials for having that patience.

If you're a government official, voicing leapt-to conclusions is the last thing you should be doing. When you say "this isn't terrorism" and it very quickly proves to be terrorism, you wreck not only your own reputation, but the reputation and trustworthiness of the agency you work for and represent… and of the government in general.

And, when you let biases you've already well-established with past behaviors inform your leapt-to conclusions, you marginalize yourself. People who know your pattern are more likely to say "Oh, there (s)he goes again" and just ignore your opinions. Or, worse, figure "if you are peddling this, the opposite might very well be true."

That's how we end up talking past each other, how constructive dialogue never gets off the starting line, and how social corrosion continues.

So, do yourself and those around you a favor, and take a beat before chiming in on the next big happening. Not only will you be more likely to get it right, you might actually find your stress level reduced. We could all use a bit more serenity.