People are Enviously Optimistic

Biases are what make people people. Humans have so many biases and heuristics running their brains it makes them virtually unpredictable. And if you’re unpredictable, your actions cannot be calculated, and that makes one truly conscious and not just another part of the universe. When you’re predictable, to quote Rick, “you’re just an inert chunk of randomly assembled molecules drifting wherever the universe blows you.” And one of the most important biases for a person is the Success Bias. (AKA the survivorship bias but Success Bias sounds cooler.) People only care about winners, (unless a loser loses so badly they become a winner again, also known as the Maryland Effect, see the movie The Room as an example), and winners are the ones that are remembered. It’s why the lottery keeps being a thing and why nostalgia will always be a thing.    

Here’s how I see it:

People love to meme on Boomers for saying, “music/movies used to be better back in my day,” but that is only due to the Success Bias. Of course people are only going to remember the best stuff from their younger years. Everyone remembers The Beatles, but no one remembers Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends (a real band from the 1970’s). Even with movies, everyone remembers and still watches Rush Hour, but no one in their right mind would want to watch The Medallion a second time (both staring Jackie Chan). But in contemporary times, we are exposed to the good (Adele), the bad (Lil Xan), and the ugly (Tekashi69). It seems likely when millennials and Gen Z get older, they’ll forget about the Lil Xans and Tekashi69s and only remember the Adeles.

         There is another part of the Success Bias that makes it more complicated than just “people remember the winners,” and it’s why this blog is titled Humans are Enviously Optimistic. People remember other people’s success much more than their own. Because then you only see their winnings, with none of the effort that you know you had to put into your own successes. This bias is what pushes people to “keep up with the joneses” as the saying goes. They see other people “easily” succeeding and push themselves to work harder to get that same success. Or you could follow Quentin Crisp’s advice, “Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper.” (I would recommend watching his stand-up here.)

         But there is a point where a change in quantity is a change in quality, and it is the same with Social Media. While a bit of seeing what the Joneses are up to would be healthy to keep a person going, constantly seeing what friends and family members are doing is not good for a mind. It’s sort of like when you’re a kid, you see movies for the first time and think an actor is really the person their playing and the things happening to them real. It’s only when you see the bloopers that the charade broken and you realize the characters are just regular people, acting. It is the same idea with Instagram. You constantly see people’s highlights and special moments, with none of the bloopers. (And when they’re all special, none of them are.)

So, try to be aware of your natural biases. They’re what make you human.