Robin Hanson, economist-philosopher talks about bias at Overcoming Bias.   This post, in particular, caught my eye:

A working paper by Ilan Yaniv says we do listen to others, but we weigh our opinion 70% and someone else’s equally qualified opinion 30%:

(There’s a lot more, but this is enough for me to make my observation)

When you talk with another, equally qualified individual, I think it’s not only unsurprising, but in fact appropriate to value your opinion higher than theirs.  After all, you have to live with the consequences of your decisions far more than some random other person.    If the other person had to face the same consequences as you did (for example a business partner) then I could see the two opinions being of equal value - and in fact, I’ve lived that exact scenario.

For me, evaluating the opinions of others is a combination of evaluating their knowledge, relative to mine, but also their effort expended in coming to their conclusion relative to mine, and the costs of error, relative to mine.

Jesus saves but only Buddha makes incremental backups.

One of the things that I’ve noticed about myself is that I discount the complexity of computers and software, relative to the complexity of engines and carpentry.  Anyone can figure out how to set up windows shares, I think, butI feel stupid because I don’t know much about car engines.

Lately I’ve been trying to remind myself that most people, even those who know a lot about car engines, are not computer experts, and get confused and bewildered by the subtlety involved in connecting and communicating between machines, or in retrieving lost files, etc.   Let alone the tremendous complexity involved in setting up a real, working web application or software program.