Hindsight is not equal to Foresight
The article titled “Hindsight ≠ foresight: the effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty” is authored by Baruch Fischhoff. Fischhoff starts with two hypotheses: knowledge of an outcome increases its apparent likelihood of happening, and that individuals with “outcome knowledge” are not aware of its having altered their viewpoint in the mentioned way (Fischhoff, 2003). The investigation comes to the conclusions that outcome knowledge increases its perceived chances of happening and that such people are usually unaware of such influences to their perceptions. Indeed, it is near impossible to reconstruct the past perfectly, and thus, the lack of knowledge about “hindsight bias” may restrict an individual’s ability to acquire lessons from past happenings.
According to Fischhoff (2003), acknowledging an outcome’s occurrence increases the supposed likelihood of its happening. In this regard, the reading points out, through a series of experiments, that if an individual finds out that an event occurred in the past, he or she is more likely to predict the same event happening in the future. This assertion holds, because, as Senders (1991) observed, “creeping determinism” blinds individuals. With outcome knowledge, people are more likely to overestimate their predictions, as opposed to situations where they have no benefit of hindsight. As a result, judges unknowingly make judgments based on past events, and this tendency cripples their ability to provide adequate judgments or learn from the past.
Fischhoff (2003) also found out that individuals who have the benefit of hindsight are mostly oblivious of the fact that it changes their perceptions of future events. In consequence, outcome knowledge makes judges biased, without their knowledge. This observation holds, as making sense out of what happened in the past seems natural, and one may not be aware of the influence of hindsight benefit to their future predictions. This process, in turn, prevents persons from learning anything meaningful from what happened in the past. Fischhoff (2003), however, warns that individuals must be aware and accept the “fact of uncertainty” and learn to “live with it.”
This reading submits that it is difficult to reconstruct the past entirely. This finding is useful in many ways. In the field of medicine, there has been a constant need to eradicate medical errors and to improve medical systems. The research by Fischhoff (2003) informs the medical field that any therapeutic approach that depends on reconstructing the past is likely to be erroneous. As a result, medical professionals must adopt strategies that study the past, albeit with caution. While the past is a useful tool to inform medical decisions, in line with Fischhoff’s (2003) sentiments, it is essential to view it only as an imperfect predictor instead of the only predictor of the future.
In my opinion, people who have received outcome knowledge are less likely to be aware of it having changed their views. People commonly perceive events that have already happened as having been more predictable than they were before their occurrence (Roese and Vohs, 2012). As a result, an individual may believe that they would have predicted an even, with high certainty after they gain outcome knowledge. This bias creates false confidence that ends up creating erroneous judgments. Such errors, in the past, have been seen among clinicians recalling past medical trials and judges making wrong judgments due to outcome knowledge. The research by Fischhoff (2003) may be useful in many fields, including medicine, law, history, and psychology. Given knowledge of outcomes, listeners or readers tend to simplify the problem that was faced earlier. However, this lack of awareness, as Fischhoff advises, ought to be kept in mind, as it reduces an individual’s capability to evaluate or take lessons from the past.