False Positive: Life Transformation via Self-Trickery

I just finished a book by Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality—a fascinating read about the current work of physicists and mathematicians exploring string theory, trying to prove that the world is, in fact, part of a multi-verse with many galaxies, planets, and stars just like ours.

They’re testing every possible hunch they can in order to fit their theory into the model of science as we understand it today. That’s how new scientific theories and laws become accepted—by fitting into and building upon what’s currently understood.

The problem that comes up over and over again, though, is one of selection bias—tests that look successful but actually aren’t because the samples tested were not diverse enough. When they’re run again with a wider array of data and subjects, some of their new discoveries break down.

Selection bias is fatal to science and objective study, but could it actually be useful to people trying to change their lives for the better by ignoring the odds and taking on unreasonable challenges?

My hypothesis is yes, it can actually be used advantageously, but it all depends on how it’s applied. Let’s look at two examples.

The Business Destined to Fail

Consider this scenario for a moment:

You have an idea for a business. It would be really expensive to start—probably using up all your savings—and you’re not sure if people will actually want what you sell. So, you decide to do your due diligence and ask 20 of your closest friends if they’d buy your product when you create it. You go to your mom, your dad, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, all your cousins, and your closest pals.

Every single one of them says, “Yes! I’d absolutely buy it! You should do it!” All of them except your crotchety Uncle Harry who still thinks the internet is just a fad, that is.

You’re over the moon. Based on your findings, you’re 95% confident that you’ve got a million dollar idea. You go to the bank, withdraw all your money, and sink it into product development.

Side note: Did I mention your product is a new anti hair-loss formula for aging tabby cats and no one in your family even has a pet?

You launch the product and sell exactly 19 tubes to the friends and family who said they’d buy it because they feel guilty, and you give Uncle Harry his tube for free, just to prove him wrong.

Your business and life savings were just eaten by the selection bias monster. You got a false positive because you asked the wrong questions to the wrong people.

Of course, that’s an outlandish scenario and you’re smart enough to avoid a catastrophe like that, but it illustrates the concept well.

The Violin Virtuoso

Now consider this scenario:

You want to be an amazing violinist, but you’ve never picked up a violin before. That scares you, and you’re not sure if you’re capable of doing it, but judging by the fact that you don’t actually know anyone that plays violin and you saw a five-year-old on YouTube play for the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony, you figure it can’t be that hard, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of competition.

You go for it.

As you get more and more into it, learning about the instrument, the music, and the culture, you start to realize just how naïve you were when you started, but does it matter anymore?

Now you’re pretty good at it. You get gigs whenever you want them, and you just got an audition with a touring philharmonic. You’re headed up, and your self-esteem is through the roof because you’ve taught yourself a whole new skill that you’d always wanted to learn. It was a hell of a lot of work, but you did it anyway because you loved it.

If you’d known just how big the challenge would be when you started, would you have even taken the first step? Would you have even allowed yourself to dream it? How would you have reacted?

In this case, your selection bias helped you get started with an otherwise insurmountable challenge.

Sometimes you need to do your due diligence before before putting yourself in harms way, and sometimes it’s better to never know the odds in the first place because they don’t matter. Even if you’d never taken your violin outside your bedroom, you’d still have learned something new that made you happy. In my book, that’s a success.

The Final Word

Selection bias can make or break you, but it all depends on what your goal is. If you’re trying to start a business you’re unsure about with every last dime you have (hint: don’t do that!) or you want to find a way to convince the world that the universe is actually completely different from how we currently understand it, then selection bias is your enemy and you must confront it.

On the other hand, if your goals are internal, and you only need to convince yourself to get started on something that’s important to you then, by all means, ignore the piles of data that say the odds are stacked against you because it doesn’t matter.

Bask in your selective ignorance.

Bonus Case Study for the Initiated

When I started Riskology.co, I used this same strategy to create the design for the site (though I didn’t realize I was doing it at the time).

Even though, deep down, I knew that paying a web designer was worth the money and that what they do is hard work that can’t be replicated by amateurs, I still thought to myself, “Ehh, I can do it.”

I was incredibly naïve, but the truth is that it didn’t really matter. The only hard cost to me to design the site myself was $65 and a lot of time—of which I had plenty—spent swearing at my computer.

I didn’t know how much work it would be or what I’d have to learn, but I set to it anyway. I ran into plenty of failures along the way, but I kept going because I wasn’t really losing anything by messing up, but I was learning plenty.

Rather than worry about looking at and researching every well-designed website on the internet—an impossible task—I picked out five sites with great design that I connected with and spent lots of time trying to understand why they looked the way they did. I wanted to know what about the design struck me as “successful.”

Then I took what I learned from those designs and put them to work in my own. I borrowed ideas liberally and arranged them in a way I thought made sense for the audience I wanted to attract, and then it was off to the races.

The end result is a design that’s very poor at attracting 99% of the people on the internet, but very good at capturing the attention of the people I want to hang around here.

For a large-scale site that’s trying to mass market, it’s pretty bad, but for the people I want to talk to, it’s pretty good. I think that’s been a big factor in the growth I’ve seen at Riskology.co.

A few lessons I’ve learned along the way to make this kind of experiment work better:

• Don’t be a copycat – Borrow inspiration and borrow it liberally, but don’t plagiarize. A straight copycat approach always results in limited success. You can’t surpass the original because you’re a phony. Learn why the source you’re taking inspiration from works and apply that instead. Borrow the essence—the mojo, if you will—but not the form itself. That leaves room for unlimited success.

• Only study success – It’s easy to find friends, relatives, and others close by that have an opinion about how you should do something, but unless they’ve done it themselves already, it isn’t worth much. Taking advice from someone that hasn’t achieved what you’re trying to do is usually a fast track to failure, but it’s tempting because it’s easy advice to get. Go the extra mile and find good case studies that you can actually learn something valuable from.

• Diversify your sample group – You don’t need to eliminate selection bias, but it’s worth it to at least understand it exists and go outside your normal feedback circle. This will both limit the selection bias effect and make whatever you’re working on much more unique. If you draw your inspiration from five places that are all basically the exact same, you’ll probably end up just creating a sixth clone.

 

Image by: stevendepolo