504: How to Notice Your Own Bias

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to notice your own bias. As humans, it’s natural for us to have biases in different ways. However, not noticing these biases can be detrimental to us and cause us to make bad decisions in business and in life in general.  In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about the importance of noticing your own biases, examples of how people can be biased, how people can be irrational during uncertainty and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:36 Why this topic was chosen. 01:31 The importance of noticing your own bias. 02:32 Examples of how people can be biased. 04:16 How people can be irrational during uncertainty. 05:09 How every prediction can be right at some point. 06:34 How people don’t like to uncertain. 08:40 Examples of how people can be irrational. 09:13 How people can be unhelpful with their bias. 10:04 How biases can be a defense mechanism against being wrong. 3 Key Points: Noticing one’s bias is sort of a superpowerThere’s irrationality that comes up when we have uncertainty.Every prediction can be right at some point. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:04] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat we're going to talk about how to notice your own bias and how to ensure that you don't make bad decisions because of a rigid internal bias that you might have. The reason why we wanted to talk about this, at a prior episode we were just talking about how to negotiate with oneself and we had shared a little bit about this idea that the one thing that I recently noticed of people wanting to believe something because of self-interests and then trying to selectively find the information, the experts, the articles, the data that confirms their bias and continuously defending their mind against everything that would attack their thought process and collecting the things that confirm that thought process. And how big of a waste, to me that seems such a... I mean, we always do this, but right now it's such a heightened environment that I just notice this so much and just... I'll give you one quick example and then let's talk about this because noticing one's bias, I feel like, is a superpower in avoiding making avoidable mistakes. [0:01:23] Hiten Shah: Absolutely. [0:01:25] Steli Efti: One thing that was really interesting at, I don't know, maybe six weeks ago or so, five, six weeks ago when we were in the Western world in Europe and the U.S. Much earlier in the pandemic timeline. And it seems still very far away, like a problem that was in Asia and in China and maybe there are a few, a couple of cases in Germany, a couple of cases in the U.S. But there were still a lot of debate of it would ever become a problem in the Western world. I remember talking to a friend of mine in the U.S. And then I remember talking to a friend of mine in Germany. What was interesting was how both of them, my friend in the U.S. Was like, "Well, I'm sure I'm in the U.S., I wouldn't want to be in Germany right now because..." I was like, "Oh, why is that?" "Well, if a pandemic would happen, I'd much rather be in the U.S. Than in Europe or Germany." And I said, "Oh, why is that?" He was like, "Well, the U.S. Healthcare system is really amazing and it's not as population dense and..." He brought up a number of reasons why. He was like, "You know what, I feel pretty safe, this is probably around the world, not the worst place to be at a pandemic and Germany would be much worse." And then I talked to my German friend a couple of days later, without prompting it, he was telling me, "Well, I'm glad that you're in Germany, Steli, right now and not in the U.S. Because you're much safer here if there's a pandemic.

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