//The claim being made is that there are situations which are unambiguously not zero sum.//
I don’t disagree with that claim.
//You haven’t addressed that.//
A man called Nick Clegg recently took the advice of the author and acted against his zero-sum bias and decided to work with a leader from an opposition political party in a coalition government.
The outcome was positive-sum for Nick Clegg because he got to be Deputy Prime Minister, and for David Cameron because he got to be Prime Minister.
However, a lot of Liberal Democrat and Conservative voters (who as a group were represented by the two party leaders) got angry because they thought the situation of who should govern Britain was a zero-sum contest.
In this situation should the group have overcome its supposed zero-sum bias and urged the leaders to cooperate? Or perhaps they were right in their protests that it was a zero-sum situation, as the leadership deal, which is neither Conservative or Liberal, may turn out to be entirely self-serving for the careers of the two young party leaders and bad for Britain.
The proposed advice is not of use to this real world application.
//It may help for you to read the Sequences. No one is claiming that one should act like something is not zero sum when it is. Dealing with a cognitive bias is not accomplished by doing everything the exact opposite of what that bias would push you towards. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence. Fighting a cognitive bias doesn’t mean assuming the exact opposite. It means being aware of the bias and being alert for when the bias may be influencing judgment.//
I’ll take time to do so. I’m attracted to Bayesianism but I feel all this fighting business is getting away from science.
//Also, is it possible, if you please, to work a tiny bit on your grammar and punctuation?//
Capitals are back. I’ll take the hit for the grammar and punctuation.
Yes, but why is it new and useful information to know that people might have a zero-sum bias when one is aware one does not have an objective way to decide whether one should act to correct it in any given situation—i.e. should preference be given to the individual or the group, or the group or groups?
The concept “fight zero-sum bias” is just another way to say “think positive”, “always look on the bright side of life”, “be optimistic”. It’s nothing new, except the word “fight” makes this version war-like.
I find the use of the word “fight” disconcerting. It’s a messy word. The way we think is a mechanical process. If there is a right way to think it has the potential to be explained. The word “fight”, which carries emotional and irrational connotations, need never be invoked. I don’t think this is a trivial point.
It’s possible that a zero-sum scenario may appear positive-sum once the zero-sum bias has been corrected, but that is merely a short term illusion because the fate of the individual is also tied to that of the group.
Also I disagree with the idea human psychology has evolved to “think the worst” of each other. Can it be proved we have a zero-sum bias? In many situations it would be more helpful to counter positive-sum bias—in Ponzi schemes, for example, not everyone can be a winner.