Preconception, Bias and Traffics

My kids don’t ride the car too often these days. About a month ago though, we went down to London and during the ride, two of my children puked in the car. It might be the long drive, or the smell of the rented car, or something they ate, but whatever it was, they puked and I had to stop the car. I’ve forgotten this, until today.

Today we went out to a 10 minutes drive but got stuck in slight traffic jam at a junction. The traffic didn’t move for around 5 minutes, when my son said that someone might have thrown up. My wife and I panicked. My son then clarified that he thought that someone might have vomited in one of the cars in front, and they had to stop, causing the traffic jam. I was a a bit confused, as that was a very unlikely event to stop a traffic. I then however remembered our last month’s trip to London where we had to stop when he and his sister threw up.

Although the possibility is low, my son had the experience of having to stop during travel, due to a motion sickness. From this experience, which is dear to him, this builds a strong preconception that feeling unwell and vomiting is a likely cause for a traffic jam. In my experience, this is unlikely to be true as it is normally an accident that causes a traffic buildup. Notice the word ‘normally’, which is in a way my opinion and is formed from a preconception. However recently when it snowed for a few days, a lot of my colleagues came late to the office and some of them didn’t even came, and worked from home instead. So my preconception of normally might be challenged here, where bad weather is more likely to cause traffic jams.

Even as simple as traffic, can be subjected to bias. Extrapolating from this, I am not surprised how some people can arrive at such different decision or conclusion, based on where they start in their train of thoughts and what preconceptions have been occupying their mind. First step though I think, is to identify that we all have biases, and what they are. Then we can sort out the differences.

Here’s to world peace.

Thank you for reading.