How do you tell the difference between making use of what you have, and confirmation bias?

[Magus]

It all boils down to this:
Give one of us a knife, a tomahawk, a bedroll, a compass, and a tarp, and set us down in the middle of Cornhole nowhere, We'll likely find our way out eventually. Give the average 9 to 5 Starbucks skittlehead the same outfit and his corpse will be found missing a few fingers looking for a signal on his cellphone. The great culling is not for us, it is for them!

 

[Amish Heart]

People around where I live absolutely make use with what they have, I see it all the time. Stuff I wouldn't of thought of doing or using. How many uses are there for baling wire. There's always more than one way to cook rice. Can't say one is better than another, depending on how you want to get it done.

 

[elkhound]

People around where I live absolutely make use with what they have, I see it all the time. Stuff I wouldn't of thought of doing or using. How many uses are there for baling wire. There's always more than one way to cook rice. Can't say one is better than another, depending on how you want to get it done.

i watch 3rd world videos over poverty and desperate times of folks and see them making incredible items from trash and junk. i seen some guys making diving goggles and snorkel on a beach once from washed up trash...their ability to manipulate plastic was incredible.

i see one russian guy lives very remote save EVERYTHING...down to foil pack.he turns it into something to help him further his daily life along. i seen him fix and repair everything.

 

[Aerindel]

So it comes down to "Run what you brung" and make the best of it. deciding others methods are wrong is a pretty narrow view. I can think of a few thousand times where people who seem to never make even close to a functional decision can always decide what another person should do

I'm more interested if what I have done wrong. I generally think other people are all already dead.

 

[Supervisor42]

What tha'heck is 'confirmation bias'?
I've had lice before, does it itch like that?

 

[Aerindel]

What tha'heck is 'confirmation bias'?
I've had lice before, does it itch like that?

It's the tendency for people to only believe evidence that confirms their past actions as correct, and ignore evidence that they made a mistake.

It makes people defensive about choices they have made, even if that choice is hurting them.

It also relates to the 'sunk cost fallacy' where you throw good money after bad, because you figure you've already invested so much, you have to keep investing to fix something even if it was a bad mistake.

An example from my own life.....putting $500 worth of aftermarket parts, into a $700 gun, just to make it reliable...instead of just selling the gun and buying one that doesn't need extra parts to make it work.