Bias X + Bias Y + Global context = Emergent Biases
“ Twenty thousand years ago, huge condor-like birds with sixteen-foot wingspans were tearing open the carcasses of hippo-sized ground sloths here in North America with the same kind of heavy-duty beaks. Mammoths and mastodons were giving themselves dust-baths and pushing over trees. Cheetahs were hunting a large variety of pronghorn and forked-horn antelopes. No less than five other kinds of big cat were living on an extravagant assortment of camel, llama, deer, horse, musk ox, bison, goat and sheep species. With its giant bears, giant beavers, giant armadillo-like species, giant tortoises, and its giant ground-sloth species, North America was, without exaggeration, a super-Serengeti containing many more big-animal species than present day Africa. ”
-Baz Edmeades in "Megafauna, first victims of the human-caused extinction"
Summary: In the context of a complex socioeconomic system of billions of people, it should be no surprise that we now encounter ‘ composite ’ biases – emergent behaviors resulting from two or more biases combining in our novel global circumstances. For instance, when we combine time bias (the focus on the present) and shifting baselines (the inability to see the trend from the past) with the focus of our empathy
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