Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Illusion of ‘I Knew It’: Understanding Hindsight Bias and How to Resist It

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The Illusion of ‘I Knew It’: Understanding Hindsight Bias and How to Resist It · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Reformed thinking.
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  It is. It's really good to be back at
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  the table. Yeah, always a pleasure.
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  And today we are tackling a subject from our sources that
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  well, it might make everyone a little uncomfortable, myself
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  included, to be honest. Oh man, 100%.
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  I've been reading through the stack of source material for
• 0:20
  this deep dive and I have to admit I felt a little targeted.
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  I think we all do when we read this stuff.
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  Right. You know that feeling when you
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  when you watch a football game or you see an election result
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  come in or maybe something happens in the stock market and
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  immediately you say, I knew that was going to happen?
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  I knew it all along. Precisely.
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  I knew it all along. You look back at this totally
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  unpredictable event, maybe a medical diagnosis or a sudden
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  job change or a market crash, and suddenly it just feels like
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  it was the most obvious thing in the world.
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  It is a very seductive feeling, isn't it?
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  Yeah. It makes us feel safe.
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  It makes us feel smart. But here is the picker, and this
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  is what we are digging into today.
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  That feeling is a complete lie. Psychologists call it hindsight
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  bias. It is this trick our brains play
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  on us to make us think the past was predictable, but as we
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  looked at the theological side of this from our sources, it
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  gets much heavier. It really does, because while
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  the secular world calls it a cognitive glitch or, you know, a
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  processing error, when you hold it up against Scripture,
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  specifically looking at James 4IN Genesis 3 from our material,
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  it starts to look a lot less like a glitch and a lot more
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  like a sin. Yeah, it is the illusion of
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  omniscience. Or, as one of our sources put
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  it, the residual arrogance of Eden.
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  That is a phrase that sticks with you, so here is our
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  mission. For this deep dive.
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  We are going to examine why the human mind is wired to rewrite
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  history to feel and control, and how that impulse is actually a
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  direct competitor to the sovereignty of God.
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  A. Heavy lineup.
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  Yeah, we have a fascinating stack of research here.
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  We've got a theological exposition on James Four and
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  Isaiah 46, and on the other side a really rigorous psychological
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  analysis of decision making and memory distortion.
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  And the goal here is not just to make you feel bad about your
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  memory, it is to understand the mechanics of the brain, the
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  exegesis of the scripture, and then find a way to live that
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  actually respects our limits as creatures.
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  So let's unpack this. We will start with the anatomy
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  of the illusion itself, what is actually happening in our heads.
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  Then we will move to the Bible to see God's diagnosis.
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  We will look at the cognitive machinery versus the divine
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  decree. And finally, we will talk about
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  the cure, both practical and spiritual.
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  Sounds like a solid plan. OK, let's start with the
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  definition. Hindsight bias.
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  The psychological source we have defines it as the tendency to
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  view events as more predictable after they occur than they were.
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  Beforehand right? And it is key to distinguish
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  this from actual learning. How so?
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  Well, it is not that you looked at the evidence and got wiser.
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  It is that once you know the ending, your brain quietly
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  updates the past. I see the source breaks it down
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  into 3 intertwined impressions. I think these are really helpful
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  to spot it in ourselves. The first one is foreseeability.
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  This is the IT was clear sensation.
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  Which is usually false. I mean, if it were truly clear,
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  you would have bet the house on it, right?
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  Spot on. You would have emptied your
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  savings account if you really knew.
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  The second impression is inevitability, the IT had to
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  happen feeling, Yeah. This is where we look at a
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  massive, complex mess of events and say, well, of course the
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  market crashed. Just look at the indicators.
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  Ignoring the ten other times the exact same indicators were there
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  and the market didn't crash. Precisely, we cherry picked the
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  data after the fact. And the third one, which I think
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  is the creepiest part of the whole source, is memory
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  distortion. This is the I remember expecting
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  it phenomenon. That is the part that really
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  shook me. The source points out that we
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  actually rewrite our own memories.
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  We sincerely believe we predicted it, even if a written
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  record would show, we were totally unsure at the time.
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  That is the scary part. It is not just lying to other
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  people at a dinner party to sound smart.
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  It is lying to yourself. The psychological material makes
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  a great point that this is not just about being boastful, it is
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  a coping mechanism. Because we hate not knowing.
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  We hate uncertainty. We hate the idea that we're just
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  walking through a thick fog, so when the fog lifts we pretend we
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  had a map the whole time. It crowds out the reality of the
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  uncertainty we actually felt. It replaces the I don't know
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  with I knew now that's the psychology.
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  But you mentioned earlier that this connects to Eden.
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  How do we get from a brain trick to original sin?
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  Well, we have to pivot to our theological source here.
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  This is where we put on our Reformed lenses.
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  The world says, oh, your brain is just trying to be efficient,
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  but Scripture says no, your heart is trying to be God.
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  That is a massive leap. Connect the dots for us.
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  Let's go back to Genesis 3, the temptation.
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  The serpent doesn't just say eat this fruit, it tastes good.
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  What is the actual promise he makes?
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  You will. Be like God.
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  You'll be like God, knowing good and evil.
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  Now our source did some heavy lifting on the Hebrew here.
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  The word for no is yadda. Yadda I have heard that word
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  used for intimacy, like when the text says Adam New Eve.
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  Correct. But in the ancient Near East
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  context, and specifically in this passage, it is not just
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  cognitive awareness. It is not just knowing that fire
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  is hot or water is wet. It signifies A determinative
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  knowledge, an experiential mastery over something.
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  So it is not just knowing facts, it is determining reality
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  itself. You have the nail on the head.
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  Eve was tempted to step out of the position of a creature,
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  someone who receives reality from God, and step into the
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  position of a Creator, someone who determines what is good and
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  evil. She wanted the prerogative that
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  belongs only to Jehovah. She wanted to be the final
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  arbiter of truth. So when I look back at a chaotic
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  event in my life and say I knew it all along, I am basically
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  claiming I had the inside track on reality.
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  You are claiming a divine attribute.
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  You are claiming that your finite mind was sufficient to
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  master the flow of history. You're effectively saying I am
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  not a surprise creature, I'm a knowing sovereign.
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  It is a daily subtle reenactment of the Rebellion of Eden.
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  That puts a whole new spin on the guy in the office who always
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  says I told you that project would fail.
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  He is not just annoying, he is reenacting the fall.
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  In a sense, yes. It is what the theologian in our
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  source calls that residual arrogance.
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  We want to be the authors of the story, not just the characters
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  within it. This brings us right to the text
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  that really confronts this attitude.
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  James Chapter 4. I know this is a classic passage
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  for Reformed believers regarding making plans, but our source
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  really opens it up in the context of this cognitive bias.
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  It really does. Look at James 4 verse 13.
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  Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go into such
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  and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a
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  profit. It sounds like a standard
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  business plan. A five year projection it is.
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  It is totally ordinary, but James stops them in verse 14
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  with a brutal reality check. Yet you do not know what
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  tomorrow will bring. The source highlighted a
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  specific Greek word here for no. Yes, this is absolutely
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  fascinating. The Greek verb James uses there
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  is epistemi. Epistemi, how is that different
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  from the other Greek words for knowledge?
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  Well, you have Genosko, which is just general experiential
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  knowledge, or Oida which is basic understanding.
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  But epistemi refers to a settled mastery of facts.
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  It is like standing over a subject and completely
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  understanding its internal mechanics.
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  It implies a firm, unshakable grasp.
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  So James is choosing his words very carefully here.
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  Very carefully. He is not saying you can't have
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  a guess about tomorrow or make a wise projection.
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  He is denying that you have epistemi.
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  He's denying that you have mastery over the events of your
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  life. He says you are a mist.
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  You are a vapor. A vanishing vapor.
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  That is the ultimate, ultimate contrast to epistemi, isn't it?
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  You can't master a vapor. You can't nail a fog to the
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  wall. And that is where the syntax
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  comes in. The source pointed out the
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  sentence diagram in this specific passage.
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  The main clause of our lives, the stuff we actually do, is
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  governed by a conditional protesis.
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  If the Lord wills the Ovalente, theologically, this means that
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  all human boasting is always syntactically and logically
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  subordinate to the sovereign decree.
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  When we exercise hindsight bias, we're trying to remove the if.
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  We're trying to make the events of history look like a straight,
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  unbroken line that we controlled, or at least fully
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  understood, rather than a curveball thrown by Providence.
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  I think it is really interesting to how this source brought up
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  the academic critics here, the liberal scholars.
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  Oh yeah, this is a crucial point for understanding how this bias
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  effects theology itself. You have critical scholars who
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  look at the prophecies of Daniel or Isaiah, prophecies that are
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  incredibly specific about the rise and fall of empires
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  centuries before they happen. And they look at those texts and
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  say no way. They say this is impossible,
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  nobody can know the future like that.
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  So they invent this idea of Edisonium ex of into prophecy
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  after the event. They claim these books must have
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  been written after the history already happened because
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  accurate prediction is impossible for humans.
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  That is ironic, isn't it? They are taking their own
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  limitations and projecting them onto God.
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  It is the ultimate projection of hindsight bias.
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  They assume that because they can't know the future, God
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  couldn't have revealed it either.
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  But Isaiah 46 verse 10 shatters that entire framework, declaring
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  the end from the beginning. God does not have hindsight
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  bias. Because God does not have
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  hindsight. He doesn't look back to learn.
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  He ordains forward. That is a distinction we really
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  need to nail down for the listener.
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  God doesn't look back. No, there is no succession of
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  moments for God where he learned something new.
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  He doesn't wake up and check the news to see how His creation is
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  doing. He wrote the news.
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  I want to get into the mechanics of how our brains actually pull
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  off this trick, because I I think it helps us realize just
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  how, crucially we really are. The psychological source breaks
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  down the cognitive machinery. How does the brain trick us?
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  It is incredibly humbling to read.
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  One of the main mechanisms listed is sense making.
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  The source says our minds intensely dislike ambiguity.
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  We have an allergic reaction to randomness.
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  So once an outcome is known, say a specific candidate wins an
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  election, the mind immediately starts stripping away what the
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  author calls the messy branches. Right before the the election,
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  there were 10 possible outcomes and 50 different variables
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  floating around. After the election, the brain
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  just deletes the 9 outcomes that didn't happen and grabs a neon
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  highlighter for the one that did.
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  It creates a clean, straight causal chain.
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  All LED to be, which led to see. And because that revised story
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  is so clean, we mistake it for being obvious.
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  The source calls this cognitive fluency.
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  That is a great term for. It it means if a story is easy
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  to tell backward, we think it was easy to predict forward.
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  If I can explain to you why a huge company failed in three
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  simple sentences today, I tricked myself into thinking I
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  could have seen it coming three years ago.
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  But explanation is not prediction.
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  That is the trap we fall into. Explanation happens with the
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  answer key sitting right in your hand.
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  Prediction happens in the dark. Another mechanism is selective
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  attention. You mentioned the highlighter
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  earlier and the outcome acts exactly like that.
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  Yes, Think about it this way. If you have a friend who is
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  dating someone and you have mixed feelings about the guy,
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  maybe he is really funny, but he's also a little flaky.
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  If they get married and stay happily together for 50 years,
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  you retrieve the funny memory and say I knew they were a
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  perfect match from day one. But if they break up in a month.
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  You retrieve the flaky memory and say I knew he was a total
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  loser. The outcome completely
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  determines which memory you are allowed to retrieve.
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  Exactly. And this is where we need to
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  bring the Westminster Confession back into the conversation.
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  Please do. Let's ground this.
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  Because what we are describing here the severe limitation, this
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  desperate need to make sense of things only after the fact, This
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  is the very definition of a finite mind.
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  Compare this to the divine mind. Look at Westminster Confession,
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  chapter 3. God freely and unchangeably
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  ordained whatsoever comes to pass.
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  He ordains it. He doesn't just watch it happen
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  and react, he ordains it. God has no new data to process.
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  For US, time is a stream we are floating in.
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  We only see things as they come around the bend in the river.
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  For God, the whole river is present at once.
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  So when we succumb to hindsight bias, we are essentially trying
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  to act like we have God's vantage point, but without his
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  nature. It is, as the theologian in our
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  source said, practical atheism. It is a functional denial of the
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  Creator creature distinction. When we say I should have seen
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  that coming, we are subtly implying that the universe is
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  small enough for our little brains to encompass.
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  We are implying that Providence is a manageable system.
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  Man, that hits close to home, I say.
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  I should have seen that coming all the time.
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  I drop a glass in the kitchen. I should have known my hand was
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  slippery. I make a bad hire at work.
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  I should have seen the red flags in the interview.
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  And let's look at the consequences of living like that
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  because it sounds like you were just being a little hard on
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  yourself. But according to the research,
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  it is actually way more damaging.
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  Right. The source outlines the high
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  cost of false certainty, and the first major cost is
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  overconfidence. If you convince yourself that
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  the past was totally obvious, you become incredibly reckless
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  about the future. You think, well, I knew the last
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  market crash was coming even though you really didn't, so I
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  can definitely predict the next one.
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  And that leads to massively risky bets.
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  It leads to leaders and politicians who think they are
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  totally invincible. It also leads to distorted
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  accountability. This is a huge issue in the
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  workplace and in the family home.
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  This is the blame aspect the material talks about.
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  The source discusses judging decisions based purely on the
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  outcome rather than the decision making process.
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  We do this constantly. A manager takes a calculated
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  intelligent risk based on all available data.
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  It has a 90% chance of success. It fails.
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  Why? Because sometimes the 10%
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  happens. That is Providence.
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  But the boss comes in on Monday morning and says that was a
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  stupid decision. You should have known it would
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  fail. That is outcome bias directly
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  fueled by hindsight bias. It destroys people, it crushes
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  employees. It makes children feel like they
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  can never, ever please their parents.
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  You should have known he would disappoint you.
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  Well, actually, at the time he seemed like a very nice young
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  man. But we judge people as if they
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  had a crystal ball hidden in their pocket.
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  And the source mentions shallow learning as the third
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  consequence. I think this one is crucial for
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  anyone listening who wants to actually grow wiser.
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  If you think the answer was obvious all along, you
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  completely stop asking questions.
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  Right. You stop asking what actual
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  information was I missing at the time.
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  You stop asking how much of this was just blind chance.
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  You just say it was inevitable and you move on.
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  So you never actually refine your process, you just get more
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  arrogant. Now let's pivot to the
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  theological consequence here. We talked a little about law and
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  gospel earlier. How does the law interact with
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  this bias? The law exposes sin, and in this
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  specific case, the law exposes the sin of intellectual pride,
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  but it also exposes the tremendous burden we place on
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  our own shoulders. The source calls it the heavy
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  burden on the conscience of the weary.
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  St. The should have knowns, yes.
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  Think of a devout parent whose child goes astray.
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  They sit awake at night racking their brains.
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  I should have seen the signs. I should have done XY and Z.
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  They are violently replaying the past with the unfair benefit of
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  the present outcome. That is a crushing weight to
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  carry. It is sheer legalism.
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  It is thinking that your personal discernment, your
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  foresight, your cleverness is what actually keeps you safe or
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  earns God's favor. You are literally beating
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  yourself up for not being omniscient, but the law says you
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  are not God, and that is actually incredibly good news if
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  we let that realization drive us to Christ.
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  That transitions us perfectly to the cure.
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  We have this massive problem. Our brains are biologically
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  wired to rewrite history, and our fallen hearts are wired to
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  claim God's throne. How do we fix it?
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  Let's start with the practical toolkit from the psychological
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  source. These are great tangible steps.
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  The first one is to record before outcomes.
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  Keeping a decision journal. Yes, write it down.
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  When you make a big decision, hiring someone, investing money,
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  choosing a school for your kids, write down what you expect to
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  happen. But also write down the
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  probabilities. Not just this will work, but I
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  think there is a 70% chance this works.
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  And here are the major risks. Because six months later, when
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  the venture either works or fails spectacularly, you can go
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  back to the book. The physical book doesn't lie.
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  Your memory will absolutely lie to you, the book will bring to
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  mind. Oh, actually I was really
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  worried about that one risk factor that ended up blowing up.
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  It keeps you grounded and humble.
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  The second tool is unknowing the outcome.
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  This is a tough mental exercise. You have to deliberately and
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  painstakingly reconstruct your pre outcome viewpoint.
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  You have to ask yourself, what facts did I actually have in my
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  hands on Tuesday, not what I know now on Friday.
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  It is like watching a murder mystery movie for the second
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  time and trying to remember what you thought before you knew the
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  Butler did it. It's really hard to separate the
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  2. It is hard, but it forces you to
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  have grace and empathy for your past self and empathy for other
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  people who had to make tough decisions in the fog.
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  And the third one is process focused post mortems.
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  This is huge for organizations and churches.
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  You have to separate the decision quality from the
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  outcome quality. You can make a brilliant,
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  faithful decision and still get a bad result due to to external
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  factors or just Providence. On the flip side, you can make a
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  terrible decision like drunkenly betting your life savings on a
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  roulette number and win. And if you win that roulette
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  bet, your hindsight bias tells you that you are a financial
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  genius. But you are not.
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  You are just lucky. Or rather, Providence allowed
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  it. So we need to evaluate the
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  process we use, not just stare at the final result.
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  Now let's bring this all the way to the cross, because the
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  theological remedy here is staggering.
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  The expert source made a connection between process
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  versus outcome and the crucifixion that honestly blew
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  my mind. It is the ultimate example in
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  all of human history. Think about the disciples.
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  Good Friday to them, standing there, looking at the outcome in
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  that exact moment. What did it look like?
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  It looked like total unmitigated failure.
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  Tragedy. The Messiah is dead on a Roman
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  cross. The movement is over, like they
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  said on the road to Emmaus. We had hoped he was the one to
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  redeem Israel. They had no hindsight yet.
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  They were living in the raw, agonizing pain of the event.
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  They couldn't see the resurrection coming on Sunday,
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  but according to the divine decree.
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  Look at Acts chapter 2, verse 23.
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  What was the crucifixion? It was the definite plan and
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  foreknowledge of God. It was the most successful,
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  perfectly executed event in the history of the cosmos, but
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  judged by human foresight in the moment, it looked like a
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  complete disaster. So the ultimate unpredictable
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  event from a limited human perspective was actually the
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  most sovereignly ordained event. Precisely.
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  And here's the Gospel indicative for the believer.
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  Christ is the only one who actually knew the end from the
• 19:12
  beginning. He knew he was going to the
• 19:14
  cross. He predicted it clearly.
• 19:16
  The Son of Man must be delivered up, and yet he completely
• 19:19
  submitted to the Father's will. Not my will, but yours be done.
• 19:23
  We do not need to be on mission because we are united by faith
• 19:26
  with the One who is. That is the release valve for
• 19:29
  all this pressure. I don't need to perfectly
• 19:32
  predict the future and I don't need to pretend I fully
• 19:34
  understood the past because I am in Christ and He holds it all
• 19:38
  together. That takes so much pressure off
• 19:40
  the daily Christian life. I don't have to be the captain
• 19:43
  of the ship, I just have to trust the captain.
• 19:45
  It liberates us from the tyranny of the should have knowns.
• 19:48
  You can look back at your past mistakes, your failures, and say
• 19:51
  I didn't see that coming, and that's OK, I'm a finite
• 19:54
  creature. But God saw it, and He used it
• 19:57
  for his glory. This leads perfectly into the
• 19:59
  third use of the law, how we live now, Christian obedience.
• 20:04
  The source talks about James 4 again in this new light.
• 20:07
  Yes, saying if the Lord wills is not just a polite tagline we put
• 20:11
  at the end of an e-mail. It is a rigorous spiritual
• 20:14
  discipline. It is a way of looking at your
• 20:17
  calendar and saying I am planning this, I am preparing
• 20:19
  for this, but I am holding it with a totally open hand.
• 20:23
  We obey not to become sovereign over our lives, but because we
• 20:26
  are loved by the sovereign. That is the heart of it.
• 20:29
  We plan. We use wisdom, we use decision
• 20:31
  journals, we try to get better at anticipating problems, but we
• 20:35
  do it all with deep humility. We do it knowing that we are
• 20:38
  dust in CR and he's gone. It really changes the way you
• 20:42
  look at a cancelled flight or a loss contract at work.
• 20:45
  It completely shifts your paradigm.
• 20:47
  Instead of reacting with how could this happen, my plan was
• 20:50
  flawless, it becomes Deo Valente.
• 20:53
  The Lord did not will my plan today.
• 20:56
  He willed something else. So let's synthesize where we
• 20:59
  have been today. We started with the
• 21:01
  psychological glitch of the mind, hindsight bias that makes
• 21:04
  us feel like we knew the outcome all along.
• 21:07
  We saw how that is actually a spiritual echo of the fall,
• 21:10
  wanting to be like God, knowing and determining good and evil.
• 21:13
  We saw how scripture actively rebukes that arrogance in James
• 21:16
  4, pointing out that we are just a vapor.
• 21:18
  Yeah, we look at how the physical brain tricks us with
• 21:20
  sense making and cognitive fluency.
• 21:22
  And we saw the real world damage it does, the overconfidence, the
• 21:25
  destructive blame game, the lack of real learning.
• 21:28
  And finally, the cure using practical tools to keep our
• 21:32
  minds honest and resting in the gospel truth that Christ's
• 21:35
  perfect omniscience covers our creaturely ignorance.
• 21:38
  I want to leave the listener with a final thought to chew on.
• 21:41
  The source material mentions something really beautiful about
• 21:43
  the hindsight of the last day. Yes, this is where we can
• 21:47
  speculate a bit based firmly on the trajectory of Scripture
• 21:52
  right now down here. We look at our lives, we look at
• 21:55
  the tragedies, the confusing turns, the prayers that seemed
• 21:58
  completely unanswered, and it just looks like a tangled mess.
• 22:01
  We can't see the pattern at all. We are stuck right in the middle
• 22:04
  of the story. But there is a day coming, the
• 22:07
  final day of judgement and glory.
• 22:08
  And on that day we will look back at the whole massive
• 22:12
  interwoven picture of human history, our own little lives
• 22:16
  and the massive scope of the world.
• 22:17
  And we will finally have true, pure hindsight.
• 22:20
  We will see it clearly for the first time.
• 22:22
  We will see the divine logic behind everything.
• 22:25
  We will see how that painful job loss LED directly to that
• 22:30
  necessary character growth, how that specific tragedy prevented
• 22:34
  an even greater evil. We will see that there were
• 22:37
  absolutely no loose threads. And we won't look at it and say
• 22:40
  I knew it all along. No, we will cast our crowns and
• 22:43
  say He knew it all along. We won't praise our own clever
• 22:46
  foresight. We will praise His perfect
• 22:48
  faithfulness. We will see that what look like
• 22:51
  random, senseless chaos down here was actually the
• 22:54
  meticulous, loving Providence of a sovereign Father.
• 22:57
  That is a beautiful place to land.
• 22:58
  It makes me want to be a lot more patient with the confusion
• 23:01
  of today. Amen to that.
• 23:02
  It is a comfort we desperately need.
• 23:04
  Thank you to everyone listening for joining us on this deep
• 23:07
  dive. It has been a heavy challenge to
• 23:09
  my own pride, but a massive comfort to my soul.
• 23:12
  Likewise, I have a lot to think about.
• 23:14
  This has been reformed thinking. We will see you in the next deep
• 23:17
  dive. Goodbye.