Devops field guide to

understanding

cognitive biases

Hi!I'm Lindsay Holmwood

@auxesis

Engineering manager

@

Bulletproof Networks

Co-organise Sydney

Devops meetups

Started

Devops Down Under

New iPhoneNew iPhone

http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamhook/4742869256/

Your current

iPhone crashes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268891@N07/856565056/

Your current

iPhone is slower

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brenderous/3671106784/

Time to upgrade!

Why?

Apple has made

my device slower!

Clustering

illusion

See patterns in

randomness

See correlations

where they are none

Your device has

always been that slow

Clustering illusion is a

Cognitive bias

What is

cognitive bias?

"Mental shortcut"

Timeliness

Accuracy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/frostnova/2268471558/

• Problem solving

• Heuristic

• Correct result

• Rational choice

• Problem solving

• Heuristic

• Incorrect result

• Cognitive bias!

Heuristic?

Pattern matching

Heuristics are simple, efficient rules often used by people to form judgements and make decisions.Involve focusing on specific information, and ignoring others.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/buttim/1297081125/sizes/o

What helped

your ancestors

survive!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhdesign/1096464615/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/princess_l_88/4948893120/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cphotos/4780625450/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amesis/3777130839/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artotemsco/5465529987/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fish2000/4648423198/

see it go over here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cphotos/4780625450/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cphotos/4780625450/

was actually here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cphotos/4780625450/

Confirmation bias

Seek information that

reinforces position

Ignore alternative

explanations

Interpret ambiguous

information in your

favour!

http://www.comedycentral.com/press/images/colbertreport/stephencolbert2.jpg

•Who is clueless enough to think Colbert is a conservative?

•Why do conservatives like Stephen Colbert?

•Ohio study finds conservatives believe Colbert dislikes liberalism

http://althouse.blogspot.com.au/2006/05/who-is-clueless-enough-to-think.htmlhttp://www.alternet.org/story/137918/why_do_conservatives_like_stephen_colberthttp://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/ohio-study-finds-conservatives-believe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

Debugging code

My code is perfect!

I know the

problem is in

this other library

I just can't find it!

*30 minutes pass*

The bug was in

my code

Counter this

behaviour

Take opposing

viewpoints

In studies of stock markets, investors made more profit when the resisted bias.

To combat the effects, investors can adopt a contrary viewpoint "for the sake of argument".

Krueger, David; Mann, John David (2009), The Secret Language of Money: How to Make Smarter Financial Decisions and Live a Richer Life, McGraw Hill Professional, pp. 112–113,ISBN 978-0-07-162339-1, OCLC 277205993

Is your conclusion

negative?

It could be biased.

Cognitive therapy is a type of psychotherapy developed in the 1960's that has become a popular approach to combating cognitive biases.

As new data tends to reinforce existing opinions, cognitive therapy teaches people to interpret new data impartially.

Harness this

behaviour

Good collaboration?

Free pass on infractions

When people are given feedback that conflicts with their self image, they regard it as unreliable and are less likely to act on it.

Confirmation reinforces,

You ignore other sources

Provisioning

automation

https://twitter.com/aussielunix

•Provisioning: •We're being hurt badly by VMware provs!

•Software: •We'll automate that now!

2 weeks later

•Provisioning: •We're being hurt badly by load balancer provs!

•Software: •We'll automate that now!

1 week later

•Provisioning: •We're being hurt badly by VMware provs!

•Software: •We'll automate that now!

4 weeks later

•Provisioning: •We're being hurt badly by EC2 provs!

•Software: •We'll automate that now!

18 months

What is

happening?

Working on the thing

closest to us that

hurts us most.

But it's not the biggest

problem overall!

Would you work

like this?

Hindsight bias

"knew it all

along" effect

memory distortion

you alter your memories to fit a narrative in your head of how you perceived things

•Asiana pilot "couldn't see runway before crash"

•Pilots in Asiana crash relied on automatic equipment for airspeed

•Asiana says crash pilot was in training

•Inexperienced pilots may be cause of Asiana jet crash

•Asiana pilots "stayed silent until two seconds before crash"

•Fears pilots' manual flying skills eroding a"er Asiana crash

•

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/07/10/12/43/asiana-pilot-couldn-t-see-runway-before-crashhttp://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/17940112/asiana-flight-crew-saw-trouble-at-500-feet-u-s-safety-board-says/http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/crash-pilots-wanted-to-abort-landing-as-boeing-777-approached-airport-too-low-investigators/story-e6frg6so-1226675762698http://www.theguardian.com.au/story/1628513/inexperienced-pilots-may-be-cause-of-asiana-jet-crash/?cs=5http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/asiana-airline-pilots-stayed-silent-until-two-seconds-before-crash-at-san-francisco-airport-8698477.htmlhttp://www.news.com.au/world-news/fears-pilots-manual-flying-skills-eroding-after-asiana-airlines-crash-in-san-francisco/story-fndir2ev-1226676769126

Judgement

"You were capable

of preventing

a bad outcome"

Monitoring thresholds

"I don't want that thing

that woke me last night

to wake me again"

"I'm going to make that

problem go away."

But...

How often does

that alert fire?

What percentage

of all alerts is that?

Are there other alerts

that are more frequent?

What makes this alert the

most important to fix?

Counter this

behaviour

Collect data!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Analyse that data

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Make decisions

based on that data

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Act on data,

not feelings

Scientific method works great for experimentation, but things fall down once you publish your evidence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias

Explain in terms

of foresight

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias#Judicial_system

Hindsight blinds,

Foresight finds

http://www.flickr.com/photos/studiogabe/5535916719/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjliew/1311490235/

Impossible deadline

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pcb85/4258475681/

???

"I don't know what

you're complaining

about"

"It's just a

bunch of typing"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjackowski/3812946635/

Dunning-Kruger effect

https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~suh/metacognition.pdf

The less you know

about a topic, the

better you think

you are at it

The less you know

about a topic, the

poorer your ability to

recognise skill in others

The more you know

about a topic, the

worse you think

you are at it

Why?

• More skill

• More practice

• More experience

• See complexity + nuance

"Curse of knowledge"

• Less skill

• Less practice

• Less experience

• No peer feedback

"Poor performers

don't learn from

feedback suggesting

a need to improve"

Examples

"I can write code

better than any of our

developers"

"I can scale our

systems way better

than our sysadmins"

"I can lead

people way better

than my boss"

NO. YOU

CAN'T.

You are not a

unique snowflake

Counter this

behaviour

Minimal training

Improved self-assessment

DevOps in a nutshell

grossly incompetent subjects improved their ability to self-assess own skills level after minimal trainingregardless of an actual improvement in that skill

Make engineers

managers

this is a large hammer to wield, but it can be effective

Non-technical

manager?

Lean on your engineers!

Ethnic diversity

most of the studies of dunning-kruger have been in western culturespreliminary research suggests there may be an opposite effect in east-asian cultures

The incompetent gloat,

The capable choke

Confirmation bias

Hindsight bias

Dunning-Kruger effect

How vulnerable to

these biases are you?

Quick show of hands - given everything you've just heard about these biases, how vulnerable to them do you think you are?

• "I'm aware of my biases"

• "These don't affect me"

• "I am better than average"

Better-than-average effect

&

Illusory superiority

Bias blind spot

• Positive attributes

• Above average

• Negative attributes

• Below average

Why?

Self-esteem

Control

Confirmation reinforces,

You ignore other sources

Hindsight blinds,

Foresight finds

The incompetent gloat,

The capable choke

Rhyme-as-reasoneffect

Aesthetics affect truth

• Fluent, Fast, Smooth

• Higher value

This is a test

1.Read the statement once

2.Count the letter F

FINAL FOLIOS SEEM TO RESULT FROM YEARS OF DUTIFUL STUDY OF TEXTS ALONG WITH YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE.

How many

did you see?

The answer is 8

Fluency heuristic

http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/ft/rh/RH_Fluency_2008.pdf

FINAL FOLIOS SEEM TO RESULT FROM YEARS OF DUTIFUL STUDY OF TEXTS ALONG WITH YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE.

Brain expects pattern

to continue

Brain skips

other information

Counter this

behaviour

http://www.wrayherbert.com/blog/memory-learning-and-the-fluency-heuristic

Trigger more

deliberate

thinking

Use checklists

Induce

randomness

Harness this

behaviour

Rhyme your

mantras

Make text

styling simple

Have you learnt

anything?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

How many passes?

What's on the

gorilla's chest?

Did you see the

curtains change

colour?

Or one of the

players leave?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

•It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.•It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. • Mark Twain

Creating "good culture"

is a distraction.

Culture is made

from people

Understand how

you think.

Become more

rational.

Become less

rationalising.

Improve ourselves.

Culture will flow.

Thank you!♥ the talk?

Let @auxesis know!

•Further reading

•You Are Not So Smart - David McRaney

•Sway: The irresistible pull of irrational behavior - Ori Brafman

•Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

•Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande

•The field guide to understanding human error - Sidney Dekker

http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-So-Smart/dp/1592407366/http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Behavior/dp/0385530609/http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555/http://www.amazon.com/The-Checklist-Manifesto-Things-Right/dp/0312430000/http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error/dp/0754648265/