Just finished the Undoing Project and also recommend it. Reading it near the time of the El Faro final report and discussion here is informative with respect to what biases may have been at work within Davidsion’s thinking, among the crew and perhaps within that unique corporate organization. Kahneman and Taversky’s insights to how the mind may work while exposed to uncertainty seem valuable and if one is aware of what biases may be at play there is the possibility to think more clearly or deliberately during times of uncertainty. This is the sort of thing that needs to be in resource management courses.
Some quotes/paraphrases/thoughts…
“Once we have adopted a particular hypothesis or interpretation, we grossly exaggerate the likelihood of that hypothesis and find it very difficult to see things any other way”
We construct scenarios (often from memories) and these effectively replace probability judgements. The production of a compelling scenario is likely to constrain future thinking.
The brain is limited. There are gaps in our attention. The mind contrives to make those gaps invisible to us. Seems to fill in the gaps with a story it creates until more or new information comes in. But it seems just having created the story in the first place also inhibits ability to accept new information.
I also noted that Taversky was consulted by Delta airlines and it sure sounded like his work was one of the basis of that industries cockpit resource management approach. It seems he took the idea that it would be very hard to change the effects of these heuristic mechanisms in any one person (the pilot) so you had to change the environment within which the judgements/predictions/decisions were being made in.