Carpe Coma

During the vast expansion of choice which has come about from the internet an old problem has taken a new and much more center stage prominence; how to effectively sort through vast volumes of options. Now the normal response to a lot of choices is to develop some filters; rules or heuristics to go by which weed out unlikely matches and allow one to focus on the likely ones. Now for simple choices with few variables, filters work great. The problem comes in when trying to apply simple filters to complex choices with many variables. Choices where there may not be an ideal option available. This gets even worse when the choices are time consuming to make and wrong ones are expensive, because we start to place a lot of emphasis on discerning the right choice(s) as quickly as possible.

So, what is filter blindness? Filter blindness is when, in an attempt to minimize false positives (things which look like a fit, but aren’t), we start creating an ever increasing number of false negatives (things inferred as not a fit, but really are). It is when we start rejecting the very things we ostensibly want because they don’t fit our rule set. They don’t pass our filters. The real kicker is that filter blindness is self-reinforcing because we don’t see the good choices we passed over, only the bad ones that still get through the filter. As a general rule, we never know about the false negatives our filters create because we rarely go look over the rejections. This bias in our sample leads us to tighten the filter even more, as bad ones are still getting through, thus increasing our blindness. Dating and hiring are both processes rife with filter blindness as they both are complex, time consuming decisions with a lot of variables where the wrong choice can be very expensive. If you have any number of friends, I’m sure you know at least one whom you see as having gone seriously filter blind.

Filter Blindness isn’t really a new idea. In statistics, it is called a type II error. Everyone that has any filtering is going to be filter blind to some degree, it’s unavoidable. So, what to do about it? We obviously need some degree of filtering, lest we spend forever sifting wheat from chaff by inspecting one grain at a time. The first step is to recognize when you may be going seriously filter blind. If you are getting frustrated with never (or rarely) finding what you are looking for, you may have gone filter blind. The longer you have been looking, the more likely you are to have gone filter blind. The quicker you decide to stop investigating an option, the more likely you are to have gone filter blind. So endless snap judgments, frustration with not being able to find what you are looking for, and a seemingly endless search all should be red flags that you may be suffering from serious filter blindness.

The next step is to determine for yourself what a reasonable ratio of false positives you are willing to accept. 0% is not a reasonable number and will result in nearly total filter blindness. The other end of the scale, 100% isn’t any good either as you will spend forever looking. Pulling from popular lore, we come across some suggestions;

Theodore Sturgeon: 90% of everything is crud.

The 80/20 rule: 20% of input is responsible 80% of output. (20% of customers are responsible for 80% of your profit, 20% of people are responsible for 80% of crimes, etc)

These would suggest that a good initial filter is one which rejects between 80-95% of possible options quickly. Less than that, and you are probably spending too much time searching the low yield selections. Much more than that, and you are going to create a lot of false negatives. Create a reasonable definition of success. Don’t expect to be ecstatic with everyone that gets past the quick judgment. Personally, I mark anyone I keep interest in for longer than a month as a qualified success because it suggests to me if certain unknown factors had been a bit different, things might have worked. Try to keep count! It’s very easy to under estimate what your success rate is when you are preoccupied with avoiding failure.

Next, be careful about what you decide are the rules to your filter. Is this feature really a deciding factor? A reliable indicator? If not, you probably should avoid using it.

Finally, Follow-up. Don’t just set your filter in place and never review them. If your filters aren’t leading you to find the right people, tweak them. Maybe one your rules isn’t as important as you thought. Maybe there is a common theme that you missed.