Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Human beings are equipped with pattern recognition software so good that it can find patterns that are not there. That makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Seeing a hidden tiger that is not actually there is a much less costly mistake than failing to see one that is there, so biasing the software in the direction of more of the first kind of error and fewer of the second, fewer false negatives and more false positives, is good design.” (05/13/26)