Hindsight Bias

Some things never change, like sibling quibbling, for example. Take this conversation between a 62-year-old and her little 60-year-old brother.

"Harris picked Walz as her running mate," the brother told his sister yesterday morning.

"I knew it!" she said.

"No, you didn't," he replied.

"You heard me say it last night," she argued.

"But you didn't know it," he pointed out, "you only predicted it. Thinking you knew it is a logical fallacy."

"Like confirmation bias?" she asked.

"Yeah, but not that one," he said. "It's one where people think things were much more predictable in retrospect once they know the outcome."

"Hmm," she grumbled. "Maybe."

"We should go to the beach," he said. "It's not raining, even though they predicted it would be."

"I knew it!" she said.

"No, you didn't," he laughed.

"But I knew you were going to say that," she told him. "I really did."