Hindsight Bias
How you can put the past behind you, and move forward.
We’ve all heard people say, 'Leave the past behind.' And let’s not forget the mind-numbingly boring, ‘The past is in the past, and we’re living in the present.’
But these typically annoying clichés about living a good life are inherently flawed.
Why? These clichés fail to tell us how to leave the past behind.
But I’m here to help you with that.
So read on if you're willing to become the person you’ve always wanted to be.
👉 So What is Hindsight Bias?
Hindsight Bias, or the “I knew it all along phenomenon,” is a psychological tendency people have to assume that they knew the outcome of an event after the outcome has already been determined.
“I knew that this stock that no one’s ever heard of would quadruple in value in just one week, so I should’ve invested my life savings in it! Who cares if it’s a meme coin and it looks like a disfigured chimpanzee, I knew this would happen!”
No, you didn’t. You just think that you did.
Of course, this can make life pretty difficult. You’d begin to think you’re this incredible Einstein-reborn-esque genius simply because you think you predicted something, when it’s nothing but hope or gross oversimplification.
And this leads to an endless loop of a “Eureka!” moment, followed by constant regret.
After all, if you could predict what was to happen, why didn’t you act on it?
👉 What Influences Hindsight Bias?
Research says there are three key variables that contribute to hindsight bias. Consider these three variables to be, let’s say, butter, flour, and sugar. When they combine, they form a cake. A mouldy, bland, existential cake of hindsight bias.
If it’s not obvious enough, baking isn’t my forte, but let’s bake a cake anyway.
🔸 Cognitive (butter)
My place of work takes elections extremely seriously. They have speeches, polling data, sense checks, campaigning—you know, the whole shabang.
Being the methodical person I am, I voted based on all this data that I had available to me. I was confident I’d made the right decision, because how could the numbers lie? (This was unrelated to the bribes on offer, of course.)
A few days later, the results were in. The person I voted for... lost? But no matter, I never fully trusted the data anyway. In fact, I was so unsure of who would win that I used the data as a crutch to help me make my decision. No, I could never have been so sure that the candidate I voted for—the losing candidate—would be the winner.
See what I’m getting at here?
The butter of this pudgy mess of a cake is essentially people misremembering or distorting their predictions of an event.
Just as I misremembered my conviction of the person I voted for (again, unrelated to that massive bribe), we change the predictions we made in foresight to one blatantly ruled by hindsight. We want to be correct—to feel validated—about our “prediction,” even if that means mistaking hindsight for foresight.
🔸 Metacognitive (flour)
Look, we all like being right. And I get it. I mean, it hurts to be wrong, doesn’t it? I remember when I was so convinced that my sister was actually an alien parasite sent down to torment me. The day I found out that it was just my sister’s personality—not the universe punishing me—was a sad, sad day.
Essentially, metacognition stems from people understanding why or how an event occurred, making it seem as if the event was predictable.
If I understand why England lost another FIFA World Cup (general incompetency), predicting that they would lose it way before they actually did seems like a much easier feat.
Actually, let me explain this with a story. Say hello to my friend, Billy.
You see, Billy thinks he has a knack for investing. Investing in his mental well-being? No. Investing in building relationships? Who needs friends anyway? Investing in a mirror so he can feed into his narcissistic tendencies? Well, yes, but no.
Billy decided to invest in the stock market. He invested $10,000 in this ludicrous stock, thinking he had the ability to pump and dump. Naturally, this failed miserably. Billy was so far in debt that the bank decided to even take away his brand new mirror.
As Billy wept over his lost mirror, he tried to figure out why his scheme had failed. Who knew that investing in the stock of a company on the verge of bankruptcy while having no influence or charisma to attempt a pump and dumb would fail miserably?
So Billy beat himself over his lost money and pride. He understood why he failed and mistook that understanding for something he should’ve known as foresight.
He’s beating himself up for something he’s realised in hindsight, but he thinks it is foresight. That’s the issue with hindsight bias. Billy thinks this was entirely his fault and he should have known about it earlier, but the only reason he thinks this is because he knows about it now.
And here we have loop of smugness and inaction.
🔸 Motivational (sugar)
Every good cake needs some sugar. Hindsight bias needs one last sprinkle of evil.
Motivational refers to the world as a predictable realm. Some events are inevitable, and you know that they will happen, just not when. Let me explain:
Say you live in a region where earthquakes are common. Naturally, you’re accepting of the fact that an earthquake can occur at any point in time. It’s an inevitability.
You take the necessary precautions—chaining your cupboards to the wall, using your brother as a shield to protect you from falling objects—but there are some precautions that you can take only when the earthquake hits.
And one day, the earthquake hits. Your house suffers considerable damage, and your brother really wasn’t an effective shield. You lie down, head in hands, blaming yourself for the damage done to your house because you knew that the earthquake was inevitable.
What you don’t consider is that, even though the earthquake was bound to happen, trying to predict exactly when it happens and how strong the earthquake will be is almost impossible.
So beating yourself over the damage of the earthquake is almost inconsequential. You did all that you could; you just don’t believe it in hindsight.
And now you have a terrible tasting cake.
👉 The Woes of Hindsight Bias
Let’s say the government of Country A has to implement a new policy. They have two options: try and fix the potholes in country A’s capital city, or raise tax rates and pocket all the earnings.
Whew, this is a tough choice.
After careful deliberation, they decided to fix the potholes. And it’s a huge success! Traffic has never been lower, and there’s even less pressure on the metro as the demand for buses has risen. Who knew a good government could be beneficial?
This decision was a tough one to make for the government, but as soon as the outcome was positive, any mention of having to deliberate on the manner was soon forgotten. To the government, it was a simple decision and one of great intelligence.
In this example, everyone’s a winner, but by failing to understand that the decision wasn’t clear-cut and that it was more complicated than it appeared, the government finds itself in a precarious situation in the future.
You see, the government didn't realise how hindsight had swayed them. In fact, they didn’t know hindsight was a thing. When they found out about it, they implemented a “hindsight tax.”
But anyway, the government was swayed by their previous successes and implemented new policies left and right. The final straw was when they taxed a man called Adi for… making terrible jokes?
People weren't happy. They rioted and pillaged every government building they could see. And the government was confused.
“Why is this happening? The last time we implemented a policy, it went so well, and we made the decision so quickly!"
The government didn’t bother considering that they were, in fact, unsure of their decision. They were swayed by the premise of their incredible predictive capacity and didn't apply it to the future. They should have learned from their mistakes in judging with hindsight, but they didn’t.
And the same can apply to FPL (Fantasy Premier League).
Essentially, it’s about keeping your relationship with FPL in check. If you burden yourself with each and every outcome—an outcome that you have no way of predicting—you are simply making life worse for yourself.
You couldn't have known that Haaland would pick up an injury midway through a game City won 5-0 and be subbed off with a blank.
But, in hindsight, you can say, “I knew Haaland would blank! I should’ve captained someone else!”
You didn't know that. No one did. If you knew that City scored five, you’d have captained Haaland anyway.
So simply knowing about hindsight bias—and the ability to differentiate between hindsight and foresight—can make your life far easier.
👉 Keeping Hindsight Bias in the Rearview Mirror
Let’s start with an exercise. Take your left palm and hold it up in the air. Now take your right palm and bring it against your left palm. Repeat this multiple times, and voila! You’re clapping for yourself. And that’s exactly what you should do, because knowing about hindsight bias is the first step to getting rid of it.
Next, plan for different scenarios and write them down somewhere. That way, when you start having hindsight-y thoughts, you have your thought process to remind you that the supposed foresight was not your fault.
Embrace uncertainty. The world isn’t predictive, and learning to let go and know that you cannot control certain outcomes will naturally lower your susceptibility to hindsight bias.
And take responsibility for your decisions. Just because it may appear as if you regret a decision made in hindsight doesn’t mean that your decision-making was optimal in foresight. But it could’ve been. And taking responsibility for it increases the likelihood of optimal decision-making in the future.
Even if that means forgetting about what could have been.