A Human Frailty

A stream of WhatsApp messages and videos suddenly triggered my thoughts. Someone posts a video attacking a politician. Someone immediately posts another showing his achievements. Within minutes, the group is divided. The battle became “my leader versus your leader.”

The discussion ranged from whether the videos were AI generated and was the content genuine or not. How one of the star batsmen made such a ghastly mistake in the recent match to how we were being looted by the politicians. And the same set of highly intelligent people were having an intellectual discussion on everything - with the confidence of being experts on all the subjects.

But what really drove me to sit down and write this was that I found a peculiar human trait across all this. The ease with which we are able to find fault with things around us. I confess, I do that too but this is one of the common threads running around at least the circle that I am in. So I decided to study and find out more about it and what I got to know is interesting. 

Humans are extraordinarily good at judging outcomes, extraordinarily poor at appreciating the complexity that produced them, and remarkably reluctant to acknowledge the limits of their own understanding.

And yes, for those who are wondering how I have become such an expert in this subject, well I learnt sitting on the shoulders of experts, who are quoted at the end of this blog.

So what is this expertise about? Why does this exist? What does one gain through this expertise? Walk with me as I take you through my understanding.

Finding fault is easier than creating something

Imagine a stadium filled with people watching a nail-biting ending of an IPL match. Two runs. Last ball. Star batsman at the crease. The game is nearly won for the batting side. An in swinger. A violent heave of the bat. Clean bowled. Palms covering our faces. And then starts the expert comments. “What a stupid shot?” Says one. “He could have just snicked it past the wicket keeper to third man. There was no one there” quips another. “ Saala, match fixed hai. He must have been paid to play the ball that way” says the expert of experts with finality.

There is something almost unfair about the spectator’s position. He gets to watch the ball after the decision has been made and say: “Why on earth did he play that shot?”

And what does the batsman at the crease get to decide in a fraction of a second:

• What is the bowler likely to do?
• Where do I place the ball?
• In this match situation should I take two runs or hit a boundary?
• I am tired after having batted so long, I don’t think I can take two runs in a sprint?
• What shots can I play?
• What happens if I get out?

The spectator has to do none of that.

The person inside the system experiences uncertainty. The person outside the system experiences information. And then the outsider mistakes information for competence. Once we know the outcome, the outcome appears much more predictable than it actually was - the “I-knew-it-all-along” phenomenon.

Before the ball was bowled, there were probably several possible outcomes. After a batsman gets out, there is only one — and we can say anything about it.

I personally feel the person with “no skin in the game”, the one sitting on the sidelines, is the one who finds the maximum fault. The person taking the decision pays a price for being wrong. The commentator doesn’t. See the asymmetry?

Let us take another example. Imagine two people: a soldier on the battlefield and the reporter.  The soldier says “I think this is the best decision we can take, given the information available, but I could be wrong.” The reporter thinks “What an idiot. Anyone could have seen this coming.” The soldier has uncertainty because he has the responsibility. The reporter has certainty because he has none. And that is the reason why one must not automatically equate confidence with competence. Sometimes, the person most certain about the answer is the person least exposed to the consequences of being wrong.

Illusion of Explanatory Depth.

See news on TV. They are able to bring experts in every field. Each highly qualified, experienced and comes with a certain amount of confidence to have been able to sit there. And we - sitting in our couches, enjoying salted peanuts with a drink in our hand - We become experts in everything. Wars, weather, political decisions, education system, history, spirituality and yes - religion. We seriously are The Experts. We have an opinion on everything. And with that come our judgments and biases.

There is this fascinating phenomenon called the Illusion of Explanatory Depth.

People were asked how well they understood various complicated but everyday things — for example, how a toilet flushes or how a mechanical system works, why electrons which flow in the wire while electricity is on, does not fall off the open edges of a plug point?

Then they were asked to actually explain the mechanism step by step. People discovered that their apparent understanding was considerably shallower than they had believed.  

And this is particularly relevant to what we say in our daily lives:

“The government should have done X.” “The batsman should have done Y.” “The RBI should have done Z.” “Climate change is happening because of A.” “Our education system is destroying our children’s future.”

And because we have a rough mental model of the subject, we mistake the model for understanding the subject.

We know something about cricket. We know something about economics. We know something about climate. We know something about education. And knowing something gives us enough vocabulary to sound like an expert without possessing the underlying system knowledge necessary to actually be one.

That is much more interesting than simply calling people stupid.

How do I know that I don’t know

The famous Kruger and Dunning study found that people who performed poorly in areas such as logic, grammar and humour tended to overestimate their performance, partly because the knowledge required to perform well is also needed to recognise one’s own errors.  

A popular version of this is  “Stupid people think they’re smart.” But I think it is an oversimplification. In technical terms it is known as metacognitive limitation: How do I know that I don’t know?

The really dangerous issue isn’t “I don’t know.” It is having the knowledge to say “I know enough to know what the problem is” because sometimes we don’t.

Biases and Polarisation

Politics adds another layer to this already chaotic environment. We don’t merely process information. We actually defend identity Think about it. Everyday across chats in social media people are attacking leaders, both ruling and opposition, whose methodology doesn’t agree with theirs. 

Suppose I dislike political leader X. X makes a decision. If the decision succeeds, I might say: “He got lucky.” If it fails: “I knew he was incompetent.” And at that juncture, if someone produces evidence supporting X: “That data is manipulated.” (You may put any name of your choice to replace X and with AI coming in, we have another wonderful scapegoat - Blame it on AI)

This isn’t necessarily conscious dishonesty.

There is substantial research showing that people with strong opinions see evidence in a biased fashion, accepting evidence supporting their position relatively easily while scrutinising contradictory evidence much more intensely. There is also an idea of identity-protective cognition — people can selectively credit or dismiss information in ways that protect ‘their cultural or group identity’.  And now the argument isn’t really about what is true. It becomes “What do I believe?”

That’s a profound human frailty.

Moral Superiority

This is a universal example and all video apps are making money as people  produce videos of potholes, flooding of roads, cave-ins, cracks in flyovers… one could go on. And then starts a tirade -

“My taxes are being stolen.” We are right. Our hard earned money is taxed and we have all the right to question where it has disappeared.

But this lasts only till some personal work needs to be ‘organised’. I need a little cabling done for which the road outside my house has to be dug up. I grease the right palm to get it through without any hiccups. 

These two behaviours can coexist quite comfortably in the same person.

And this is because we, human beings are extraordinarily good at compartmentalisation. We don’t necessarily construct one consistent moral philosophy and then live according to it. We construct local justifications.

My bribe is different. I had no choice. 

Everyone does it. I was trying to get something done. 

What choice did I have? I was under pressure. 

I’m only doing it because the system is corrupt.

We are often much better at detecting hypocrisy in others than detecting it in ourselves. And this asymmetry is wonderful. My behaviour has circumstances. Your behaviour has character.

I am reminded of that old humorous take “Mera kutta, kutta. Tumhara kutta, Tommy”

That is the classic fundamental attribution error - our tendency to explain other people’s behaviour through their character while giving much greater weight to circumstances when explaining our own.

The Enjoyment of Finding Faults

But my mind was circling around just one single strong thought. Why do we actually enjoy finding faults?  As I dug I found some rewards which we get for doing this.

Firstly, it gives us competence without requiring performance. Think about it. I don’t have to be a politician to say how the country should be governed. I don’t have to be a cricketer to know what the batsman should have done. I don’t have to run a hospital to know what’s wrong with healthcare. I don’t have to manage a school to know what’s wrong with the education system. Criticism is a very cheap form of competence. Creating something, running something, taking responsibility is hard. Judging something from outside is easy.

Next, criticism gives us a feeling of control. We get uncomfortable when things get complicated. And a complicated world is even more uncomfortable. Climate change, geopolitics, inflation, education, war, artificial intelligence — these are enormously complex systems. Saying “The problem is X ” feels much better and easier than saying “I don’t completely understand this system and there are probably several interacting causes.” Certainty is psychologically comforting.

And in today’s world we have an additional reward. Criticism can provide status. This is particularly interesting in the age of social media. Actually, there is research around moral grandstanding — using moral discourse partly as a means of gaining social status.  In plain English: Being the person who spots what is wrong can make you feel like the person who sees what others cannot. And this can be such a seductive act. It changes my identity as a person. “I am awake.” “I see through them.” “I am not fooled.” “Everyone else is being manipulated.” There is status in being the critic.

Social media activities have shown negativity itself has an advantage.  Negative events, impressions and feedback tends to have greater psychological impact than equally good information.  They receive more processing than positive ones too. Look at our daily WhatsApp chats.  We see “New road completed near the border.” We scroll past. We see “Roads flooded in Gurugram. ₹500 crore scam in road construction!” We stop.

There is nothing particularly irrational about this. A system that notices potential problems is useful. The problem is that a survival mechanism designed to detect genuine issues can become a personality habit of detecting faults.

The Case for Criticism 

I can hear voices which say criticism is not inherently bad. I am in total agreement with it. 

Society needs critics. We need people outside who can see what the person inside is not able to observe. The honest citizen sometimes sees corruption that the administrator cannot. The journalist sometimes sees something the government doesn’t want to see. The opposition sometimes identifies failures the ruling party is blind to. So, the problem isn’t “Why do people find faults?” It is important for us to ask “What happens after we find the fault?” There are two very different kinds of criticism.

Productive criticism - Here is the problem. Here is the evidence. Here are the constraints. Here is what I don’t know. Here is an alternative. I am willing to be wrong.

Performative criticism - Look at this idiot. How could anyone do this? Everyone knows the answer. The whole system is corrupt. Somebody should fix it.

The first is problem-solving. The second is identity construction.

Two intelligent people can spend 45 minutes arguing over a political video neither created, neither investigated, neither has the expertise to evaluate fully, and neither can change the outcome of. Yet both walk away feeling they have accomplished something.

I have not written this with any idea of pointing out to anyone. It is about general human frailty that I had been thinking about. The problem isn’t that we have opinions. The problem is that we have forgotten the difference between an opinion and understanding. Everyone is entitled to an opinion but confidence should ideally be proportional to one’s knowledge × experience × evidence × willingness to consider alternatives. Unfortunately, most human beings don’t work that way. We become confident with emotional investment + tribal identity + familiarity + hindsight

And then we call it knowledge.

Why is it that I love finding faults?

As I turned the lens on myself, I felt it was probably because there is an internal pleasure of seeing something others missed or my misplaced sense of competence or maybe it was control. Maybe it is intellectual stimulation. This article is about that, right? Finding fault in why others find faults - what a meta-question. Maybe it is indignation or simply that diagnosing a problem is more interesting than accepting the world as it is.

And that is probably a strong possibility in my case. I don’t know enough about this to have a strong opinion.

And perhaps, that would make this less about “I am a negative person” and more about “A default way of my looking at the world.” And ultimately it may be my difficulty with saying three very simple words: “I don’t know.”

I think that is worth exploring.

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A small reading list

If you want to pursue this properly rather than just collect pop-psychology explanations which I have given, you could consider reading these:

1. Kruger & Dunning (1999) — Unskilled and Unaware of It — metacognitive blindness and overconfidence.  
2. Rozenblit & Keil (2002) — The Illusion of Explanatory Depth 
3. Lord, Ross & Lepper (1979) — Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization — why political disagreement can actually strengthen existing beliefs.  
4. Baumeister et al. (2001) — Bad Is Stronger Than Good — why our minds naturally give disproportionate weight to failures and threats.  
5. Grubbs et al. (2019) — Moral Grandstanding in Public Discourse — fascinating for understanding outrage, status and public criticism.  
6. Kahan (2007) — Identity-Protective Cognition — particularly useful for understanding politics and why facts don’t necessarily change minds.