TB: Absence Blindness

Humans have a hard time paying attention to what is NOT present. We are optimized to perceive contrast and change, not to compare what we see against what could be there but isn't. Decisions are systematically biased by information that is visible, at the expense of information that is absent.

Absence blindness explains many cognitive failures: we attribute success to visible actions while missing what was prevented, we evaluate strategies by what happened rather than what didn't happen, and we fail to notice when nothing goes wrong (which is often the sign of good work). The antidote is to explicitly ask: what is NOT here that could or should be?

• Personal MBA: Humans are optimized to perceive contrast not to compare what we see with what could be there but is not.

• Inversion
• Second-Order Thinking