The Bias You Didn't Expect
There are few places where society values rational, objective decision making as much as it values it in judges. While there is a rather cynical discipline called legal realism that says the law is really based on quirks of individual psychology, "what the judge had for breakfast," there's a broad social belief that the decision of judges are unbiased. And where they aren't unbiased, they're biased for Big, Important, Bad reasons, like racism or classism or politics. It turns out that legal realism is totally wrong. It's not what the judge had for breakfast. It's how recently the judge had breakfast. A a new study (media coverage) on Israeli judges shows that, when making parole decisions, they grant about 65% after meal breaks, and almost all the way down to 0% right before breaks and at the end of the day (i.e. as far from the last break as possible). There's a relatively linear decline between the two points. Think about this for a moment. A tremendously important decision, determining whether a person will go free or spend years in jail, appears to be substantially determined by an arbitrary factor. Also, note that we don't know if it's the lack of food, the anticipation of a break, or some other factor that is responsible for this. More interestingly, we don't know where the optimal result occurred. It's probably not the near 0% at the end of each work period. But is it the post-break high of 65%? Or were judges being too nice? We know there was bias, but we still don't know when bias occurred. There are at least two lessons from this. The little, obvious one is to be aware of one's own physical limitations. Avoid making big decisions when tired or hungry - though this doesn't mean you should try to make decisions right after eating. For particularly important decisions, consider contemplating them at different times, if you can. Think about one thing Monday morning, then Wednesday afternoon, then Saturday evening, going only to the point of getting an overa
I echo people's comments about the impropriety of the just-so story.
The analogy is problematic. At best, it proves "there is an possible circumstance where a fairly poorly thought-out instrumentally rational belief is inferior to a true one. Such an example is fundamentally incapable of proving the universal claim that truth is always superior. It's also a bizarre and unrealistic example. On top of that, it actually ends in the optimal outcome.
The actor in the hypothetical likely made the correct utilitarian decision in the terms you assume. The moral thing to do for a drowning person is save them. But if you saved these people, you'd all die anyways. If you don't save them, it seems like they'll almost-drown until they pass out from exhaustion, then drown. Or they'll be killed by the approaching deadly threat. So without more information, there is no realistic possibilitythey survive anyways. This, you actually did the right thing and soared yourself the emotional anguish of making a hard decion.