Biases in Information Processing

The Sumatrans seem to reflect certain biases in information processing in their interactions with the wild, which could have resulted in actions preceding proper and informed decision making. They display active use of temporal discounting, the discounting of risks that have negative effects in the long-run. Sumatrans frequently spark forest fires and carry out tiger hunting practices. Although these do have their economic and practical benefits in the short term, such individuals fail to account for the long-term repercussions, which include health problems from haze, the extinction of Sumatran tigers, and subsequently the increase of agricultural pests in terms of tiger prey populations that go unregulated. Henceforth, Sumatran individuals display active temporal discounting through acts that satisfy their immediate wants, subsequently ignoring the long-term effects of these same acts on their environment.

Bringing yet another evolutionary argument into the human-tiger conflict debate, I would like to bring your attention to Ornstein and Ehrlich, two theorists who proposed that today we live in the New World, but with the “Old” human mind. In essence, the two argue that it is difficult for us to attune our minds to perceive slowly occurring threats in the environment because our ancestors faced dangers which were imminent and required them to react quickly. It is proposed that as humans, we have a bias towards reacting to quick and imminent dangers and neglecting slow, gradual ones.

This theory falls in line with the idea of temporal discounting, and could serve to complement explanations to account for the rash, sometimes violent acts of Sumatran individuals towards the Sumatran tigers. Perhaps the failure of Sumatrans to account for the long-term result of their actions- extinction of the tiger species, isn’t solely the result of their lack of rationality, but could also in part be explained by inheritance of the “Old” mind.