Trust your cognitive biases

And why I love diners where the food is just OK.

“Trying to avoid cognitive biases is not only impossible, it’s a waste of life,” I say to my friend, slapping the cracked formica countertop of our booth, fueled by the cheap coffee always filled to the brim by the elderly waitress.

I forced him to drive to this mediocre diner from the west side of LA (that’s almost 2 hours in traffic). I wanted him to experience my favorite diner.

Why?

The food is low-quality and overpriced. The menu is the size of a novella. The building was constructed in 1946, and the last time the orange leather booths and the off-brown floor were refurbished was in 1978. Cooks bustle behind a brick half-wall, and the waitstaff is an elderly-yet-well-oiled-machine.

I love it.

What’s to love? Nothing “measureable.” LA is filled to the brim with restaurants with a much better cost-benefit on pretty much any conceivable metric. Hey, what can I say? I like a diner.

I found a metaphor to explain why I won’t be talked out of my extreme diner bias.

The optical illusion metaphor

Say, I showed you an optical illusion. Like this one: