Confirmation Bias: Gold Rush South 2023

Confirmation bias is the innately human characteristic of seeking information that confirms an already held belief (and ignoring things that refute it). Most orienteers will be familiar with this phenomenon, having had the experience of going through all sorts of machinations to make the lines on the map force to fit the (wrong) belief in their head about where they are. In medicine, doctors are taught to combat confirmation bias in a diagnosis by deliberately asking ha"what can I look for that would prove me wrong?" (not what proves me right). 

Now, confirmation bias on the part of the navigator is bad because it sucks up time, but not horrible because the absence of a control at the location where you expect it to be forces you to consider other options. UNLESS, the confirmation bias error was made by the course setter (that was me, control #8 on the Long Intermediate course). If the navigator is good, and confident, he or she may immediately recognize the error is not their own and choose either to "guess at" what mistake the setter made and have a broader look or simply move along (as Sergey did). I don't know whether Torin & Jackson, and Kirsten, and Ted, who eventually found my wrongly placed control (not only on the wrong spur, but also too far down the spur) guessed that I was wrong, assumed they were wrong, just generally broadened their search, or got lucky. In any case, my apologies to you and anyone who ran the part of the intermediate course that included #8 (John? Innes?). 

I started my planning with an Intermediate course initially sketched out by John Murray, which, on setting, ran beautifully as 5-9, but for some inexplicable reason, I changed the order of controls for the participants, without trying it myself. On pickup, I experienced 5-6 and 8-9 as those who ran it did and, sigh, more regret. Plus the journey from 8 to 9 was made even more difficult if you believed control 8 was set at the correct location. 

Enough with the regret and apologies already!  I showed up and made it happen. It was a beautiful day. Thanks to John, we had a new map in some very interesting hydro-mined terrain with a complicated mix of dirt-bike trails to both help and hinder our task. Eighteen smiling people in 11 groups took on the challenge. Many wisely chose the Sport Course or recommended Intermediate shortcuts. I had a fantastic time getting to know Donna and Valerie, talking navigation strategy with Ted, catching up with old pals, and sharing the sunshine with everyone. And I got to go home to the best tasting tomato I've had all summer. Thanks to whoever left it! 

Results

Team	Course	Time	Rank on course
Kirsten Severud	Intermediate, Full	1:41	1
Torin & Jackson Ford	Intermediate, Full	2:11	2
Ted Smith	Intermediate Full	2:37	3
Sergey Velichko	Intermediate, Full	MP (1:02)*
John Murray	Intermediate, Full	DNF
Innes Wright	Intermediate, Full	DNF
Lois, Micah, Emilio, & Tyler	Intermediate, 6-9 shortcut	3:08	1
John Siebold & Leslie Perez	Intermediate, 5-10 shortcut	3:09	1
Jerry Stewart & Valerie Orr	Intermediate, 5-10 shortcut	3:28	2
Scott Cockerham and Christy Morris	Sport	1:23	1
Donna Pitzer	Sport	1:36	2

*Sergey also claimed 11 was wrongly placed, but my due diligence checking leads me to disagree

Thanks to John Murray for mapping the course. Thanks to Innes for helping with set up and making sure I made it home safely. Thanks to all of you who came and made it worthwhile! Hope to see you in October at Snowbank Meadow.

Meet Director,

Melanie Wright