We are always trying to understand the world:
Does this cause that?
Does one thing depend on another?
Is there a reason this keeps happening when that does?
This is the mind asking about contingency—
the quiet, often unspoken question:
Does the presence of one thing change the likelihood of another?
But contingency is not always obvious.
It doesn’t arrive in clear signals.
It hides in comparison.
It waits in the contrast
between what is
and what isn’t.
And if our attention favors one side over the other,
then our judgment begins to lean—
not because the world is tilted,
but because our gaze is.
What the Mind Chooses to Watch
We are drawn to confirmation.
To action.
To what stands out.
We notice the moments when A happens and B follows.
We feel the pattern.
We trust it.
We repeat it.
But we rarely pause to ask:
What about when A didn’t happen?
Did B still come?
Our minds skip that quiet absence—
the non-event,
the silence,
the blank space on the page.
Yet this is the key to judging contingency:
not just what did happen,
but what could have,
but didn’t.
When Attention Becomes a Filter
Attentional bias is not loud.
It whispers.
It highlights co-occurrence.
It forgets independence.
It notices the story that fits,
and forgets to listen for the one that doesn’t.
And so, the illusion grows:
This depends on that.
Every time I do this, that follows.
I must keep doing it—because it works.
But sometimes, the cause is an illusion.
Sometimes, the connection only lives
in the spotlight of attention.
The truth?
It may be standing quietly in the dark,
waiting to be seen.
The Price of Uneven Attention
When we judge contingency with biased eyes,
we overattribute cause.
We misread randomness as rule.
We mistake proximity for dependence.
We carry superstitions.
We hold false hope.
We build rituals on faulty links.
And we act—confidently,
persistently—
on stories that were never tested
against what we chose to ignore.
This isn’t foolishness.
It’s the natural side effect
of a mind that sees only part of the picture
and believes it’s seen enough.
How to See More Honestly
To judge contingency well
is not to look harder—
but to look more evenly.
It means asking:
- What happens when the supposed cause is not there?
- Do I notice the moments when nothing changes?
- Have I collected the quiet data—
the unremarkable, the missing, the absent?
This is not easy.
The mind resists it.
But clarity lives in the unseen as much as the seen.
And truth, when invited into the full frame,
often looks different than it did
when we only glanced at one side.
A Closing Reflection
If you believe one thing causes another—
if you think, this depends on that—
pause.
Ask:
- What have I been watching for?
- What have I not been watching at all?
- What would I see
if I gave equal weight
to what didn’t happen?
Because judgment begins with attention.
And attention, when it tilts,
can reshape reality in our minds.
And in the end, attentional bias in judging contingency reminds us
that the story we tell about dependence
is only as strong as the parts we choose to include.
To judge wisely
is to turn our gaze not just to the loud patterns—
but to the quiet exceptions.
To the silences.
To the blank spaces where a deeper truth
might be waiting.