P value interpretation of greener grass

Brain is a trickster. As a part of its trick, part of our lives are illusory without us knowing about it. Such is the extent of illusion that every day we read about mad folks, hallucinators and diseased but never realise our own handicap, and our own illusions.

The current context is around interpreting the cliched saying of "Grass is greener on the other side". Given frequency of it's usage, there has to be some truth in this.

When we look at the greener grass - a person who is having hell of a time, or a family having good fun, or a romantic couple, or an employee presenting at a very good conference etc. - we are looking at a set of happy events - very generic events - the events that could have been easily part of your lives. Given our proclivity towards happiness, our brain yearns for it. But in the urge it forgets the statistics. We are looking at a moment in other person's life and extrapolating it to say how good is the other person's life.

Here comes the problem of P-value.  For folks not with statistics background - P value is just a way to measure statistical significance i.e. confidence of occurrence of an event - a measure of have you seen it enough number of times to be sure about it . That moment is a very very small part of that person's life. It's just the tip of an iceberg. The real story lies beneath it. So, as in statistics you need a minimum sample size to be certain about something, Similarly in real life the right conclusion of greener grass could be made only if we have enough and wholesome visibility into the other person's life. Now having a visibility into other person's life is a very very difficult thing - as most of the thoughts, feelings and decisions are veneered under an impenetrable layer of mind. So while we see a man happy with the family, there would be so many other instances where he is in stress because of family. But just looking at happy moments, your brain might trick you into getting a family.

That might be the difference between how successful folks work vs the others. They might have much better control on their brains in terms of P values, and hence take more balanced and informed decisions