A fallacy is a mistaken belief or error in reasoning; something that might sound logical on the surface, but doesn’t hold up when you look deeper. One of the most common fallacies is the Appeal to Popularity, “Everyone believes X, therefore X must be true.” It’s a fallacy because popularity doesn’t equal truth: Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t automatically make it correct. Throughout history, many widely held beliefs have turned out to be false (e.g., the Earth being flat, the Sun revolving around the Earth). These are fallacies.
When it comes to surfing and surf culture, there are plenty of fallacies. I’ve discovered and rediscovered one time and time again: The Perfect Wave Fallacy – when you form an unrealistic expectation of a surf break due to a limited amount of information in, overly optimistic thinking, and a few quirks of the human brain.
The Underlying Psychology
A collection of heuristics help explain why the surfer’s brain is susceptible to the perfect wave fallacy.
A heuristic is a mental shortcut our brain uses to make decisions or solve problems quickly. If you’ve ever heard a psychologist talk about heuristics, then you’ll be familiar with the common explanation that goes something like this,
“Our brains are wired to conserve energy. Instead of carefully analyzing every situation, we rely on quick rules of thumb — patterns we’ve learned from past experience — to make fast judgments. Most of the time, it works. But sometimes, those shortcuts lead us to the wrong conclusion.”
My experience as a surfer has been… watching highlights of the best surfers on the best day of the year at a foreign surf break and imagining:
- That wave breaks like that all the time
- I’ll be able to surf it like them
Knowing that my stoke level is simply the result of my expectations minus reality, and that being self aware helps clarify reality, I wanted to understand the psychology behind the perfect wave fallacy. These are the main pieces:
Availability Heuristic
This is the ‘big dog’ of all the biases and heuristics skewing our perception of far away dream waves. It describes the short cut of basing our judgment on information that comes to mind quickly, even if it’s not accurate or complete.
For example, after watching a lot of news stories about plane crashes, we start to believe flying is dangerous — even though flying is statistically safer than driving.
After going down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos on Skeleton Bay I start planning a trip, dreaming of a mile long barrel. In reality, not only does this wave rarely break, it’s also very difficult to get to, and quite challenging to surf. I’d be better off looking at the days per year it’s surfable (sometimes 0), footage of an average surfer trying to master it, and the logistics of getting there… then adjusting my day dream to account for reality.
Supporting the availability heuristic are two similar, but different components:
- Survivorship Bias
- Selection Bias
Survivorship Bias
Definition: Focusing only on the people or things that succeeded, while ignoring those that didn’t — which distorts the truth.
Example: I read stories about college dropouts who became billionaires and think dropping out increases my chances of success — but I’m not seeing the millions of people who dropped out and failed.
When it comes to a foreign surf break I most often only see the best day of the year. These are the standout sessions that make it into the YouTube videos, IG clips, and surf magazines. And like any good surfer I’ll daydream that this break has waves like this all year. The average or bad days are essentially invisible to me.
There’s a classic example from a classic movie: Based on one phenomenal day, we project this out to the future… believing that perfect waves goes unridden 300 days out of the year. This South African break, however, requires a less common swell direction for the area and is actually one of South Africa’s least consistent waves. (Not to mention development has changed the sand patterns and further decreased the beauty of Bruce’s)
Selection Bias
Definition: When the sample you’re looking at isn’t representative of the full picture because of how it was chosen.
Example: A medical study on a new drug only includes young, healthy volunteers. The results show great success — but don’t reflect how the drug performs on older or sicker patients.
When it comes to surf footage: Only the best waves survive the editing room.
Confirmation & Optimism Bias
These two brain quirks further reinforce the illusion of a perfect surf break modeled in the mind of a surfer.
Confirmation Bias: Once we get the idea that the wave is perfect, we look for more content that confirms that belief, getting hyped, and ignoring the stuff that doesn’t.
Optimism Bias: We believe the wave will be good when we get there because we’re overly optimistic, imagining that the small window we’re there, it will be just like the highlight reels we’ve seen.
It’s hard for me to overcome the perfect wave fallacy. It feels good to scroll and dream. But the whiplash of reality stings and the older I get the slower I recover. I’ve found more pleasure – authentic and lasting – in lowering my expectations. Tricking the mind the other way is possible. I can’t predict what the reality of a surf session will be, but I can rig the outcome by lowering my expectations beforehand.