Predicting the Future with Bayes’ Theorem
In episode #37 of The Knowledge Project, we talked with professional poker player Annie Duke about thinking in probabilities, something good poker players do all the time. At the poker table or in …
In episode #37 of The Knowledge Project, we talked with professional poker player Annie Duke about thinking in probabilities, something good poker players do all the time. At the poker table or in …
“The attention which we lend to an experience is proportional to its vivid or interesting character, and it is a notorious fact that what interests us most vividly at the time is, other things equal, …
When something goes wrong, we often strive to be better prepared if the same thing happens again. But the same disasters tend not to happen twice in a row. A more effective approach is simply to …
Rolf Dobelli’s book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, is a compendium of systematic errors in decision making. While the list of fallacies is not complete, it’s a great launching pad into the …
Most of us see what we want to see. If we’re arguing with a spouse, we’re going to start seeing all of their faults. After all, it’s not my fault it’s your fault. Once …
Anthony Gottlieb writing in the New Yorker: Indeed, the guilty secret of psychology and of behavioral economics is that their experiments and surveys are conducted almost entirely with people from …
When consuming information, we strive for more signal and less noise. The problem is a cognitive illusion: we feel like the more information we consume the more signal we receive. While this is …
We all know first impressions matter. We’ve all been told to be extra careful about how we come across in the initial seconds of a job interview or a first date. So we sweat over handshakes and shirt …
In response to But Wait … There’s More, a kind reader passed along a link to a wonderful interview between Andrew Warner and Tim Hawthorne (a producer of infomercials). On how to …
You’ll never look at infomercials the same after reading this post. Robert Cialdini calls But Wait…There’s More “A wholly fascinating account of a wholly fascinating …
People everywhere differentiate each other by liking (warmth, trustworthiness) and by respecting (competence, efficiency). Essentially they ask themselves: (1) Is this person warm? and (2) Is this …
David Books, author of The Social Animal, with an excellent column on the planning fallacy: In his forthcoming book (now released), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman calls this the planning fallacy. …
There are 3 things you should know about the availability heuristic: We often misjudge the frequency and magnitude of events that have happened recently. This happens, in part, because of the …
We often think we can rely on common sense. But in a complex world, common sense is not always sufficient. *** Duncan Watts new book Everything is Obvious: Once You Know The Answer explores the limit …
Future Babble has come out to mixed reviews. I think the book would interest anyone seeking wisdom. Here are some of my notes: First a little background: Predictions fail because the world is too …
We owe thanks to the publishing industry. Their ability to take a concept and fill an entire category with a shotgun approach is the reason that more people are talking about biases. Unfortunately, …