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Michael Mauboussin

The Generalized Specialist: How Shakespeare, Da Vinci, and Kepler Excelled

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Do you ever ask kids this question? Did adults ask you this when you were a kid? Even if you managed to escape this question until high school, then by the …

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Confidence and Validity

Santa Fe Institute Board of Trustees Chair Michael Mauboussin interviewed Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. The wide-ranging conversation talks about disciplined intuition, causality, base rates, …

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Making Decisions in a Complex Adaptive System

In Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition, Mauboussin does a good job adding to the work we’ve already done on complex adaptive systems: You can think of a complex adaptive system …

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How Situations Influence Decisions

Michael Mauboussin, the first guest on our podcast, The Knowledge Project, explains how our situations influence our decisions enormously in Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition. …

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The Wisdom of Crowds and The Expert Squeeze

As networks harness the wisdom of crowds, the ability of experts to add value in their predictions is steadily declining. This is the expert squeeze. *** In Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of …

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The Inside View and Making Better Decisions

When we don’t think about the process we use to make decisions, they tend to get worse over time as we fail to learn from experience. Often, we make decisions based on the information that is easiest …

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Creating a Decision Journal: Template And Example Included

We all make decisions. And yet few of us think about what we can learn from our past decisions to make smarter decisions in the future. A decision journal helps you learn from past decisions, think …

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A Wonderfully Simple Heuristic to Recognize Charlatans

While we can learn a lot from what successful people do in the mornings, as Nassim Taleb points out, we can learn a lot from what failed people do before breakfast too. Inversion is actually one of …

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Michael Mauboussin, Interview No. 4

Michael Mauboussin is the author of numerous books, including More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places, Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition, and The …

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Michael Mauboussin: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing

In The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing, Michael Mauboussin goes beyond the general idea that luck is important to outcomes. He explains the type of …

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Michael Mauboussin: Three Things to Consider in Order To Make an Effective Prediction

Michael Mauboussin commenting on Daniel Kahneman: When asked which was his favorite paper of all-time, Daniel Kahneman pointed to “On the Psychology of Prediction,” which he co-authored with Amos …

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The Paradox of Skill

Michael Mauboussin talking about his new book The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing with the WSJ: The key is this idea called the paradox of skill. As …

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Mental Model: Game Theory

From Game Theory, by Morton Davis: The theory of games is a theory of decision making. It considers how one should make decisions and to a lesser extent, how one does make them. You make a number of …

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The challenge with history

There is a lot of wisdom in this: The challenge with history, however, is that it’s a very fickle teacher. Which is a lot of the key to understanding history is what the circumstances were. And …

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Michael Mauboussin: Two Tips to Improve The Quality of Your Decisions

Michael Mauboussin, chief investment strategist at Legg Mason and our first interview on the podcast, offers two simple techniques to improve the quality of your decision making: a decision journal …

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Michael Mauboussin’s Behavioral Economics Reading List

Michael Mauboussin is one of the smartest people you’ll ever meet. Need proof? Just listen to this podcast interview we did. If you’re looking to learn about behavioral economics, he …

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