Stop and just go read the superb Farnam Street Blog on “The Central Mistake of Historicism: Karl Popper on Why Trend is Not Destiny“.
Post Category → Anthropology
Michael Mauboussin
Just heard an interview with Michael Mauboussin on The Knowledge Project podcast (a Farnum Street blog production) and he was super interesting.
A few quotes form the podcast. These are paraphrased:
- “An expert is someone who has a predictive model that works.”
- “When it comes to decision making, Daniel Kahneman advises us to use the statistical baseline first (system 2) then Overlay your intuition (system 1), not the other way around or you have confirmation bias.”
- Evaluate your decision making – track your results. The objective is to make quality decisions over time (like Munger and value investing which is more about avoiding loss than making huge gains).
- Lessons from Colonel Blotto – if you are dominant player you want to keep It as simple as possible – fewest possible battlefields. Also for weaker then dilute the power Of the powerful opponent. Create more complexity, more battlefields.
- Advice for Parents: Instill Growth Mindset (praise for effort not characteristics) , consider opposite viewpoints and learn how to bet ( decision tracking). Teach kids that even though they win a bet, if it was an irrational/reckless bet, they will lose in the long run. Offer them recommendations, not orders. If you are right, they will learn to respect your recommendations.
He recommended these books:
- Consilience by O.E Wilson
- Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett (evolutionary thinking is the key wisdom) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin’s_Dangerous_Idea
- Complexity – http://www.amazon.com/COMPLEXITY-EMERGING-SCIENCE-ORDER-CHAOS/dp/0671872346 . About complex adaptive systems.
- Work rules by Lazlo Bock
Miller’s Law
From Wikipedia:
Miller’s law, part of his theory of communication, was formulated by George Miller, Princeton Professor and psychologist.
It instructs us to suspend judgment about what someone is saying so we can first understand them without imbuing their message with our own personal interpretations.
The law states: “To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.”[1] [2]
The point is not to blindly accept what people say, but to do a better job of listening for understanding. “Imagining what it could be true of” is another way of saying to consider the consequences of the truth, but to also think about what must be true for the speaker’s “truth” to make sense.