A Book A Day - Weekly Digest 27

The Data Detective by?Tim Harford

??Key takeaway??

Showing data is not neutral, there is always someone with an intent behind. Know your biases and know your stats.

???Key ideas??

Experts are less likely to change their mind in the face of contradictory evidence. They are motivated to avoid uncomfortable information. Notice your emotional reactions to data, information. Pause, reflect to see whether your mind is trying to defend a position. Make sure to weigh the facts.

True understanding comes from knowing when statistics, personal experience, or a combination is the most relevant. Cigarette smoking makes you 16x more likely to get lung cancer, even if your 90-year-old chain-smoking grandmother is OK.

Children who play violent video games are more likely to be violent in reality. What is a violent game? How often do children play? How do you measure violence? The murkiness of definitions can aid people whose goal is to distort the facts. Question the definitions used in a claim before you accept/refute.

The current news environment favours immediate news obscuring the big picture. In February 2018 London had more murders than New York for the first time ever! But New York had 2,262 in 1990 while London had 184. And in 2017 they had respectively 292 and 130. Both cities are much safer today. Context matters.

Even scientific research can be influenced by bias. Publication bias: journals are much more likely to publish experiments with surprising results than inconclusive ones. Careers, incomes are tied to researchers ability to publish research. Replication crisis as a lot of studies cannot be replicated. Check for replication.

Lots of experiments are concluded on WEIRD people (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democracies). Statistics and data aren’t always equally applicable to all people. Like sample bias, some types of people are more likely to respond to polls than others. Also the place for the poll (twitter population).

Google Flu Trends was able to be better than the CDC to estimate flu cases back in 2009. But it was stopped after it over-estimated by a factor of 2 one winter. But algorithms are much better at producing fair sentences than human judges. Peer under the algo hood.

Politicians sometimes attempt to distort/discredit the work of statistical agencies, like Greece with debt numbers prior 2009. When the truth was discovered the economy crashed. Independent statistical agencies keep a country honest, they benefit many industries for usage of statistics.

Don’t be fooled by the slick aesthetics of a graph or chart. Check your emotional response to them. Verify you understand what the graph is saying. Someone may be trying to persuade you of something (with good or ill intent).

A study of superforecasters show they are better than traditional experts at forecasting. In common: their open-mindedness, they are happy to change their views when shown new evidence.

#ABookADay?#readingbooks?#data

Carrots and Sticks by?Ian Ayres

??Key takeaway??

Commitment contracts and accountability partners are essential for behavior change. And a big stick!

???Key ideas??

Human nature drives us to forgo long-term benefits for immediate rewards. We're addicted to now, we reach for smaller, certain rewards over bigger, uncertain ones. We are uncertain of the future therefore we prefer the immediate reward.

People dislike losing something they have considerable more than they enjoy gaining something new. It means not willing to lose things we don't yet have. People then don't save for retirement. To go around this, encourage people to save when they get a raise, it's money they don't yet have, no loss yet.

Our propensity for self-control is weakened whenever we're forced to exert the mental force necessary to abstain from a certain action. So we should reserve self-control for when we need it most. Only change basic, singular behaviors at a time.

Carrot or Stick? Rewards and punishments work well to change behaviors, and to make people focus on long-term goals. But stick works best, because people have a loss aversion. A $100 fine scares more than a $100 rebate would motivate. Also, punishment costs nothing.

For a cash fine to be effective, the higher the more effective. Modest fines put a price tag on bad behavior, it makes it OK. And it's better to make the money for the fine go to something that society generally disapproves of.

It's nearly impossible to break a bad habit with many small punishments. Like progressive increase of cigarette taxes, always small, people get used to it. A much larger punishment gives a person pause. Like a smoking permit costing $5,000 to be able to buy 2,500 cigarettes.

Commitment contract: an agreement with yourself. It needs a severe and public punishment linked to the behavior the contract addresses. Because what others think of us drive our behavior. You need to have a referee to ensure that you will be accountable for your punishment. Find someone trustworthy, fair and committed to you achieving your goals.

To achieve permanent change, you need to set realistic goals. Like losing 5% of your weight instead of going for 10%. You also need a long-term commitment contract with your goal. For instance supporting the behaviors to keep the weight off.

#carrots?#sticks?#incentives

Curious by?Ian Leslie

??Key takeaway??

The only person that can make you stupid is yourself. Curiosity is a conscious decision, and thus so is ignorance.

???Key ideas??

According to psychologist George Loewenstein, curiosity is a result of information gaps. Storytellers use this all the time, creating and closing information gaps. The gap is between something we already know and something we don't yet know.

Curiosity brought us to the moon, and leaves us waste time scrolling on social media. Diversive curiosity: desire for more novelty, excitement. It gets us started, but it can become aimless. Epistemic curiosity: the desire to know something new. Conscious choice requiring self-discipline, effort, focus. You need both to cover breadth and depth.

Children between the ages of three to five ask around 300 questions per day. This curiosity can be nurtured by parents who react to kids pointing (vs staying silent). As adult we can reach a saturation point with knowledge, a lot of it automatic (like driving), that we don't question. But we can be overconfident, believing we know everything.

The internet is both a blessing and a curse. You can learn about complex topics or you can watch cat videos all day. Children spend ten hours per day on devices, most of it for entertainment, not education. There is a growing cognitive polarization in society, between the curious and the incurious. Virtuous circle for the curious, even more curious. Vicious for incurious.

Internet spoils us, because the knowledge is one click away, we tend not to store it in our memory. The effort we put in acquiring knowledge brings it to our long-term memory. Google is so precise that it closes information gaps, killing our curiosity. We also don't wander, we have a question, we get an answer. Which limits creativity by association.

How many questions do you ask per day? It is contagious, the more you ask, the more other people ask in turn. We fear asking questions because we feel stupid, or we don't want to be inquisitive. 2008 financial crisis: bankers trading intricate, volatile financial products. No pause to question the risk taken.

It's necessary to acquire a base of knowledge for creative work to happen. The more you know, the more connections you can make. The more you know about a subject, the more you know what is left to uncover = information gaps = curiosity.

Should you be a generalist, knowing a few things in many areas or a specialist, going for depth on a few? We need both. Darwin was a specialist in biology (earthworms), but was also interested in economic theories (Maltus), which enabled thinking out of the box with the theory of evolution.

Anything can be interesting with the right perspective. Boredom is a problem with us, not the object of our boredom. You can choose a perspective of being curious and not being bored. Like Andy Wharol with the painting of can of Campbell soup.

#readingbooks?#curiosity

Think Again by?Adam Grant

??Key takeaway??

Be humble so you can constantly reassess your ideas, opinions. Doubt ideas around you, make plenty of mistakes. Remember that you are your values, not your beliefs.

???Key ideas??

In 2009 Blackberry had almost 50% of the smartphone market. 5 years later, just 1%. We pride ourselves on sticking to our guns, staying true to what we believe in. In 2011 the average person consumed 5x the amount of information per day than in 1986. We need to know how to rethink to integrate new information. Think like a scientist, always curious, adapting to new data, asking questions, testing theories.

People who have the lowest amount of emotional intelligence think they are much more intelligent than they are, and don't think they need coaching about it. Humility helps open yourself to learning new things. Confidence is about self-belief, humility is about questioning, finding the right methods. Successful people are confident about the goal, humble to find the best way. Best teams have plenty of task-based conflict, little relationship conflict.

To negotiate, 1) Find common ground, dance with the other, agree when relevant, don't win every battle. 2) Have fewer, stronger arguments. Quantity dilutes quality. 3) Act like a scientist. Show curiosity towards your opponents' positions. Ending 20% of their comments with a question.

Even the most ignorant beliefs can be changed, like Ku Klux Klan members' view on racism. Show them that their beliefs are arbitrary. What would be the beliefs like if born in other families with different traditions? A lot of our beliefs are by chance, happenstance.

You can persuade someone by asking them the right questions. Motivational interviewing: it's more effective to help people discover their own reasons to rethink rather than giving them your reasons. Start with curiosity about why the person thinks that way, explore motivation to change. Listen and acknowledge the fears of the other. Tell the person they have complete freedom to choose.

People rethink less when an issue is presented as black and white. This is the binary bias trap, based on a quest for clarity, simplifying everything to two categories. Many people's views sit in the middle of the climate change debate. We are forced to pick a side, but we are more likely to change our mind when an issue is presented as complex, with many different perspectives. Show all opinions to choose from, and your doubt, it is more persuasive.

If you want your team to have the ability to rethink and reassess their decisions, then your workplace needs to adopt a learning culture. Employees keep an element of doubt, aware of much they don't know. Organizations with this type of cultures are the most innovative, make the least mistakes. Psychological safety is key: comfort to take risks, trusting others, admitting mistakes. Performance cultures punish failures.

#thinkagain

The Great Mental Models by Shane Parrish, Rhiannon Beaubien

??Key takeaway??

Mental models are simply the best way to come to sound decisions. One I particularly like: Hanlon's razor - the simplest and most likely explanation for misbehavior is stupidity, rather than malice. Intentional acts of wrong-doing require a lot of time and energy. Mistakes are a lot easier to make: ignorance, laziness, oversight, lapse of judgement.

???Key ideas??

A map is a simplified representation of a complicated reality. Map: represent the world in a way that is useful to us. London Underground map: overall layout of lines and stations, all the rest is left out. Financial statements, policy papers, parenting manuals, news articles: they are map-like simplifications of reality. They can lead us astray if we forget what they leave out, and if we do not update them.

Recognize the limits of your circle of competence. To navigate the landscape of human knowledge we need maps: investment manual, mountaineering guide, etc. When you master a field, a map is no longer necessary, it is part of your circle of competence. Starting a business and not being good with numbers: hire a financial advisor, read on financial literacy, not an expert but know the basics. Our egos can lead us to inflate how big our circle of competence is and can end dramatically (200 frozen bodies on the slopes of Mount Everest).

Solve problems creatively by reasoning from first principles. First principles are foundational facts on which knowledge in a field is built. Engineer who wants to build an energy-efficient refrigerator: start with laws of thermodynamics. Reducing meat consumption: taste and smell of meat are the most important aspects, which depend on chemical properties and reactions, leads to lab-grown food. Start with underlying causes of the problem.

Develop your creative problem-solving skills even further by practicing inversion. Method 1: assume something is true, work backwards to show what else would have to be true for that to be the case. Lucky Strike cigarettes made as after-dinner treat and torches of freedom through advertising: making them socially acceptable and desirable for women. Method 2: assume the opposite of what you want to accomplish, what else would need to be true for this to happen. You want to be rich so assume you are poor, work backward to see the actions that led you to poverty - then make the list and avoid.

Use thought experiments to test out your ideas and clarify your thinking. Thought experiments: what would you do if money were no object? This leads you to think about what you would do for its own sake rather than money

Engage in second-order thinking to scrutinize your decisions and bolster your arguments. Win the lottery, then buy a house. But then you need to clean more, or hire someone, etc. Antibiotics in livestock industry: focus on bigger cattle/bigger profit, consequence is drug resistant bacteria. Long-term costs of our choices might outweigh short-term benefits. Or vice-versa, they might be positive and help make a case for action.

Use probabilistic thinking to weigh your decisions more precisely. Bayesian updating: we should assess new information based on information we already have. That means not overreacting to new information, whether positively or negatively. Adjusting our beliefs as we receive and assess new information

According to Occam's razor, the simplest of two or more equally compelling explanations is the most likely to be true. More complicated explanation has more variables that need to be true than simple one. If you wake up with fever, it is more probable that you have the flu than Ebola. Turn theory into practice - use the models to make better decisions.

#mentalmodels