NewRetirementポッドキャストのエピソード18は、ベストセラー作家、演説家、かつての世界であるアニーデュークへのインタビューです。チャンピオンポーカープロ。彼女がポーカーテーブルや彼女自身の行動金融研究で学んだことのレンズを通して不完全な情報を持っているときの意思決定、信念、学習に焦点を当てた彼女の新しい本ThinkinginBetsについて説明します。
今後のエピソードをお見逃しなく：
また、プライベートFacebookグループに参加して、このポッドキャストについて話し合い、トピックを提案し、成長するコミュニティで学びましょう。
スティーブ： NewRetirementポッドキャストへようこそ。今日は、ワールドシリーズオブポーカーブレスレットの勝者であり、400万ドルのキャリアを獲得した元ポーカープロフェッショナルであるアニーデュークと話をします。長期的には、ポーカーとThinking in Betsのレンズを通して、彼女の新しい本の名前です。アニーはフィラデルフィアの外に住んでいて、私たちのショーに彼女を迎えることができてとても興奮しています。それで、アニー、私たちのショーへようこそ。ご参加いただきありがとうございます。
アニー： ここに来られてとてもうれしいです、ありがとう。
スティーブ： ええ、時間を作ってくれてありがとう。それで、私たちがあなたの本に行き、行動金融についてのすべてについて話す前に、あなたはあなたの人生について少し共有しますか？どのように育ったのか、そしてこれまでの大きなマイルストーンのいくつかは？
アニー： 大人の生活から始めますよね？それで、私はコロンビア大学の学部に行き、バーバラ・ランダウという名前の教授と一緒に実際に一年間研究助手と一緒に勉強していました、そして彼女は認知心理学を勉強していて、特に第一言語習得に興味がありました。大学の終わりではなく、学部の終わりに、彼女は私にペンシルベニア大学に行って、彼女のメンターであるリラ・グレイトマンとヘンリー・グレイトマンと一緒にUPennで勉強するように勧めました。そして、私はそこで5年間、全米科学財団フェローシップで過ごし、認知科学を勉強していました。特に、第一言語の習得に重点を置いていました。
ノイズが多く、ランダム性が高い場合に、…システムでどのように学習するかという問題はどれですか。それで、その終わりに私は教授になるために出かけていました、それは本当に私がとろうとしているルートであると私が思ったものであり、そして私は実際に病気になりました。大学院の最後の年に胃の問題に苦しんでいました、そして私が向かっているときにそれは非常に悪くなりました…私の仕事の話に。それで、私は実際に2週間病院に着陸し、仕事の話をキャンセルしなければならず、回復するのに少し時間が必要でした。
それで、私は一年を何も休まずに、そして雇用市場に戻るつもりでした。その年、私がポーカーを始めたのは、お金が必要だったからです。私には交わりがなく、お金を稼ぐ方法が必要でした。それで、明らかにその間に約18年になりました。私は教授に戻ることは決してありませんでしたが、ポーカーに本当に、本当に興味を持ってから約8年が経ちました。 2002年に、私はオプショントレーダーのグループと話すように頼まれました、そして私はリスクについて話すように頼まれていました、そして私は実際に学習に関する私のアカデミックトレーニングとこの実際のハイステークスアプリケーションが何であるかを明確に統合し始めましたこの種のプリンシパルは、あなたがポーカーテーブルで実行しているようなものであり、ポーカーとポーカーテーブルで見たものが、私が大学院で学んだようなものをどのように形成するかということでした。
私たちがどのように学び、偏見を持ち、ヒューリスティックであるか、そして特に騒がしいときにフィードバックを処理する方法についての種類。それで、私はそれについて話し始め、発展しました…私の人生の多くはそれに費やされました。実際、それにはより多くの時間が費やされました。私の人生の一部は、私がポーカーをプレイしていた過去10年間のポーカーでした。そして2012年に私は引退し、これをフルタイムで始めました。私は、特にフィールドの構築とエネルギーの創出を目的とした非営利団体How I Decideを設立し、子供たちに意思決定、批判的思考スキルを教えるプログラムを設立しました。 / P>
そして、それを考えてこの本を書きました。ですから、それは一種の「そこに行きます。それが私の人生の物語です。」
スティーブ： わかった。それで、アニーは面白いです。ですから、あなたはこの18、20年のプロのポーカーキャリアを持っていたように思えますが、後半には、実際にポーカーをプレイしている彼らの行動金融の側面をより深く掘り下げて、意思決定の側面についてもっと考えてください。そうですか？
アニー： うん。ええと、私はいつも、たった一つのことをすることに本当に満足していない人だったと思います。だから、何かがわくわくするとき、私はちょっとそれに飛び込んで、それが起こったと思います。私がこのオプショントレーダーのグループの前で話すことになったのは完全な偶然でした。彼らは実際に彼らと話すために私に来さえしませんでした。彼らは私の友人のエリック・サイデルのところにやって来ました。しかし、私にとって幸運なことに、エリック・サイデルは人前で話すのが本当に好きではありません。それで、彼は私に代わりにそれをするように勧めました、そしてそれは私がすべての大学院生がそうであるように大学院にいたとき、私はたくさん教えていました、そして私はいつも教えるのが大好きでした。大人として本当に好きだった2つのことを本当に考えてみました。私が認知心理学と行動心理学で行った学業、そして私が行った他のことは、私が遊び方を見つけた一種の奇妙なゲームであり、それらをまとめる方法を考え出しました、そして非常に厳密な方法でそれらについてもう一度考え始めるだけでなく、教えることに戻ることもできます。これは私が本当に好きだったものです。だから、両方のことを同時に行うことができて、2つのことの交差点を見つけることができたのは、私にとって一種の完璧なことだと感じました。
スティーブ： うん。ありがたいです。なぜその本を書いたのかとお聞きしたいのですが、いい感じですね…18年間ポーカーをプレイし、そのゲームのプレイ方法とその考え方を学ぶという2つの側面が融合しています。そして、認知心理学、意思決定に関するすべての作業。そして、それは本当に啓発的な本です。ほんとうに楽しかった。私はそれを読んだときにそれから一体を書き留めていたので、私は戻っていくつかの良い質問を思い付くことができました。そして、あなたがあなたの本を読んだ後に人々に持ってもらいたいと思う大きなポイントはありますか？
アニー： 持ち帰りの一番は不確実性を受け入れていると思います。私たちが人生でやろうとしていることの多くは、自分自身を騙したり、自分自身を説得したり、他の人に自分たちの決定を確信していること、自分たちの信念を確信していること、自分たちが物事がどうなるかは確かです。そして、それは世界の特に正確なモデルではありません。それは実際にあなたにかなりの不安を引き起こし、実際に私たち自身や他の人々のように多くの場合、思いやりの欠如を生み出すと思います。
不安はある種のことから来ます…物事がうまくいかないように突然、それは批判のようであり、「私は知っているべきだった」と「なぜ私はこれが来るのを見なかったのですか？」そして、それに付随するこれらの種類のものは、非常に不安を引き起こし、特に自己思いやりはありません。そして、私たちが下す決定の根底にあるのは私たちの信念に基づいているという事実を考えると、私たちが信じていることについてこの確信の幻想を持っていると、家は崩壊するだろうと思いますそれは私たちが信じていることの正確なモデルではないので、あまり良くないであろう基礎。完全な情報から情報を得ているという信念はありません。定義によるものです。
そして、私たちはそれについて考えることができます。人類の歴史の範囲は、地球が平らで太陽が地球の周りを回っているように、人間が後で真実ではないと信じていたものの数を考えることができます。単純なものですが、そういうものがたくさんあるということです。絶滅したと私たちが信じていた種がたくさんありますが、例として今では絶滅していません。しかし、そのように考えることができることはたくさんあります。それは、どの州でも自分の信念をかなりよく表しています。私が人々に言うとき、「20歳のときに信じていることは何ですか。 20歳のときに確信が持てたのに、実際に確信していたはずなのに、今気づいていることはありますか？」そして、彼らは「ああ、すべて」のようなものです。
そして、私は「そうだ、だから今あなたが自分の信念を別の方法で見るべきだと思い込まないでください」と言っています。ですから、本当に良い決断の基盤は、決断力の基盤だと思います。世界の正確なモデルを構築すること、将来がどうなるかを本当によく考えることの基礎は、不確実性を打ち砕くのではなく、受け入れることから来ると思います。ですから、それが最初の重要なポイントになると思います。そして、2番目の重要なポイントは、これを自宅で試さないことです。ええ、自分でこれを試さないでください。私たちは、偏った方法で世界を解釈するように構築されています。
それにはさまざまな理由がありますが、たとえば、聞いている人のほとんどは確証バイアスに精通していると思います。たとえば、私たちは自分の信念を確認するものに気づき、そうでないものには気づかない傾向があります。後知恵バイアス。それは実際に起こることの感覚が避けられないということです。つまり、1％の確率で発生する可能性があり、発生した後は、たとえばそのように発生しなければならなかったように感じます。ですから、それは偏見です。誤検知に偏っています。
ですから、これらのさまざまな種類の方法がすべてあります。たとえば、読んだり、パスとフローを考えたりした人は、私たちのブレインウェアを実行しているようなバイアスの多くに精通している必要があります。そして、私がそれらについてあなたに話し、あなたにそれらを認識させ、あなたが賢い人であるならば、それは彼らが去るという意味ではないということです。実際、場合によっては、それが少し悪化することを示す証拠があります。ですから、私は、あなたがより良い意思決定者になるのを本当に助けてくれるように、他の人をプロセスに採用することを非常に強く信じています。他の人を見ていると、自分の偏見が見えないように、1マイル離れたところに彼らの偏見が見えます。
ですから、「チームを作りましょう。あなたは私の偏見を監視し、私はあなたの偏見を監視します。そうすれば、どちらもうまくいくでしょう。 」ですから、それは2番目の大きなポイントになります。その過程で、何人かの人々があなたと一緒に、より良い意思決定者になろうと真剣に取り組み、互いに助け合うことを約束します。
スティーブ： うん。それは素晴らしいことです。それは素晴らしい洞察です。ですから、2つのことは不確実性を受け入れるようなものですよね？結果が1つだけになると思い込まないでください。ただし、彼女にはさまざまな確率でさまざまな結果があります。私は-
アニー： そして、あなたの信念は真と偽の間のどこかにあります。それは別のことです。
スティーブ： 右。そして、あなたの信念とあなた自身の偏見は、あなたが世界をどのように認識するかに大きく影響します。ええ、あなたの周りにチームを作るという考えは、完全に理にかなっていると思います。企業では、これは簡単です。人々の個人的な生活はどうですか？彼らがこれに参加するために採用されるべきかどうかは、彼らの配偶者またはパートナーや友人だと思いますか？
アニー： うん。どこにいても人を見つけることができますが、会社で行うのはそれほど簡単ではないということに戻りたいと思います。私たちがグループに入るときの私たちの自然な傾向は、デフォルトで確認スタイルにすることです。だから、それは集団思考、エコーチェンバー、そのようなことの下に入るでしょう。特に、同じページにいる人々として優れたチームについて考えている人がたくさんいます。彼らはそれを合意として解釈します。
ですから、彼らは意図的に、同じ視点、同じ信念、同じ種類のアイデアへの同じようなコミットメントを持っている人々の周りにチームの結束を作ろうとしています、そしてそれは実際に…なぜ人々がチームプレーヤーであることをそのように解釈しますが、そのタイプのチーム環境は、人々が反対するように見えるため、必ずしも自由に代替の視点を提供したり、グループに挑戦したりする必要がないエコーチェンバーを作成します、または否定論者、またはデビーダウナーの1人のようなもの。
スティーブ： うん。完全に。
アニー： いいえ。
スティーブ： わかりました。
アニー： そうです。
スティーブ： ええ、そしていくつかの会社、そして私はいくつかの会社で彼らが人々に健全な議論と強い声、他の意見を持つことを本当に奨励しようとしていることを知っています。一部の人々は、「ねえ、議論は素晴らしいです。最善の決定を下したいので、これらの会議に参加してもかまいません」と、あなたは自分の立場を強く主張する必要があります。しかし、それはおそらく多くの企業の例外だと思います。あなたが正しいと思います。たくさんの人が集まって話をします。誰かが強い考えを持っていて、誰もが一種の山積みで、こう言います。やってみましょう。」
アニー： うん。そして、DreamTeamsを書いたShaneSnowの話を聞いていると思います。彼は、このような起源について話していました。いくつかの研究があったので、それは自尊心の研究のいくつかと同じように感じます。そして、そのようなものがどのように誰もがトロフィーを獲得するように発展したのか。この証拠のこの種の解釈が、私にはよくわからない何かに変わったのです。しかし、彼は、同じページにいるように感じたときに人々が仕事で幸せになることを示すこの調査があったと述べました。ただし、同じページにいることを定義する方法はいくつかあります。たとえば、チーム内でプロセスについて同じページにいるように感じるため、同じページにいる可能性があります。最良のプロセスは健全な議論を促進するため。
しかし、同じページにいるという単純なバージョンは、私たちが互いに同意するということです。これは、同じページにいることを解釈する簡単な方法の一種であり、この調査が発表されたときに、同じページにいるときに人々が仕事で最も幸せであることがわかったとき、「まあ、それはつまり、誰もが互いに同意し合うような状況を促進する必要があるということです。」そしてもちろん、問題は、それが多様性への推進力とどのように衝突する可能性があるかを考えることですよね？多様な人々をチームに参加させたいと言っています。彼らは多様な視点を持っているので、彼らが提供できるさまざまな視点を持っているので、私は推測しました。
チームプレーヤーである、または同じページにいるというこの考えにどのように反発するのかを考えると、お互いに同意し、異なる視点を持っているために誰かを連れてきたということですが、彼らは彼らの見方は沈黙している、または彼らがその不一致を表現している場合、どういうわけか彼らは良いチームプレーヤーではないということです。これはかなり悪いと思われます。それで、私はそれの起源の種類についての彼の種類の見方が本当に好きでした。
そして、私が言いたいもう1つのことは、私たちが気付いていないことの1つは、チーム内で、特にリーダーシップの立場から、私たち全員が一種の状況を作り出すことができるということです。私たちが実際に私たち自身の信念を持っているグループであるという理由だけで、その確認的なスタイルまたはエコーチェンバーのようなスタイルに追いやられているのですよね？ですから、違いについて考えることができます。これは、人々が自分たちがしていることにさえ気づいていないことです。彼らは健全な議論をするつもりですが、たとえば、あなたが指導的立場にあるときに最初に自分の信念を提供するだけで実際に他の人が他の人を引き起こすことを認識していないため、プロセスに感染します今、あなたの信念が何であるかについて推論します。
したがって、例として、4人の異なる人が求職者に面接し、それについて話し合うために全員が部屋に集まった場合、全員が互いに影響を及ぼし合うことになり、生産性は低下します。他の人の考えを見る前に、実際に各人が独立してレポートを書くことを許可した場合、意見はそれほど忠実にはなりません。このような相互汚染が発生するのと同じように、それはあなたが注意しなければならないもう一つのことであり、それは実際には意見の不一致を許容することです。自分がそれをしていることさえ知らなくても、意見の不一致を殺すようなものになる可能性があります。
スティーブ： 右。それはとても興味深いことだと思います。…私たちは農作業で苦労しています。整列したいですよね？」しかしまた、私は健全な議論のアイデアであり、私たち全員が私たちの立場を強く支持することに同意するので、それを再構成すると思います。それは大丈夫です。合意。それを見るのは一種の興味深い方法です。実際にあなたと同じくらい意思決定を考えている企業はいくつあるのだろうか。これらの企業と交流するとき、あなたはどう思いますか？
アニー： まあ、そうだろう。確かにブリッジウォーターはそうですよね？
スティーブ： ええ。
アニー： 彼らは原則を読みに行くだけなので、ステロイドに対するこの種のアプローチを見ることができます。
スティーブ： うん。彼のものをいくつか読んだ（レイ・ダリオ）。
アニー： ええ。
スティーブ： うん。彼はこれについて考えています。
アニー： うん。だから、私は見て意味します。ほとんどの企業が意思決定を考えていると思います。それは彼らが科学によって知らされた方法からそれについて考えているかどうかの問題ですよね？ですから、一例として、私が一緒に仕事をしている企業の大多数は、たとえば戦略的計画などで一緒に仕事をするように頼まれたときに、考えられる結果について一緒に仕事を始めます。それで、私たちは一種の理解をします…それは一種のシナリオプランニングですよね？これが決定Aからの可能な結果であり、これが決定Bからの可能な結果です。明らかに、それらは重複している可能性があります。
それから私は彼らにこの質問をしますそれでは、結果に確率を付け始めましょう。」そして、私が一緒に仕事をしている人の大多数は、「何？いいえ、できません。」そして私は「まあ、なぜ私たちは同意するのですか？これらの結果のそれぞれに何らかの可能性があることに同意できますか？」そして答えは、彼らが間違っているのではないかと恐れているということです。言い換えれば、彼らが言うことは、「将来このことが起こる可能性を確実に知る方法はない」ということです。したがって、彼らはデフォルトで「あなたにそれを与えることを拒否します」と言います。
ですから、あなたが見たものがイエスであることがわかると、彼らは意思決定に取り組んでいますが、プロセスの観点からは、全体のポイントがそれであると理解していないため、実際には正しいプロセスに到達する方法を実際には知りません。何かが発生する可能性を推測することは、まったく推測しないよりも優れています。したがって、発生する可能性のあるこの特定のシナリオは、30％と70％の確率で発生すると言えます。彼らは、「ああ、それは正しい答えではないので、私はそれを言いたくない」と感じています。彼らはそれについて正しく考えていないからです。
しかし、私が彼らに言うのは、「それは、まったく可能性がなく、ただ暗闇に置いておくようなふりをするよりはましだ」ということです。第二に、あなたはこれについて他の誰よりもよく知っているので、あなたの推測は他の誰よりも良くなるでしょう、そしてあなたが推測している事実はすでに良いでしょう。そして第3に、特定のシナリオに可能性または確率を割り当てようとするプロセスだけで、元のテイクアウトに戻って不確実性を実際に受け入れるときに、実際に実際の方法で不確実性を受け入れることができます。不確実性は2つの場所から発生します。 、そうですか？
1つは運からです。ですから、結果が発生する可能性について考えるときは、運の要素を認める必要がありますよね？あなたは、「まあ、私がコントロールできない決定を過ぎて、これがどうなるかに影響を与える可能性があることは何ですか？」について考え始める必要があります。
スティーブ： それはその不確実性に戻りますね？不確実性がそこにあることを除いて。
アニー： 右。丁度。そして、不確実性の2番目の形式は、隠された情報です。わからないことは何ですか？そして、何かが判明する可能性を適切に見積もるには、予測に情報を提供する、つまり予測に情報を提供する、私が持っている情報についても考える必要があります。そして、それはあなたが実際に非常に情報を必要とするようになる原因になります。 「まあ、私たちの最善の推測は70％から30％の間です」と考えると、実際に自分自身に問いかけ始めます。「では、どうすればその範囲を狭めることができますか？私が見つけたのは何ですか？どのような情報を見つけることができれば、それを少し狭めることができるのでしょうか。狭めることができるほど、私はより良くなるからです。」
ですから、私が言いたいのは、要約すると、「はい、私はこのビジネスを運営しています」とは思わない人を見つけることはないと思います。私は意思決定について非常に考えています。しかし、ほとんどの人にとって、それは科学によって特に知らされていないと思います、それはこれらの種類の木を構築することによって、実際に未来を実際に計画することによって、実際の確率論的思考によって特に知らされていないと思います、私は彼らのほとんどがやっていると思います彼らが部屋でコンセンサスを得ようとしている決定、ナンバーワン。ですから、彼らはそれが本当に重要だと考えています。コンセンサスを得る必要があり、それから1つの可能性にたどり着く必要があります。
それができたら、それを確信します。ほとんどの人のプロセスはそのように見えると思います。
スティーブ： ええ、そして私はとても多くのコメントがあります。しかし、いくつかの簡単な考え。 1つは、私たちの教育の多くは批判的に考える方法に関するものだと思います。これは重要ですよね？また、私はエンジニアでしたよね？問題を解決して物事を構築する方法と、どのように決定を下すかを考える方法とは？そして、あなたがあなたの人生を見るとき、そうですか？あなたの人生の結果は、あなたが下した決定と、それがうまくいったかどうかの合計ですよね？その運と不確実性の部分。
ポーカーに話を戻しましょう。あなたがそれについて話すのを聞くほど、その種のリスク/報酬の概念に関する意思決定のための多くの教訓があると思いますよね？ですから、ポーカーで決断を下すたびに、「さて、私はどれだけのリスクを冒しているのですか？」のようになります。右？ 「私はポットにいくらのお金を入れていますか？私の潜在的な利点は何ですか？」右？ 「鍋の大きさは？」特にテキサスホールデムでは、それだけの価値があります。リスナーの多くはこれに慣れていないかもしれませんが、ゲームのプレイ時にカードがめくられるため、基本的には情報を入手するために料金を支払います。ですから、賭けをするか、電話をかけて追加情報を入手するかを決める必要があります。
そして、そのアイデアはビジネスに完全に変換されます。リーンスタートアップと呼ばれるこの概念があります。基本的には、できるだけ早く、できるだけ安く学ぼうとしています。あなたは仮説を立て、これらのMVPを構築します。アイデアをテストするための最小実行可能製品。これにより、支出をできるだけ少なくして、何が起こるかを確認しようとしています。実験を実行して、何が起こるかを確認します。似ていますが、それを行うとき、理想的にこれを組み立てるときは、「ねえ、これの潜在的な利点は何ですか？この実験を実行するための費用はいくらですか？」
シリコンバレーの多くのスタートアップがこれを実行していることを意味し、ますます多くの新しい企業がこれを実行していると思います。しかし、あなたの会社はそのアプローチを採用していると思いますか？
アニー： だから、それらのいくつかはそうです。私が一緒に仕事をしている人の中にはアジャイル開発をしている人もいますが、それは明らかにまさにそのタイプの考え方です。ですから、やはり会社次第です。それらのいくつかはそうです。しかし、重要なのは、リーンスタートアップではない会社でも、これらの小さなテスト、情報の小さなポークを行うことができるように世界について考え、それを使用しないことです。必ず1つの戦略に固執する必要がありますよね？このような非常に小さなABテストを実行して、何が機能し、何が機能しないかを確認するために、ちょっと調べ始めてください。
繰り返しになりますが、それは私がエピステミックにオープンである必要があると言っている人として世界に近づいているのではないかと思いますよね？これがうまくいく可能性のあるさまざまな方法があることを確実に知る必要があると感じる必要がないように、私は他に、決定するのではなく、テストしたいことを試してみることができます正解です。
スティーブ： そうです、私たちの偏見はどれですか？
アニー： これは非常に異なる方法です。
スティーブ： 右。特に、迅速な意思決定に慣れている企業を率いる人々は、正しい答えが何であるかについて「直感」を持っていることが非常に多いと思います。
アニー： そうです。
スティーブ： そして、彼らはすぐにその結論に到達したいと考えており、おそらく、その決定を下すのに役立つ他のすべての人に影響を与えて、「わかりました。これが正しい…」
アニー： うん。つまり、そのような伝染の問題に戻りますよね？誰かがやって来てこう言うと、「これが私たちがすべきだと思うことです。これが私の信念です。これが正しい答えだと強く感じています。」その部屋に誰かがいることは、どんな形であれあなたに本当に挑戦することであり、必ずしも彼らが故意にそれをするつもりはないということではありません。彼らは、「わあ、この人はたくさんの経験があり、これを本当に強く信じています。だから、私が思ったことは何でも間違っているに違いない。」つまり、それは一種の自然な考え方であり、私は多くの場合、これを自分の生活の中で小さな方法でテストするように人々に指示しようとします。そうすれば、これを実行するのがどれほど難しいかがわかります。この伝染防止の方法で。
そして、あなたはこれがあなたに鳴るかどうか私に言うことができます。たとえば、誰かが政治に関する意見記事を読んだとき、「私はこの意見記事を政治で読んだ。読んでくれませんか？」文字通り文の終わりのように。それとも、「私はこの意見記事を読みました。これ、これ、これ、そしてこれだと思いました。また、それを読んで、あなたの考えを教えてくれませんか？」そしてもちろん、後者です。これが私たちのコミュニケーションの仕方であり、私たちの意見や信念は、あなたの意見を取り戻す前に私があなたに伝えるための重要なデータであることに気付いたということの一部だと思います。
私たちは、意図しない方法でそれを行っているとは思いません。
スティーブ： 無意識です。
アニー： 私たちは本当にそれを信じていると思います…そうです。重要なデータです。たとえば、「まあ、私はそれについて考えたので、スティーブが私にアドバイスを返す前にそれを知ることが重要なので、それらを伝えさせてください。」
スティーブ： まあ、そうだろう。そして、あなたが何かを提示しているという事実でさえ、あなたはおそらくすでにあなた自身の確証バイアスの影響を受けていると思います。「ああ、私が信じていることを補強するこの記事を見ました、そしてそれについてどう思いますか？ 」つまり、あなたは自分が信じていることを強化したと言っているのではなく、それを提示するだけです。
アニー： 丁度。しかし、「ねえ、私はこの意見記事を読んだ。私はあなたがどう思うか知りたいです。読んでいただけませんか？」そして文字通り私はあなたに他の情報を与えません、そして私は人々にこのように人々と交流し始めるように挑戦します、そして彼らはそれがどれほど難しいか、彼らが自分の意見を控えなければならない頻度に驚いています、それは本当に難しいですそれを中に保つために。もう1つは、重要なデータだと感じているだけではないと思います。しかし、私が同意しないのに、その人が私が同意すると思ったらどうなるのか、少し恐れていると思います。または、私が同意するときに私が同意しないとその人が考え、それがどういうわけか悪いと思ったらどうしますか？その人はあなたの誤解を得るでしょう。
あるいは、彼らはあなたについて違った考え方をするかもしれません。それは、「私は本当にこれを中立的な方法であなたに提示しているだけです。私は本当にあなたから忠実度の高いフィードバックを受け取りたいので、私がそれに同意するかどうかは関係ありません。そして、それを推測しようとしないでください。」
スティーブ： うん。それは私に一つのことを考えさせます。
私はクローバーポップと呼ばれるこの会社のエンジェル投資家です。彼らの全体的なアイデアは、意思決定を改善しようとすることです。これに興味があります。このような投資がすべて行われているのは、私たちの経済におけるチャンスの領域だと思います。どのように実行を改善し、どのように物事をより適切に追跡するかですが、意思決定をより適切に行う方法については、テクノロジーを活用できるようになることはあまりありません。彼らがしていることの1つは、誰が提案をしているのかを実際に盲目にすることだと思います。ですから、「この問題を本当によく知っているので、私たちは皆、それを解決することに興味を持っています」という人々のグループを持つことができます。そして、CEOに彼の立場、CMO、そしてdah、dah、dahを提示してもらいます。それであなたは情報が来ているのでしたね？
そして、私たちがちょうど彼らがそれについて彼らの意見を提示しているのかどうかについてだったので、それは皆にバイアスをかけます、しかしあなたが来て、「誰がそれを提示しているのかわかりません」と言うなら。そして理想的には、あなたが言っていることは、彼らが言うだけで、戻って検討を求めることです。うまくいけば、あなたはより良い結果を得るでしょう。
しかし、私はあなたが他のものを持っている必要があるとほとんど思います…私たちが常に私たちの偏見と戦うのはとても難しいです。ツールを介してそれを行うことは役立つかもしれません。私はここに座って彼らを元気づけようとはしていませんが、それは面白いエリアだと思います。
アニー： ああ、同意します。うん。いいえ、完全に同意します。 I mean this is what I say, like, I tell people to try this exercise just in everyday conversation and people just fall apart to that. It’s so hard. And, I mean, I love the idea of what you just said because one of the things that I talk about in the book, is how do you implement these scientific norms, like norms for scientific communication into the way that you’re interacting with other people in terms of not just sort of making decisions, prospectively, but deconstructing decisions retrospectively? Both have their own challenges.
There is a wonderful acronym, which is CUDOS. Which was put forward by Robert Murton and he was really talking about norms for scientific communication. CUDOS stands for … The C is communism, obviously not the political kind, it’s that data should be treated communally within the team trying to decide about it. That doesn’t mean I’m supposed to share my data with another company, obviously, but within a team data needs to be communal.
And then the U is basically what you just talked about, which is universalism, which is that the message and messenger should not be equated.
So, obviously there are certain times when you need to know things about the messenger, for example, their level of expertise in something helps you decide whether the information that they’re presenting, it helps you put a probability on whether it’s true or not right? So, if there’s an expert, if I know that you are somebody who’s an expert on East Asia for example, I’m going to trust what you tell me about the population among better than somebody who knows nothing about that.
So, in that case there are certain features that might be important, but outside of that kind of thing the fact is that there are things that are true no matter who says them, and very often we will trust or distrust the information based on our trust or distrust for the person.
So, the thing I say is, like, the Earth is round whether it’s Mussolini, or your mother, or your best friend telling you that right? Or your worst enemy telling you that. The Earth is round none the fact, nonetheless. So, things have trust to them regardless of who the deliverer is, and this is actually really important because otherwise what can happen is that not only on a global sense information can be distorted in a political way depending on who the deliverer is, and I think we see this a lot in these sort of claims now about fake news, and the way that people interpret information if they’re coming from one part or the other depending on who they agree with in a way that’s actually very destructive, but then also you have to think about that in your own life right?
So, when you’re talking about Cloverpop what they’re trying to do is actually implement universalism, they’re to implement that norm of universalism, which is to blind whether it’s a CMO, or the CEO, or an intern who is offering it up so that you can evaluate the information independent of the person who has delivered it.
Just really quickly, D is disinterestedness. So, you want to eliminate conflicts of interest.
And then the OS in CUDOS is objective skepticism, which to sum that up really quickly; approach the world asking “Why am I wrong?” rather than “Why am I right?”.
So, I didn’t want to just leave people hanging as to what the rest of the acronym meant.
Steve: That’s great. Yeah, that’s actually the first time I’ve heard that acronym. So, this is Robert K. Merton right? He was the sociologist?
Annie: Exactly.
Steve: We had his son Robert C. Merton on the podcast.
Annie: Oh!
Steve: He was a Nobel Prize winner in economics.
Annie: That’s amazing. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah, small world.
Annie: はい。 But that’s wonderful. I’m a very big fan of his fathers, and him as well by the way.
Steve: 右。 And just a side note, Robert C. Murton is also a poker player. Apparently he plays in a game in Boston. I was going to ask him about it, and then he was like, “I don’t want to talk about that on the podcast.” I didn’t get a chance to ask him, but I think you find that with a lot of math oriented and kind of analytical people, many of them do play poker and they probably take useful lessons from it that they apply in all kinds of places.
わお。 So, yeah, it’s amazing listening to you talk about decision making, and just for audience right? Making good decisions, being thoughtful about, or aware of all of the biases that we carry in and how that affects our thinking and our behavior, which ultimately affects the outcomes. You know, that’s how hopefully this discussion is useful to you.
大丈夫。 So, a couple of … You know, back to poker a little bit just since its got lessons for us, one of the topics you talk about is, and we touched on it a little bit earlier, but this concept of resulting. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? I think it would be helpful for folks to understand that.
Annie: Yeah, for sure.
So, I just alluded to we can think about how are you thinking about decisions prospectively and also retrospectively right? So, you know, prospectively as in making a decision, and trying to scenario plan, map out the future, figure out what the probabilities of those futures might be. So on and so forth.
But the retrospective problem is trying to figure out what you’re supposed to learn from your own experiences because presumably you should have some sort of feedback loop where the feedback that you get is looping back in so that you can be better at decision making going forward, and so on and so forth. But, what the requires is that we be taking good lessons from the result of our lives, and this is where uncertainty can wreak a lot of havoc.
So, out in the world, in life, and in poker, the connection between the quality of an outcome, and the quality of the decision that leads to that outcome is very loose on one trial. Now, certainly you can run a Monte Carlo and get 10,000 trials of anything where it’s the same decision and you’re just seeing what outcomes happen to fall in some sort of simulation, or you could flip a coin 10,000 times, now you can start to see something from outcomes, but on a given outcome or a small number of outcome where the sample size is very small there is an incredibly loose connection.
So, to sort of get there let’s think about the difference between chess, and then poker, and then a really simple life decision. So, in chess, you can see how decision quality and outcome quality are incredibly tightly linked. So, if I lose a game of chess to you, what do we know about my decision making relative to yours?
Steve: That hopefully I understand, or process the information a little bit better than you did since we all have the same information available to us.
Annie: 右。丁度。 So, if I lose a game of chess to you it’s because I played worse than you did, and it’s a completely reasonable thing to work backwards from the fact that we know what the quality of my outcome was; it was bad, it was negative, I lost; to figure out what the quality of my decision was and determine that that was also negative, and it was bad, and I didn’t do as well in comparison to you.
And the reason that that’s the case, that we can do that in chess is that you’re eliminating these two sources of uncertainty, so there isn’t a strong element of luck. So, in other words, the pieces stay where they are until someone moves them because of an act of skill right? Not because somebody rolls the dice and now your pieces just randomly move around or something.
So, we’ve eliminated the strong influence of luck, and then we’ve also eliminated most of the hidden information in a sense that you can see my position, I can see your position, so there’s no information asymmetry there, and what that means is that when I’m looking at your board I could theoretically figure out every possible move that you could make in response to any moves that I make.
So, what that means is when you’re reducing the really strong influence of uncertainty in that game, what that means is that outcome quality and decision quality become very tightly correlated.
Now, you can think about a game like poker in contrast. If I lose a single hand of poker to you what do we know about my decision making in comparison to yours?
Steve: Not a lot because there’s a big element of luck in each hand right? But if you win the tournament it’s saying a lot more right? So, if you make a series of decisions really well then you have a much higher chance of winning the whole thing. Is that true?
Annie: うん。 So, if I lose a hand to you we know almost nothing about the quality of my decisions based only on the results right? Now, obviously, if I lost the play, if I can dig into the process I’d know more, but all you can see is the result, we don’t really know very much about my decisions relative to yours.
Even after the end of a particular tournament we don’t know that much. We know more because you had to play more hands, but in order to start to get some kind of clear idea of somebody where you can see what the decision quality is sort of starting to shine through you need to see, you know, 1,000 to 1,500 hours out of a poker player and then you can start to really, really see it.
You know, you can see it after a month you’re narrowing it down as you go along as you add hours in right? But in order for the skill element to really start showing through you need a lot of hours of play. So, that’s assuming you’re at a live game where you’re getting 30 hands an hour or something like that.
And the reason for that, again, there’s this luck element right? I can’t control the cards that are yet to come so the deal is random, and then there’s also now we have this information asymmetry right? I can’t see your cards and so I’m guessing at them. So, that’s what creates this disconnection between outcome quality and decision quality.
Now, we can say is life more like chess or poker? That’s sort of the question, and let’s take a really simple example like driving through a traffic light. Well, you can see more quickly that life is more like poker than chess because if all I know is that you went through an intersection and you got in an accident in that intersection, that’s the only thing I know is that there was an accident that occurred, do I know a lot about the quality of your driving?
Steve: No, because someone else could have made a mistake versus you.
Annie: 丁度。右。 So, now that immediately we can see, “Aha.わかった。 So, this is more like poker than chess.”
So, now here’s where the resulting problem comes in. We took a long winding road down to resulting. Going back to that first point I made, people really aren’t comfortable with uncertainty, they don’t like the fact that you can’t really see into the decision quality right? So, it’s like after the fact and you’re trying to figure out if a decision is good when you had no way to observe the process, and so that’s pretty opaque to you, but you want to know, and so you use this shortcut which is called resulting, which is saying “Well, I know the quality of the outcome so therefore I must know the quality of the decision.”
So, if I know that the outcome was bad I can derive that the decision making must have been bad. Now, again, this is completely reasonable in chess, but it’s completely unreasonable if you’re playing poker. So, if life is more like poker we know it’s a relatively unreasonable thing to be doing in life.
So, the example that I open the book with, which I think it’s one of the most powerful examples of resulting that I’ve seen is the 2015 Super Bowl. Pete Carroll, coach of the Seahawks, the Seahawks are on the 1 yard line of the Patriots, and there’s 26 seconds left in the whole game. The Seahawks had one time out, and obviously they need to advance the ball 1 yard in order to score. They’re down by 4 so a field goal will not do the trick right? So, they must score a touchdown at that play.
So, as you’ll recall, Pete Carroll called a particular play that was pretty unexpected.
Steve: That’s right. He called a pass play. I was going to say, and he had Marshawn Lynch as a running back, who is a really good short yardage carrier.
Annie: そうです、まさに。 So, exactly to that point. So, he’s got Marshawn Lynch, everybody is expecting he’s going to hand the ball off to Marshawn Lynch, Marshawn Lynch will just try to barrel through, and that’s obviously what he’s going to do, and with his one time out he’ll be able to try that twice.
And instead he calls a pass play as you said and it ended in spectacularly bad fashion. Malcolm Butler intercepted the ball and that was the end of the game.
And the end game calling from Cris Collinsworth is incredibly brutal. You know, “I can’t believe this call. This is a crazy call.” So on and so forth. And then the next day, even after people had time to think about it, most people were echoing Cris Collinsworth, and there seemed to be an argument among the major outlets about whether it was the worst play in Superbowl history or the worst play in all of football history, which seems pretty … You know.
Steve: Pretty brutal.
Annie: Pretty brutal.
So, I think this is a really good example of resulting because you can see this very clearly that what people are seeing is that this result was spectacularly bad, and so therefore they are going back in and deriving that the decision quality must have been pretty bad, but we can actually get to the heart of the people by I can just ask you this thought experiment.
So, Steve, let’s imagine that Pete Carroll passed the ball and it was caught for a touchdown in the end zone. What do you suppose the headlines would have looked like the next day?
Steve: He’s a very creative genius for running that play. That was completely unexpected.
Annie: That’s exactly right, and in fact, for those people who are football fans, what did they say about Doug Peterson when he ran the Philly Special which resulted in a touchdown?
Steve: うん。丁度。 Super clever right? Unexpected.
Annie: Super clever. Out Belichicked Belichick.
Steve: Yep.
Annie: Exactly.
And you can kind of see what’s happening here right? Remember, I said this problem is we can’t see through to what the decision quality is and so we use this shortcut. So, you can kind of see people feel like they know whether the hand off to Marshawn Lynch is good or not. They feel like they know something about that decision process. They feel like they have access to the quality because it’s a play that’s pretty agreed upon you know? There’s sort of consensus around that this would be a good choice.
So, by choosing something that people really weren’t expecting he’s choosing a play that is not well understood, which means that people don’t really understand whether it’s a good decision or not sort of right? Like, they don’t get it. They don’t know ex-ante.
So, now what happens is that because that’s opaque, because the decision is not understood, because there isn’t consensus around it, how do you then figure out if the decision is good? Oh, you use this shortcut called resulting. The result was really bad, so therefore I know that the decision must have been really bad.
Now, one little factoid, the probability of an interception in that particular situation was between 1 and 2%. So, the minute you kind of know that fact it feels like, well, how could you possibly say that was the worst call in Superbowl history? It was only going to turn out the way that it did less than 2% of the time.
So, I mean, that right there reveals sort of the obscurity of the whole bias.
Steve: うん。 It would be interesting if you kind of put football analysts into cohorts, or football fans into cohorts of people who are real, I don’t want to say real, but like in poker you see this right? You’ve got amateurs doing things that are crazy, and then you have people that play a lot of poker and they analyze this and they’ll call him a donkey, or say this guy is doing all of this kind of crazy stuff and that’s why he’s a bad player is because he doesn’t know any better, and giving color commentary on the result because they’re not behaving, quote/unquote, “rationally”.
But, in this case I bet Pete Carroll, and I think you mentioned this in your book right? Later on he was being thoughtful about it. He was trying to out play his opponent right? He was trying to do something unexpected on purpose to try and win. And as you said, his odds were totally in his favor because it was very unlikely that it would get intercepted and he just kind of got, quote/unquote, “unlucky” in that one case.
Annie: 右。丁度。 And you can actually ask yourself what was he getting in return for the cost of an interception? And what he was getting in return was an extra play. But, you know, there was a clock management problem. He had 26 seconds left in the game with only one timeout. As you know, if you hand it off to Marshawn Lynch and he fails to get into the end zone a lot of time has rolled off the clock, so once you’ve done that you’ve actually only got one play left, whereas if you execute on the pass play … You know, this is where it’s really important to think about the three outcomes that would a running play.
So, not including a sack, or Russell Wilson fumbling the ball or anything like that. So, let’s just put those in the all things being equal category and think about the three outcomes of the pass itself which are it’s caught for a touchdown, okay, so they win the game. It’s intercepted right? That’s going to happen 1 to 2% of the time, but the third outcome is the ball is incomplete, and when the ball is incomplete of course the clock stops on its own, you don’t use a timeout for that, and that play gets executed really quickly.
So, very little time comes off the clock and because you still have that one timeout left you can. So, remember they have three downs. It’s second, third, and fourth down to execute on it. So, he was actually maximizing the number of plays, the number of chances that he would have at the end zone with this particular choice, and in exchange it was costing him that 1 to 2% chance of an interception.
Steve: Yeah, that was the risk.右。 You know what would be really interesting is has anyone talked to Bill Belichick about how he thought about it? I wonder if he was like, “Oh, okay. They have 26 seconds left. Maybe they are going to run a passing play because they want to do clock management and it’s likely to be a slant because I’ve seen their,” whatever, and I appreciate all of the color on that decision in football.
You know, as you were talking about poker and chess we know that AI is really good at and now pretty much can’t be beaten with chess and also with Go, where you also have information, perfect information. Is anybody working on AI for poker?
Annie: Oh yeah. So, it’s getting better at poker. So, there’s an AI that is very, very good at a particular form of poker, which is Heads up poker. So, it’s just one on one. So, obviously that reduces the set of possibilities right? Because I’m just playing against one person, and in particular it’s a form of poker where both players are likely to be playing almost every hand that they’re dealt.
But, this is a relatively recent development, but it’s now very good at that. It seems to really beat the best players in the world at that, and then we’ll see whether it can expand to, you know, how well it expands to a multiplayer situation, but it is getting better, but it’s solving a different problem right?
So, when you look at, for example, these Backgammon computers they can really just brute force the game right? Again, because you don’t have the hidden information, and this is true with chess as well, you can just play out every possibility until the end. So, once you have enough computing power you can solve the game so there’s just this brute force approach to it, which is not something that you can do in poker. You can’t brute force the game. That’s where the difference is, which is there wasn’t really any progress made in poker until you were starting to get machines that were more like deep learning machines.
Steve: うん。 It seems like with poker, I remember we were talking about it, there’s kind of three levels of poker right? You’re playing, at least with Texas Holdem right? You’re playing your cards, just straight up right? And what are the probabilities of you winning in any outcome. And then, you’re playing against what your opponent is likely to have right? And so therefore, then you need the emotional intelligence, and also some math right? And also this kind of, ideally, a history of what they’ve done in the past, which is probably hard for a computer to get right? I mean, if you see the same people in a poker tournament you can kind of study what do they do? How do they behave in certain situations? And that’s the third part right? How is your opponent likely to behave, and that also goes to kind of game theory for yourself, but also for them.
I mean, I think one thing that’s interesting about poker, we’re talking about football, and it’s like, when I play poker, or when people play poker sometimes they’re giving disinformation on purpose right? They’re trying to mislead so you can bluff later, or kind of play a little bit erratically so people can’t quite predict your behavior. I don’t know how that translates to …
I mean, I could see that translating strategically when you’re in business to kind of trying to outthink your opponents in the business arena.
Annie: Well, yeah, I think it actually translates pretty well. I mean, I think this idea that I was talking to about even just thinking about what are the probabilities of different outcomes is something that I find when I’m working with groups that are trying to do strategic planning that they’re just very loathe to do.
You know, I have a narrative in the book about working with a nonprofit just trying to get them to start thinking in expected value about their grant proposal, their grant process, and it was hard. I really had to do some very deep work with them to start getting comfortable with thinking about assigning probabilities to the chances that you get a grant or that you don’t so that you could really understand what the grant is worth because, you know, when you walk around in this world where you’re thinking about things in binary and this is how you’re making your decisions.
You know, when you’re applying for a grant that’s 100,000, and you’re just thinking about it as 0 or 100,000, where obviously if you’re thinking probabilistically and you say, “Well, there’s a 40% chance I’m going to get this grant.” You can now assign a value to it of 40,000, which does all sorts of wonderful things for you right? Certainly it allows you to more efficiently create a work staff. It allows you to really think about when you’re winning to hiring an outside contractor for example. It allows you to be much better at budgeting right? Like, at forecasting what your inflows are going to be right?
I mean, there’s all sorts of really good things that come out of it, but people are very loathe to do even just that step of thinking about, you know, how do I assign probabilities. That’s beyond starting to think about what are the payoffs of it? How do I deal with unknown information in a way that I really think about it? How do I deal with the connection between decision quality and outcome quality? How do I start to try to figure out good process for working back?
And then this sort of basis thing of what you just said, which is; how am I thinking about as a good Bayesian right? Like, what are the base rates? What are people’s natural dependencies? What could I expect them to do in these situations? How could I think about how my actions appear to another person?
So, people also don’t do that as much right? People have this idea, for example, that if you come into a negotiation and you’re speaking very forcefully that you’ll come off as being very forceful, but we know that very often that when people hold a very strong they’re actually less forceful in the way that they present it, and that’s a very, very strong human tendency that you can’t get to unless you think about it from the other side. Unless you think, well, what if you’re watching someone be really forceful in front of you, and if you said to yourself, “Well, wait a minute. If I had a really strong position how would I be acting?” And the answer is I wouldn’t be yelling at everybody telling them this is the final offer right? I mean, just as an example right?
But, you can’t do that until you start to think about how do I look from other people? What is the story that I’m telling? What are their opinions of me? What am I signaling to them with my actions? What are my base rates? How do I incorporate new evidence in order to actually adjust my base rates? These are all kinds of the things that the way poker players are thinking that I think aren’t incorporated into most people’s every day decision making.
Steve: 右。 We’re going to see if this works out for Kavanaugh soon, if his strong position.
Annie: Right.
Steve: I remember I was reading some poker book and it was talking about people that have strong hands tend to kind of act relaxed, sit back, and that’s an indicator that they’re strong, and weak players they’re a little bit more aggressive, or maybe they’re bluffing at it, and very often their actual position is opposite of how they present themselves.
Annie: うん。 I mean, think about it, when was the last time that you sat in a negotiation and you had a really, really strong position in the negotiation and you were red faced, yelling at the people across the table that this was your final offer, take it or leave it?
That’s not the way that somebody who’s in a really strong position behaves. And yet what happens is that when you’re sitting across from someone who behaves in that way, you think there’s a one-to-one mapping, right?
And you’re like, “Oh, they’re behaving in a strong way. They must be really strong.” But if we took a second to step back and say, “Wait a minute, how do humans really behave in this situation?” And the way I can figure out is by thinking about how I would behave in that situation. You get to the truth really quickly.
So we tend to be very reactive. We tend to make snap judgment about what the connection between people’s behavior is, and what their positions actually are in a way that we would be better to start doing some better perspectives making, that would help to actually get to the answer.
Because it seems to obvious once I say it to you, right? When was the last time you had a great position and you were red-faced screaming at somebody that it was your final offer? And of course you’re laughing and saying, “Never.”
Steve: うん。 Right.
Annie: And then you say, “Well, how come you think that that’s the case when they’re doing it to you?” “Oh.”
Steve: Yeah.
Annie: Yeah, right.
Steve: Yeah, never.
Annie: Okay, great. So yeah, but this is the way, this is just human nature, and that’s part of the thing, is that what our gut tells us is often not right, we need to hold our gut up to some sort of rational process, in order to make it accountable to something other than our feeling.
Steve: Yeah, I was just gonna say that … When we were talking here, so much of our life is about trying to make sense of the world, and we try to use these patterns, our brains are good at patterns, right? And pattern recognitions, where … I know you talk about system one and system two, and the emotional side of your brain, and then the more … The limbic system, and then the more rational side, and so much of our life is about trying to bucket things up, put them into … To identify patterns and make it quicker for us to assess things.
But the reality is, we live in a much more complex world, and we need to be much more rational about it. But it’s so hard, because we’re constantly fighting against the desire for our brains to make these snap decisions out of system one, and get the conclusion, right?
Annie: Well yeah, and if you think about it, it’s of course, right? Because if you were to make every single decision on system two, building out some probabilistic decision-tree, you’d never get out the front door in the morning, it would take too long. And the fact is that, most of our brain is this very big, ancient animal brain, and then we have this very thin layer of prefrontal cortex, that is trying to take up this more executive functioning, rational thought.
There isn’t a lot of it. And I talk pretty early in the book, but this is something that Michael Shermer has talked about, that we just have this default toward certain types of thinking, because when evolution was selecting features, it wasn’t necessarily selecting for accuracy, but rather efficiency. So you can think about this pretty simply. For example, we have a bias toward false-positives.
So I’m on this savanna and there’s rustling in the grass; evolution isn’t selecting for the human that now builds out a probabilistic decision-tree, about whether that is a lion. Because that human is dead too much of the time. So instead, it selects for the human who runs away. And sometimes that human is wrong, but it doesn’t matter, because 100% of the humans who’ve run away, have lived, right?
So the wrong ones and the right ones have lived, and who cares? So you have this strong bias toward false-positives, rather than false-negatives, right? So that’s just how it is, and it’s part of the reason why I said right at the beginning, that one of the things is, “Don’t try this at home, folks. Go get some other people to help you with this, because … I have only a little bit of prefrontal cortex, but you also have a little bit of it, and somebody else has a little bit of it, and if we get together, we can get more of that executive functioning stuff working for us.”
Steve: 右。 You’re making me think about … I was listening to Elon Musk on the Joe Rogan podcast, the one where he smokes pot on it, but before all that, I had this really interesting discussion about AI, and how the fact that we’re actually … Companies are actually cybernetic organisms if you will, they’re a bunch of people but also enhanced by technology and we ourselves, with our devices that we’re carrying around, are becoming almost like enhanced … And we are enhanced, essentially, right? Because we can talk to these things, and it can look up any information pretty much immediately, which is amazing.
And you do see … I can see this happening, faster than people think, because take navigation, right? So you can talk in your phone and say, “Hey, I wanna go from here to whatever. Los Angeles, on public transportation. What’s the fastest way?” And it will look at … It does a couple things, right? It finds the different routes that you can take; I mean, you can fly there, you can take a bus, you could drive, whatever, and it’ll solve for that. It’ll also solve for what’s happening right now. So you’re gonna drive, what the traffic patterns are today, and also what they’re predicted to do.
That’s what’s interesting. Google just rolled out, “Tell me when you’re going to drive from here to San Francisco.” And it’ll say, “Oh, the anticipated drive time is, is three hours, versus four hours, versus five hours.” It’s just amazing, right? And you could start to see this with maybe … Based on this conversation, I believe we need help making decisions, and a lot of this stuff may have to be built into computers to get more positive or more optimal outcomes.
At least help us get to more optimal outcomes, to manage against all these system one biases and beliefs that we carry around, that’s baggage, if you will.
Annie: ええ、ええ。丁度。同意します。 That all happened … Obviously before I decided to. I have no problem with I just thought, given that people were questioning Elon Musk’s judgment, that maybe that wasn’t the best-
Steve: The best example?うん。 Well, he did make … That Tweet he sent looks like it’s gonna cost him $20 million bucks and the company $20 million bucks, plus he lost the Chairmanship.
Annie: Right, yeah.
Steve: Maybe he should be using some AI-enhanced decision for filtering when he sends his Tweets out.
Annie: Yeah I actually just had a discussion on a podcast just very briefly about that, and I think that it sounds like he doesn’t sleep very much, and lack of sleep really has a very deep effect on your judgment. There’s all sorts of ways in which … There’s a lot of research being done, in terms of essentially what happens to your … In terms of increased cognitive load, and what is the equivalent to, in terms of drops in IQ points, for example. So work done in scarcity, where people feel like their resources are not enough for their needs, for example, what happens to their ability to think well, their cognitive capabilities, and it looks like it’s equivalent to about a 13 point IQ drop, which is pretty shocking.
But that also the same as what you get if you miss a night’s sleep. So missing a night’s sleep really reduces your ability to think clearly. I think all of these things are actually really interesting to look at. There’s a great book called Scarcity, actually, that I think is a really great book to read, where you can really see what the cognitive costs of poverty are.
And you also get some of these same effects, for example, if you’re feeling excluded from friend group; that’s another way to end up getting the same effects. So anyway, when we were talking about Elon Musk and what’s happening, it sounds like he’s having some sleep issues, so that makes part of the explanation for what’s going on, yeah.
Steve: Yeah, what is the average IQ? Is it 130 or something like that?
Annie: The average IQ, by definition, is 100.
Steve: Is 100, right.じゃ、いいよ。 So if you’re talking-
Annie: That’s definitional.
Steve: So, if you’re taking a 13 point drop, that’s more than 10% loss in your cognitive ability. That’s pretty significant.
Annie: うん。 It’s really huge. When people are stressed, because they feel like their resources cannot meet their needs. And this can be in a relative sense, by the way, this doesn’t mean that you’re living in poverty in an absolute sense. What was interesting is that it’s relative. If you live in a place where people are quite wealthy, and say you’re having trouble paying your mortgage, even though in an absolute sense, you might have quite a bit of money relative to the world, in a relative sense, you do not.
And that seems to be what the trigger is, and that’s outside of, obviously, the other effects of living in actual poverty that you can measure in an absolute sense, relative to anybody in the world. But I think it’s really important for us to think about that, because when we’re talking about … Obviously in order to dig yourself out of poverty, part of what goes along with that is having the … Basically being able to envision what the future is gonna look like for you, identifying what your goals are, and then figuring out how to execute on them.
But what we’re finding is that there’s so much cognitive load placed on you, by being in scarcity itself, that it essentially short-circuits a lot of that ability, and you end up making much more short-term decisions all the time. So there’s some very interesting work in this space, in terms of what it’s doing to people’s ability to think, and how much it reduces people’s ability to actually realize what their own potential is.
Steve: It’s hamstringing us. Well, good, you’re supporting the thesis behind this business, which is we’re trying to help people get control over their future, right? So, feel financially secure, so that they can make the most of their human capital. And this is what I saw with my own mother, where she was freaking out about money, and we’re like, “Okay, let’s try to solve that problem.”
And then once that was addressed, and you’re like, “Okay, I have a sense of stability. I’ve got some money in the bank, I have enough income in my life to pay for my life, so I’m not gonna go broke.” Which is the number one financial worry that everybody has. “Will I run out of money and end up being destitute?”
Once that was taken care of, it created the cognitive space to be like, “Okay, what do I want to do in my life? What could I do, and what’s most interesting to me?” Which, I think then leads you to do hopefully much better work with your life, right? Use your human capital in the best way possible.
Annie: Yeah, and we think about that, from a societal standpoint, right? When we look at this cyclical effect of poverty, when you really understand scarcity, you can start to see where some of that is coming from, right? Same thing with your mother, right? There’s all these different ways in which just having those worries about what are your resources, and are my resources enough to meet my needs?
What that does to your ability to start thinking about the other things in your life, because it just ends up taking up your whole brain capacity. So, from a societal level, how are you addressing that?
Steve: うん。 I think we talked about this a little bit before, but there’s this movement called FIRE, right? Financial Independence, Retirement Early. It’s mostly FI, Financial Independence, and especially being embraced by millennials, where they’re really trying to live much more frugally. And it’s really a mindset thing. So I was just at this ThinkCon Conference, and I saw a panel where they had four FIRE people, and you see people like, “Well, I’m feeding my family of four for $25 or $30,000 a year, and we live a pretty good life.”
I think what they’re doing is … I know what they’re doing, is they’re saying, “Hey, look. I can live more efficiently, and I also wanna reframe how I look at my life very differently, so that I am coming from this place of abundance, and not being driven by what my neighbors had.”
And one of these guys who talked, Mr. Money Mustache, was like the … He’s one of the founding guys that does this, he’s like, “If you reframe how you look at your life, where for most people, they’re in a community and then they see their neighbor or friend drive around in a fancy new car, and then they look at their old 10 year old car, and they’re like ‘God, my car’s a piece of junk, I really need to get a better car.’ If you then reframe that to be like, ‘You know, how awesome is it that I have this inexpensive to insure, and to maintain, and to register car, and I have all this extra free capital. How awesome is that?’ It totally changes your life, because you’re then no longer trying to, ‘Ah, I gotta spend money on this or that to keep up with these people.’ And that creates a sense of freedom and also the sense of ‘I have more space in my life to think about other things.'”
There’s gonna be a movie about it coming out.
Annie: Oh, that’s cool. I think that, that actually is a very good example of what I talk about in my book, which is changing what the inputs are that give you the reward.右？ So this idea of don’t fight our tribal nature, right? What tribe is giving you, tribe is giving you two things. One is belongingness, right? I belong to a group, and the other is distinctiveness from other people, and this is something that’s actually just very important to us, in terms of our human condition.
And what the general default for that tribal nature does, is it causes you to compare to your neighbors, right, in the way that you’re saying, where, “Oh, they have a really nice car, I need to have one of those as well.” Just like for me in my poker group, the general default in poker is you see these tribes being formed in poker, and I’m sure you know this from sitting at enough poker tables, is people saying, “Oh, I got so unlucky when I lost that hand.”
And other people agreeing with them, and then saying, “Let me tell you about how I got unlucky.”右？ Where we want to offload that bad feeling of loss, into a way that socializes it to the world, right? As opposed to privatizes it to ourselves, where we’re onboarding the blame. But you can reframe what it is that you get the reward from.
So the group that I worked with said, “Okay, this is our tribe, what makes you belong to our tribe and be distinct from others is we’re gonna try to be the mistake-admitters.右？ We’re gonna try to be the ones who are trying to poke around into the hands that we want, and figure out all the disastrous decisions we made in those. And when we lose, we’re gonna try to figure out what was our part in it? And we’re gonna challenge each other when we hear people talking in a way that we think is biased.” And all these things, so that we’re still getting that need for tribe fed, and we’re still getting the social approval that comes with being in a tribe. That was all really good, it was just that the features that were being rewarded were different.
And I feel like that’s the same that you just described to me, that most of us are naturally getting our reward from, “I have a car that’s just as nice as my neighbor’s, or nicer than my neighbor’s.” Or whatever. But they’ve created a tribe now where it’s, “We belong to a tribe where we have turned that on its head, and the reward for us is that we have an older car. That our expenses are lower, and that we’re in on a secret that they’re not in on.”右？
Because you need that distinctiveness. “We have a secret that they don’t have, and so they’re looking at me in a certain way, like, ‘Oh, look at you with your poor, schleppy car.’ And I’m like the Hobbit, you don’t know the secret. This is the secret to success in my life, right here; that I can resist the temptation to give in to what normal humans are giving in to, in terms of what the comparison is.”
I think it’s a very good example of how you can remold tribe to fit in with what your long-term goals are, by allowing you to still get the short-term reward that we all need. It’s just that, that short-term reward is aligning with what you actually want in the long run.
Steve: 右。 That’s a great … I mean, I love how you analyzed that, because that’s exactly what’s happening, the folks that are in this Financial Independence movement, they totally reframe it to be like, “Hey, I’m proud of how frugal I am.” And they go out of their way to demonstrate that to their friends, but also in their outside lives.
I mean, just quick story. I met the community manager of this site called BiggerPockets, and I’m gonna hopefully go onto their podcast or get them on here as well. They’re real estate. But this woman-
Annie: I just went on BiggerPockets. [crosstalk]. Yeah, you can go listen to me on BiggerPockets.
Steve: Oh did you? That’s awesome. Did you talk to Mindy Jensen?
Annie: No, no. Who did I talk to? David and-
Steve: I know they run two podcasts. There’s BiggerPockets, and there’s BiggerPockets of Money, so I’m talking about the one BiggerPockets of Money. But anyway, so I was gonna grab coffee with her, so we’re in this resort and everything’s super expensive, and I’m like, “All right, why don’t we go in here?” And she’s like, “I can’t buy this food. It is just way too overpriced.” And I was like, “I’ll buy for you.” She’s like, “I won’t let you spend the money on this.” So we had this whole negotiation about where we could eat, and what was possible.
She’s like, “I wanna go out to the store and get food.” I was like, “All right. But there’s also the time value of money and everything else.” Anyway, I appreciate that she stuck to her principles. She ultimately did let me buy her a bagel with cream cheese on it, for $4.50. That was the one thing we could find, and we got some water.
But I appreciated the fact that hey, the core founding principle is, “Look, we’re gonna be frugal, we’re gonna be efficient with our money.” And on the other hand, she’s doing huge real estate deals. It’s not like she’s short of money, she just chooses to live her life this way, and it creates this sense of … Because we’re all sitting here worried about, “Oh, am I gonna run out of money, da, da, da …” And then you look around and you’re like, “oh, what are the current costs of my life? What if it was a quarter of what it is? What would my life be like then?” Well it’d be pretty friggin different.
So I think you’re gonna be hearing more about this, but cool.
Annie: Yeah, well it’s a great example. I hadn’t really thought about that movement in that way, but the way that you described it, really triggered that connection for me, as a really wonderful example of how you can create tribe around thoughtfully thinking about how can we use this belongingness, and the distinctiveness, to actually get us toward a goal that we really want to get to?
As opposed to the default of how we normally act, and it’s really a beautiful example, and I mean I know about the movement, but I’d never thought about it in that way, until you described it in that particular way.
Steve: Well, I’m just learning more about it, too. I just think that there’s a lot of lessons for folks from that community, because they have detached themselves successfully from the normal framework. I mean, we’re all conditioned, we grow up, we’re getting stuff, and we’re taught, “Well, the American Way is to buy more stuff.” I mean, that’s our whole economy right? We gotta buy and consume more stuff, it drives the economy and employs everybody.
On the flip side, we’re getting more and more efficient at creating this stuff, we’re realizing stuff doesn’t make us happier, because hedonic adoption, so I do think that there’s more-
Annie: Choice makes us unhappy.
Steve: Yep.丁度。 There’s all the … Now that we have all this stuff around us, and all this information coming at us all the time, now more and more people are moving towards hey, they wanna see people in person. They wanna have more thoughtful conversations. So hopefully, we will get to a happy place in our society where we can have our core needs taken care of, but still have time in our lives for our family and friends, and the things that are meaningful to us, and do meaningful work, right? Which is what I think really is the source of happiness, not the new 911 in your garage that makes you happy for about a week, and then you’re like, “Wow, this thing’s a lot to insure.”
So look, Annie, I appreciate your time. I know we’ve gone way over, but I just wanna … I’m gonna try and summarize what I’m learning here, and feel free to correct me. But my takeaway from your book, Thinking In Bets is one, there’s a ton to learn. You’ve learned a ton from playing poker and you’ve applied … And also, obviously, all the work you’ve done and research about decision-making, and we almost have to be aware of the biases and beliefs that we bring to the table, and how that affects our thinking.
And then there’s a lot of great lessons if you start to accept the uncertainty in life, try to weight the potential outcomes, and make decisions accordingly. So if there’s a high likelihood, you can put that amount of resources into it. Or high likelihood something will happen, and also high likelihood it’s gonna be really influential for your life, or whatever your business, you can put more resources into that. And if it’s low likelihood, or low outcome, you should invest resources accordingly.
And another big thing is, just learning, right? Having a system to get feedback, and welcome that feedback loop in your life, where you … Annie, one thing you mentioned to me that I thought was great, was you wanna have, I think it was strong beliefs but loosely held. Or evolving beliefs, I guess, is how you put it.
Annie: Yes, but I shouldn’t get credit for that, by the way. That’s a common … Don’t give me credit for coming up with that exact thing that you say, I just wanna not take credit for it.
Steve: わかった。 But I think that idea of having evolving beliefs, right, that the world is changing, we’re learning, and don’t always default back to how you thought about things, it’s an important part of evolving as a person. Anything else that I missed there, in that summary?
Annie: I think that was a pretty darn good summary, I gotta say.
Steve: I appreciate that. I really did enjoy the book, a lot, and I’m gonna share it with our team, and hopefully our listeners pick up on it. So anything else you wanna cover, any big influencers, or things you wanna call out?
Annie: Yeah, I would love [crosstalk] make it, because it sounds like we’re mission-aligned. Yeah, and the second thing I would say is that, I think this kind of thinking, and this kind of decision-making takes practice. So I have a newsletter that I put out every Friday, which is really looking at current events, and it’s four or five pieces in each newsletter, which is looking at things that are happening out in the world currently, and how do you apply this kind of thinking to them.
So as an example, in the last newsletter, I think I had a piece about the Serena Williams to-do, and what the world really tells us about whether there was sexism or not, and what different arguments people were making, and how you can evaluate those. Just as an example, look at things that are coming out in social science, or behavioral economics, and look at some results that are coming out. Looking at things that are in politics, and how to apply this kind of thinking to evaluate things in business.
I think probably in the next newsletter that I put out, I’m gonna do something about what the shift in opinion before and after the Kavanaugh hearings were, on opinion about who was telling the truth and who wasn’t. Not such a surprise, it seems to be aligned completely with what your political party is, and nobody’s opinion changed very much from the new information, which isn’t that surprising.
So I’m gonna talk about that, and talk about how tribe really drives what your opinion is, and affects the way that you process information. So that’s just a flavor, but people can go onto my website, annieduke.com, and they can see archives of the newsletter there, so they can see if it’s to their taste, that way you can try it before you subscribe to it. But hopefully some people will find some value in that, and will subscribe to it.
Steve: Thanks, Annie, for being on our show. Thanks Davorin Robison for being our sound engineer. Anyone listening, thanks for listening. Hopefully you found this useful. Our goal at NewRetirement is to help anyone plan and manage their retirement so they can make the most of their money and time. And if you made it this far, I encourage you to, as you said, check out Annie’s book, Thinking in Bets, and her website and newsletter, and How Do I Decide, as well. And also welcome you to check out our site, and planning tools at newretirement.com, where you can build your own plan for free, and take advantage of our premium advanced tools, and personal support.
We also have a private Facebook group, and you can find us on Twitter as well, @newretirement. The last thing here, which we haven’t asked for it before but if you like this, we would love to … Either way, would love to get reviews on iTunes, or Stitch, or anywhere. We read them and we’ll try to change the show, based on your feedback. It just helps us build awareness for what’s going on out there.
All right, so that’s it. Thanks again, and have a great day.