그래서 그들은 의도적으로 같은 관점, 같은 신념, 같은 종류의 아이디어에 대해 같은 종류의 헌신을 가진 사람들을 중심으로 팀에 응집력을 만들려고 노력하고 있습니다. 그런 식으로 팀 플레이어가 되는 것을 해석하지만, 그런 유형의 팀 환경은 사람들이 반대 의견을 제시하는 것처럼 보이기 때문에 대안적인 관점을 제시하거나 그룹에 도전하는 데 반드시 자유를 느끼지 못하는 반향실을 만들 것입니다. , 또는 반대론자 또는 Debbie Downers 중 한 명과 비슷합니다.

Steve: 응. 완전.

애니: 아닙니다.

스티브: 알겠습니다.

애니: 맞습니다.

스티브: 네, 그리고 어떤 회사에서는 사람들이 건전한 토론과 강력한 목소리, 다른 의견을 가지도록 격려하기 위해 노력한다는 것을 알고 있습니다. 어떤 사람들은 "야, 말다툼은 대단해. 우리는 최선의 결정을 내리고 싶기 때문에 이러한 회의에 개입해도 상관없습니다.”라고 말하며 자신의 입장을 강력하게 옹호해야 합니다. 하지만 그건 아마 많은 회사에서 예외일 거라고 생각해요. 내 생각 엔 당신이 맞다. 많은 사람들이 모여서 그것에 대해 이야기합니다. 누군가는 확고한 아이디어를 가지고 있고, 모든 사람들은 일종의 말뚝을 박고 이렇게 말합니다. “좋아, 좋아. 해보자.”

애니: 응. 그리고 제 생각에는 Dream Teams를 쓴 Shane Snow의 말을 듣고 그가 이것의 기원에 대해 이야기하고 있었던 것 같습니다. 약간의 연구가 있었고, 그래서 나는 그것이 일종의 자존감 연구와 같은 느낌이 들었고, 그런 종류가 어떻게 모든 사람이 트로피를 얻는 것으로 발전했는지 느꼈습니다. 이 증거에 대한 이런 종류의 해석은 내가 확신하지 못하는 무언가로 바뀌었고 그렇게 도움이 되었습니다. 그러나 그는 사람들이 같은 페이지에 있다고 느낄 때 직장에서 더 행복하다는 것을 보여주는 이 연구가 있다고 말했습니다. 하지만 같은 페이지에 있다는 것을 정의할 수 있는 다른 방법이 있습니다. 예를 들어, 우리 팀 내에서 프로세스에 대해 같은 페이지에 있다고 느끼기 때문에 같은 페이지에 있을 수 있고 가장 좋은 프로세스는 건전한 토론을 촉진합니다.

그러나 같은 페이지에 있는 단순한 버전은 우리가 서로 동의한다는 것입니다. 그것은 같은 페이지에 있는 것을 해석하는 일종의 간단한 방법이며, 이 연구가 나왔을 때 사람들이 같은 페이지에 있을 때 직장에서 가장 행복하다는 것을 보았을 때 "글쎄, 그건 모든 사람이 서로 동의하는 상황을 조성해야 함을 의미합니다.” 그리고 물론, 문제는 그것이 다양성을 향한 욕구와 어떻게 충돌할 수 있는지에 대한 생각입니다. 그렇죠? 당신은 당신이 팀에 다양한 사람들을 데려오고 싶다고 말하고 있습니다. 다양한 관점을 가지고 있기 때문에 제공할 수 있는 관점이 다르기 때문이라고 생각합니다.

나는 그것이 팀 플레이어가 되거나 같은 페이지에 있다는 것이 서로 동의한다는 것을 의미하는 이 아이디어에 대해 어떻게 싹이 트게 될지 생각합니다. 그리고 지금 당신은 다른 관점을 가지고 있기 때문에 누군가를 데려왔습니다. 하지만 그들은 마치 그들의 관점은 침묵하고 있거나, 또는 그들이 그러한 의견 불일치를 표현한다면 어떻게든 좋은 팀 플레이어가 되지 못하고 있다는 것입니다. 이는 꽤 나쁘게 여겨집니다. 그래서, 나는 그것의 기원에 대한 그의 종류의 관점이 정말 마음에 들었습니다.

그리고 제가 말하고 싶은 또 다른 것은 우리가 알지 못하는 것 중 하나가 팀 내에서, 특히 리더십 위치에서 우리가 모든 종류의 상황을 만들 수 있다는 것입니다. 우리가 실제로 우리 자신의 신념을 가진 그룹이기 때문에 확증적 스타일이나 반향적인 스타일로 몰아가는 것, 맞습니까? 따라서 차이점에 대해 생각할 수 있습니다. 이것은 사람들이 자신이하고 있는지조차 인식하지 못하는 것입니다. 그들은 건전한 토론을 하려는 의도를 가지고 있지만, 예를 들어 당신이 리더십 위치에 있을 때 당신의 신념을 먼저 제시하는 것과 같은 일을 하는 것이 실제로 다른 사람들을 화나게 한다는 것을 깨닫지 못하기 때문에 일종의 프로세스를 감염시킵니다. 지금 당신의 신념이 무엇인지 추리하기 위해.

예를 들어, 4명의 다른 사람이 구직자에게 면접을 하게 하고 모든 사람이 한 방에 모여 토론을 하게 된다면 모두가 서로에게 영향을 미치게 되며 그렇게 생산적이지는 않을 것입니다. 실제로 각 사람이 다른 사람들의 생각을 보기 전에 독립적으로 보고서를 작성하도록 허용한다면 의견은 충실도가 높지 않을 것입니다. 이와 같은 교차 오염이 발생하기 때문에 주의해야 할 또 다른 사항이며 실제로 의견 불일치를 허용하려는 의도에 대한 것입니다. 자신이 그런 짓을 하고 있는지도 모르는 사이에 의견 차이를 없애버릴 수 있습니다.

Steve: 오른쪽. 나는 그것이 꽤 흥미롭다고 생각합니다. ... 우리는 농장 일에서 고군분투하고 있습니다. “알았어. 우리는 정렬하고 싶어, 그렇지?” 그러나 또한 저는 건전한 토론에 대한 아이디어를 가지고 있습니다. 우리 모두가 우리의 입장을 강력하게 옹호할 것이라는 데 동의하면서 그것을 재구성한다고 생각합니다. 그건 괜찮습니다. 합의. 흥미롭게 볼 수 있는 방법입니다. 얼마나 많은 기업이 당신만큼 의사 결정에 대해 실제로 생각하는지 궁금합니다. 이 회사들과 교류할 때 어떻게 생각하시나요?

Annie: 그래. Bridgewater가 확실히 그렇죠?

Steve: 네.

애니: 그들은 스테로이드에 대한 이러한 접근 방식을 볼 수 있도록 원칙을 읽습니다.

Steve: 응. 그의 책(Ray Dalio)을 읽었습니다.

Annie: 네.

스티브: 응. 그는 이것에 대해 생각하고 있습니다.

애니: 응. 그래서, 나는 외모를 의미합니다. 거의 모든 회사가 의사 결정에 대해 생각하고 있다고 생각합니다. 그것은 그들이 과학에 근거한 방식으로 그것에 대해 생각하고 있는지 여부의 문제 일뿐입니다. 그렇죠? 예를 들어, 나와 함께 일하는 대부분의 회사가 예를 들어 전략 계획에 대해 함께 일할 것을 요청할 때 가능한 결과가 무엇인지에 대해 함께 작업하기 시작합니다. 그렇죠? 그래서, 우리는 일종의 알아 냈습니다 ... 일종의 시나리오 계획입니까? 결정 A의 가능한 결과는 다음과 같습니다. 결정 B의 가능한 결과는 다음과 같습니다. 분명히 중복될 수 있습니다.

그리고 나서 저는 그들에게 “좋아. 그럼, 결과에 확률을 넣어 봅시다." 그리고 나와 함께 일하는 대부분의 사람들은 "뭐? 아니요. 저는 그렇게 할 수 없습니다.” 그리고 저는 "글쎄, 왜 우리가 동의합니까? 이러한 각각의 결과에 일종의 가능성이 있다는 데 동의할 수 있습니까?” 그리고 대답은 그들이 잘못될까 두려워한다는 것입니다. 다른 말로 하면, 그들이 말하는 것은 "이 일이 미래에 일어날 확률이 얼마나 되는지 내가 확실히 알 수 있는 방법이 없습니다." 그래서 그들은 기본적으로 "나는 당신에게 그것을 주기를 거부합니다."라고 말합니다.

그래서, 일단 당신이 보는 것이 예라는 것을 알게 되면 그들은 의사 결정에 전념하지만 분명히 프로세스의 관점에서 볼 때 그들은 전체 요점이 다음과 같다는 것을 이해하지 못하기 때문에 올바른 프로세스에 도달하는 방법을 실제로 알지 못합니다. 어떤 일이 일어날 가능성을 추측하는 것이 전혀 추측하지 않는 것보다 낫습니다. 따라서 발생할 수 있는 이 특정 시나리오가 30%와 70%의 시간에 발생할 것이라고 말할 수 있는 것뿐입니다. 그들은 일종의 "아, 그건 정답이 아니기 때문에 말하고 싶지 않습니다."라고 생각합니다. 제대로 생각하지 않고 있기 때문입니다.

하지만 제가 그들에게 하는 말은 "그것은 가능성이 전혀 없는 척하고 그냥 어둠 속에 두는 것보다 낫습니다."라는 것입니다. 두 번째는 당신이 이것에 대해 다른 누구보다 더 많이 알고 있기 때문에 당신의 추측은 다른 누구의 것보다 더 나을 것이고 당신이 추측하고 있는 사실은 이미 잘 될 것이라는 것입니다. 그리고 세 번째는 특정 시나리오에 가능성이나 확률을 할당하려고 시도하는 과정만으로도 내가 원래 테이크아웃으로 돌아가 불확실성을 진정으로 수용할 때 실제로 실제 방식으로 발생한다는 것입니다. 불확실성은 두 곳에서 비롯됩니다. , 그렇지?

하나는 운에서 비롯됩니다. 그래서 어떤 결과가 나올 확률을 생각할 때 운 요소는 인정해야 하는 것 아닙니까? "글쎄, 내가 통제할 수 없는 결정 이후에 이것이 결과에 영향을 미칠 수 있는 것은 무엇인가?"

에 대해 생각하기 시작해야 합니다. 스티브: 그 불확실성으로 돌아가고 있죠, 그렇죠? 불확실성이 있다는 점만 제외하면.

애니: 오른쪽. 정확히. 그리고 두 번째 형태의 불확실성은 숨겨진 정보입니다. 내가 모르는 것들은 무엇입니까? 그리고 어떤 일이 일어날 가능성이 얼마나 되는지를 잘 추정하기 위해서는 내가 가지고 있는 예측 정보, 예측 정보가 무엇인지 생각해야 합니다. 그리고 그것은 당신을 실제로 매우 정보에 굶주리게 만듭니다. "음, 우리의 가장 좋은 추측은 70%에서 30% 사이"라고 생각하면 실제로 "음, 어떻게 그 범위를 좁힐 수 있지? 내가 알아낼 수 있었던 것은 무엇인가? 내가 더 많이 좁힐수록 더 나은 삶을 살기 때문에 그 정보를 조금 더 좁힐 수 있는 어떤 정보를 발견할 수 있습니까?”

그래서 제가 말씀드리고 싶은 것은 추상화에서 "예, 저는 이 사업을 운영하고 있습니다."라고 말하지 않는 사람을 찾지 못할 것이라고 생각한다는 것입니다. 의사결정에 대해 많이 생각하고 있습니다. 하지만 대부분의 사람들에게 그것은 과학에 의해 특별히 정보를 받지 않았으며, 이러한 종류의 나무를 구축함으로써 실제 확률론적 사고에 의해 특별히 정보를 얻지 못했다고 생각합니다. 실제 방식으로 미래를 실제로 매핑함으로써 대부분의 사람들이 그렇게 하고 있다고 생각합니다. 그들이 방에서 합의를 얻으려고 하는 결정, 첫 번째. 그래서 그들은 그것이 정말 중요하다고 생각합니다. 우리는 합의를 얻어야 한 다음 한 가지 가능성에 착륙해야 합니다.
그리고 일단 그렇게 하고 나면, 우리는 그것을 확신하게 될 것입니다. 그리고 그것이 대부분의 사람들의 프로세스가 어떻게 보이는지 생각합니다.

스티브: 네, 댓글이 너무 많습니다. 그러나 몇 가지 빠른 생각. 하나는 우리 교육의 많은 부분이 비판적으로 생각하는 방법에 관한 것이라고 생각합니다. 어느 것이 중요합니까? 그리고 나도 엔지니어였지? 문제를 해결하고 구축하는 방법과 결정을 내리는 방법에 대해 생각하는 방법은 무엇입니까? 그리고 당신이 당신의 삶을 볼 때, 맞습니까? 당신의 인생의 결과는 당신이 내린 결정과 그것이 성공했는지 여부의 합입니다. 그렇죠? 행운과 불확실성의 일부입니다.

포커로 돌아가서 이야기를 들을수록 포커는 위험/보상 개념에 관한 의사 결정에 대해 많은 교훈을 제공한다고 생각합니다. 그렇죠? 그래서 포커에서 결정을 내릴 때마다 "알았어, 내가 얼마나 위험을 감수하고 있지?" 오른쪽? "나는 냄비에 얼마나 많은 돈을 투자하고 있습니까? 나의 잠재력은 무엇인가?” 오른쪽? “그릇이 얼마나 크니?” 그리고 텍사스 홀드에 특히 가치가 있습니까? 아마도 많은 청취자가 익숙하지 않을 수 있지만 기본적으로 게임을 할 때 뒤집어지는 카드가 있기 때문에 더 많은 정보를 얻으려면 갈 때마다 비용을 지불해야 합니다. 따라서 추가 정보를 얻기 위해 전화를 걸고 내기를 결정해야 합니다.

그리고 그 아이디어는 비즈니스에 완벽하게 적용됩니다. 기본적으로 가능한 한 빨리, 가능한 한 저렴하게 배우려고 하는 린 스타트업이라는 개념이 있습니다. 가설을 세우고 MVP를 만듭니다. 최소한의 실행 가능한 제품은 아이디어를 테스트하기 위해 가능한 한 적게 지출하고 어떤 일이 일어나는지 확인하려고 합니다. 실험을 실행하고 무슨 일이 일어나는지 볼 것입니다. 비슷하지만 그렇게 할 때 이상적으로 프레임을 만들 때 "이봐, 이 작품의 잠재적인 장점이 뭐지? 이 실험을 실행하는 데 드는 비용은 얼마입니까?”

제 말은 실리콘 밸리의 많은 신생 기업이 이것을 운영하고 있으며 점점 더 많은 새로운 회사가 그것을 하고 있다고 생각합니다. 하지만 귀사가 그러한 접근 방식을 수용하고 있다고 생각하십니까?

Annie: 그래서 그들 중 일부는 그렇습니다. 나와 함께 일하는 사람들 중 일부는 애자일 개발을 하고 있는데, 이는 분명히 정확히 그런 유형의 사고방식입니다. 그래서 다시 그것은 회사에 달려 있습니다. 그들 중 일부는 있습니다. 하지만 중요한 것은 린 스타트업이 아닌 회사에서도 여전히 세상을 생각하면서 이런 작은 테스트를 할 수 있고 정보를 얻기 위해 작은 구멍을 뚫고 사용하지 않는 방식으로 세상을 생각하는 것이라고 생각합니다. 반드시 하나의 전략으로 정착해야 하지 않습니까? 이런 종류의 아주 작은 AB 테스트를 수행하고 어떤 것이 효과가 있는지, 어떤 것이 그렇지 않은지 알아보기 위해 여기저기 파고들기 시작하면 됩니다.

다시 말하지만, 당신은 내가 인식론적으로 열려 있어야한다고 말하는 사람으로 세상에 접근하는 것과 관련이 있다고 생각합니다. 맞습니까? 이 문제가 해결될 수 있는 모든 종류의 다양한 방법이 있다는 것을 확실히 알아야 하는 것처럼 느껴지지 않아야 하고, 결정하는 대신 어떤 것을 테스트하고 싶은지 확인하는 데 열려 있습니다. 정답입니다.

스티브: 맞아요, 우리의 편견이 맞죠? 우리는 일종의-

애니:를 원합니다. 이것은 매우 다른 방식입니다.

스티브: 오른쪽. 나는 특히 회사를 이끄는 사람들이 빠른 결정을 내리는 데 익숙하고, 그들이 테이블에 제시하는 정답이 무엇인지에 대해 일종의 "직감"을 가지고 있다고 생각합니다.

애니: 맞습니다.

스티브: 그리고 그들은 그 결론에 빨리 도달하기를 원하고 아마도 그 결정을 내리는 데 도움이 되는 다른 모든 사람들에게 영향을 미치고 "알았어. 여기가 바로 ...”

애니: 응. 그런 전염병 문제로 돌아간다는 말이겠죠? 누군가가 와서 "여기에 우리가 해야 할 일이 있습니다. 이것이 제 믿음입니다. 이것이 정답이라는 것을 강하게 느낀다”고 말했다. 행운을 빕니다. 그 방에 누군가가 정말로 어떤 식으로든 당신을 도전하게 하고 그들이 의도적으로 그것을 하지 않을 것이라는 것은 아닙니다. 그들은 마치 "와, 이 사람은 경험이 많고, 이것을 정말 굳게 믿는다. 그러니 내가 생각한 것이 무엇이든 틀렸을 것입니다.” 내 말은 그것은 그것에 대해 생각하는 일종의 자연스러운 방법이며, 매우 자주 사람들에게 작은 방법으로 자신의 삶에서 이것을 테스트하도록 말하려고 노력합니다. 그래야 그들이 이것을 실행하는 것이 얼마나 어려운지 알 수 있습니다. 이러한 감염 방지 방식으로.

그리고 이것이 당신에게 울리면 나에게 말할 수 있습니다. 예를 들어 누군가가 정치에 대한 논평을 읽을 때 얼마나 자주 그들이 "나는 정치에서 이 논평을 읽었습니다. 읽어줄래?” 말 그대로 문장의 끝처럼. 아니면 “나는 이 논평을 읽었다. 이것, 이것, 이것, 저것을 생각했다. 당신도 그것을 읽고 당신의 생각을 말해 주시겠습니까?” 그리고 당연히 후자입니다. 이것이 우리가 서로 의사 소통하는 방식이며, 그 중 일부는 우리의 의견이나 신념이 우리가 당신의 의견을 되돌리기 전에 당신에게 전달해야 할 중요한 데이터입니다.
우리가 의도하지 않은 방식으로 그렇게 하고 있다고 생각하지 않습니다.

Steve: 의식이 없습니다.

애니: 나는 우리가 그것을 정말로 믿는다고 생각합니다. ... 맞습니다. 중요한 데이터입니다. 예를 들어, "글쎄요, 그것에 대해 생각이 있습니다. 스티브가 나에게 조언을 해주기 전에 그 사실을 아는 것이 중요하기 때문에 그 생각을 전달하겠습니다."

스티브: 그래. 그리고 나는 당신이 무언가를 발표하고 있다는 사실조차 이미 자신의 확증 편향의 대상이 될 수 있다고 말하고 싶습니다. " 내 말은 당신이 믿는 것을 강화하는 것처럼 말하는 것이 아니라 단지 그것을 제시함으로써 말하는 것입니다.

Annie: 정확히. 하지만 이렇게 말하면 훨씬 더 잘할 수 있을 것입니다. 나는 당신이 어떻게 생각하는지 알고 싶습니다. 읽어주실래요?” 말 그대로 저는 여러분에게 다른 정보를 제공하지 않습니다. 사람들에게 이런 식으로 사람들과 교류를 시작하도록 도전합니다. 그리고 그들은 그것이 얼마나 어려운지, 얼마나 자주 자신의 의견을 자제해야 하는지에 놀랐습니다. 정말 어렵습니다. 안에 보관하기 위해. 그리고 또 다른 한가지는 중요한 데이터라고 느끼는 것 뿐만이 아니라고 생각합니다. 그런데 내가 동의하지 않는데 상대방이 내가 동의한다고 생각하면 어쩌나 하는 두려움이 조금 있는 것 같아요. 아니면 상대방이 내가 동의할 때 동의하지 않고 그것이 어떻게든 좋지 않을 것이라고 생각한다면 어떻게 합니까? 그 사람은 당신에 대해 오해할 것입니다.

아니면 그들은 당신에 대해 다르게 생각할 수 있으며, "나는 정말로 단지 이것을 중립적인 방식으로 당신에게 제시하는 것입니다. 왜냐하면 나는 정말로 당신으로부터 충실도가 높은 피드백을 다시 받고 싶기 때문입니다. 그리고 내가 그것에 동의하는지 아닌지는 중요하지 않습니다. 그리고 추측하지 마십시오.”

스티브: 응. 한 가지 생각이 납니다.
저는 클로버팝이라는 회사의 엔젤투자자입니다. 그들의 전체 아이디어는 의사 결정을 개선하는 것입니다. 나는 이것에 관심이 있습니다. 이 모든 투자가 가능한 우리 경제의 기회 영역이라고 생각합니다. 어떻게 더 잘 실행하고 어떻게 더 잘 추적할 수 있지만 더 나은 의사 결정을 내리는 방법에 대한 기술 지원은 많지 않습니다. 그들이 하는 일 중 하나는 제안을 하는 사람을 실제로 눈멀게 하는 것입니다. 따라서 "이봐, 우리는 이 문제를 정말 잘 알고 있고, 우리는 모두 그것을 해결하는 데 관심이 있다"라고 말하는 사람들의 그룹을 가질 수 있습니다. 그리고 CEO가 자신의 직책인 CMO와 dah, dah, dah를 발표하게 합니다. 그럼 그 정보는 너한테 온 거잖아, 그치?

그리고 우리는 그들이 그것에 대해 자신의 의견을 제시하는 경우 모든 사람에게 편향되지만, 당신이 와서 "누가 그것을 제시하는지 모르겠다"라고 말한다면. 그리고 이상적으로, 당신이 말하는 것은 그들이 단지 다시 고려를 요청한다는 것입니다. 바라건대, 당신은 더 나은 결과를 얻을 것입니다.
하지만 나는 당신이 다른 것을 가져야 한다고 거의 생각합니다... 우리가 항상 우리의 편견과 싸우는 것은 너무 어렵습니다. 도구를 통해 수행하는 것이 도움이 될 수 있습니다. 여기에 앉아서 펌프질을 하려는 것은 아니지만 흥미로운 영역이라고 생각합니다.

Annie: 오, 동의합니다. 응. 아니 전적으로 동의합니다. 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: 예. But that’s wonderful. I’m a very big fan of his fathers, and him as well by the way.

Steve: 오른쪽. 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.

우와. 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.

Alright. 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: 오른쪽. Exactly. 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: Yeah. 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: Exactly. 오른쪽. So, now that immediately we can see, “Aha. 괜찮아. 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: 맞아요. 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: Yeah. Exactly. 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: Yeah. 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: 오른쪽. Exactly. 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. 오른쪽. 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: Yeah. 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: 오른쪽. 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: Yeah. 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: Yeah. 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: 오른쪽. 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: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. 동의한다. 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? Yeah. 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. 좋아. 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: Yeah. 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: Yeah. 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. 오른쪽? 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.” 오른쪽? 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. 오른쪽? 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.” 오른쪽?

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: 오른쪽. 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: 네. Exactly. 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: 괜찮은. 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.