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commitment to self-improvement to be the strongest predictor of performance.
“All who drink of this treatment recover in a short time, except those whom it does not help, who all die,” he wrote. “It is obvious, therefore, that it fails only in incurable cases.”
“the rectum is the focus of existence, contains the essence of life, and performs the functions ordinarily ascribed to the heart and brain.”
The rate of the development of science is not the rate at which you make observations alone but, much more important, the rate at which you create new things to test.11
the left field of vision (which reports to the right hemisphere) was shown a picture of a snowstorm and the person was asked to point to the picture that related to it. So he quite reasonably pointed at the shovel. The right field of vision (which reports to the left hemisphere) was shown an image of a chicken claw—and the person was then asked why his hand was pointed at a shovel. The left hemisphere had no idea why. But the person didn’t say “I don’t know.” Instead, he made up a story: “Oh, that’s simple,” one patient said. “The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to
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“It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously,” Daniel Kahneman noted, “but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.”17
attribute substitution, but I call it bait and switch: when faced with a hard question, we often surreptitiously replace it with an easy one.
Learning the cues is a matter of opportunity and effort.
“I’d rather be a bookie than a goddamn poet,” was his legendary response.
Forecasts must have clearly defined terms and timelines.
If the meteorologist’s curve is far above the line, she is underconfident—so things she says are 20% likely actually happen 50% of the time (see this page). If her curve is far under the line, she is overconfident
patient data collectors—and cautious data interpreters.
statisticians sleeping with their feet in an oven and their head in a freezer because the average temperature is comfortable.
inverse correlation between fame and accuracy:
Someone might ask why the United States spends billions of dollars every year on geopolitical forecasting when it could give Doug a gift certificate and let him do it.
“Do I agree with this? Are there holes in this? Should I be looking for something else to fill this in? Would I be convinced by this if I were somebody else?”
Doug knows that when people read for pleasure they naturally gravitate to the like-minded. So he created a database containing hundreds of information sources—from the New York Times to obscure blogs—that are tagged by their ideological orientation, subject matter, and geographical origin, then wrote a program that selects what he should read next using criteria that emphasize diversity.
“If you don’t get this elementary, but mildly unnatural, mathematics of elementary probability into your repertoire, then you go through a long life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”
So finding meaning in events is positively correlated with wellbeing but negatively correlated with foresight. That sets up a depressing possibility: Is misery the price of accuracy?
extreme commitment leads to extreme reluctance to admit error,
“There is no harm in being sometimes wrong, especially if one is promptly found out,”
The knowledge required to ride a bicycle can’t be fully captured in words and conveyed to others. We need “tacit knowledge,” the sort we only get from bruising experience.
Forer effect,
cognitive loafing.
plan for surprise. That means, as Danzig advises, planning for adaptability and resilience.
Dare to be wrong
Better to discover errors quickly than to hide them behind vague verbiage.
