Thought Process

The Unthinking Habits of Your Mind // Book Summary of David McRaney’s ‘You Are Not So Smart’

April 1, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Psychologists have argued that many cognitive biases are rooted in mental shortcuts. They are heuristics—rules of thumb, stereotypes, instincts—that help you make sense of the world. They aren’t intrinsically flawed, but, they’re often quirky and error-prone. Your mental models can affect you in ways that you don’t suspect.

David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart (2011) suggests a brief—if hurried—tour of 48 cognitive biases that can deceive you. Based on the author’s popular blog, the book is a satisfying assessment of understanding people’s—and your own—behavior a little bit better.

There is a growing body of work coming out of psychology and cognitive science that says you have no clue why you act the way you do, choose the things you choose, or think the thoughts you think. … From the greatest scientist to the most humble artisan, every brain within every body is infested with preconceived notions and patterns of thought that lead it astray without the brain knowing it. So you are in good company.

Each chapter starts with a brief statement of a misconception followed by the fact. Then a synopsis of a related behavioral study shows how our brains produce the counterpart deception and the truth. Some of the less-known preconceptions discussed are,

Confabulation. You tend to create unreliable narratives to explain away your choices post hoc. These reassuring perceptions can make you think you’re more rational than you actually are.
Groupthink. People tend to fall in with the rest of the group to minimize conflict and foster group cohesiveness and social acceptance. No one wants to be the one person with a dissenting opinion.
Social Loafing. That others in a team will pick up your slack may induce you to put in less effort if you think you’ll get away with it. This can curb your own performance, even if you’re a conscientious, hardworking type. If you don’t feel your participation will be noticed, why bother putting in the effort?
Availability Heuristic. You’re likely to estimate the likelihood of an event based on your ability to recall immediate and easily accessed examples.
Fundamental Attribution Error. You tend to assign external reasons for your own behavior but internal motives to other people. For instance, if you’re late for a meeting, you’ll blame it on public transport. If someone else is running late for a meeting with you, you’ll blame it on her poor time-keeping.

Recommendation: Read David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart. It’s an engaging, easy-to-read primer to how the mind works. Read it as a lead up to Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling dissertation Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011; summary forthcoming.)

Idea for Impact: Once you learn to spot the cognitive biases we all grapple with, they’re easier to overcome.

The Data Never “Says”

March 1, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Data doesn’t say anything. Indeed, data can’t say anything for itself about an issue any more than a saw can form furniture, or a sauce can simmer a stew.

Data is inert and inanimate. Data doesn’t know why it was created. Data doesn’t have a mind of its own, and, therefore, it can’t infer anything.

Data is a necessary ingredient in judgment. It’s people who select and interpret data. People can turn it into insight or torture it to bring their agenda to bear. Data is therefore only as useful as its quality and the skills of the people wielding it.

Far more than we admit, subjectivity and intuition play a significant role in deciding how we collect, choose, process, explain, interpret, and apply the data. As entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan warns in Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril (2012,) “We mostly admit the information that makes us feel great about ourselves, while conveniently filtering whatever unsettles our fragile egos and most vital beliefs.”

In the hands of careless users, data can end up having the opposite effect its creators intended. All data is good or bad depending on how it’s employed in a compelling story and what end it’s serving—neither of which the data itself can control.

Don’t let data drive your conclusions. Let data inform your conclusions.
Don’t declare, “The data says,” (as in, “the stock market thinks.”) Data by itself cannot have a particular interpretation.
When you find data that seems to support the case you wish to make, don’t swoop on it without caution and suspicion. Data can be very deceptive when used carelessly.
Be familiar with the limitations of your data. Investigate if your data informs any other equally valid hypothesis that could propose an alternative conclusion.

Idea for Impact: Beware of the risk of invoking data in ways that end up undermining your message.

How to Avoid Magical Thinking

February 22, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Magical thinking remains a subtle impediment to making sound decisions. The more you examine yourself, the more you can reduce your tendency to indulge in it.

Discover the truth for yourself. Beware of the tendency to let others think for you. Don’t believe what your parents, teachers, counselors, mentors, priests, and authorities of all inclinations have taught you from an early age. (The best predictor of people’s spiritual beliefs is the religiosity of their parents.) Question others’ underlying premises and discover for yourself what’s reasonable. Force yourself to test for alternatives.

Don’t believe what you want to believe is true. Many people believe in UFOs and ghosts, even when there’s no credible verification for any visitation from outer space or dead souls haunting abandoned buildings. Often, misinformation is cunningly designed to evade careful analytical reasoning—it can easily slip under the radar of even the most well-informed people. Shun blind optimism.

Consciously identify your biases and adverse instincts. Psychologists have identified more than 100 cognitive biases that can get in the way of clear and rational thinking. Explore how those biases could come into play in your thinking. Try to determine their motive. Work to extricate yourself from them to the best of your ability.

Demand proof when the facts seem demonstrable. Remain intellectually agnostic toward what hasn’t been established scientifically or isn’t provable. If you can’t determine if something is true or it isn’t, suspend judgment. Beware of anecdotes—emotionally swaying stories in particular—they are the weakest form of evidence.

Don’t believe in something that isn’t true just because there’s a practical reason to. If you feel emotionally inclined to believe in something because it gives you hope, comfort, and the illusion of control, identify your belief as just that. Faith is often no more than an inclination that’s not withstood the tests of reason. The process of faith is an absence of doubt. There’ll always be people who reject evolution for reasons that have little to do with evolution. Don’t act with more confidence in unproven theories than is justifiable.

Idea for Impact: Be wary of the influences that can put you at risk for magical thinking.

Give critical thinking and systematic evidence the central role in how you understand the world. Improving the criteria you use to judge the truth of things is difficult—but it’s of the essence. Have an unvarying, well-balanced degree of skepticism about everything, especially your own postulations.

A Real Lesson from the Downfall of Theranos: Silo Mentality

February 4, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The extraordinary rise and fall of Theranos, Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud, makes an excellent case study on what happens when teams don’t loop each other in.

Theranos’ blood-testing device never worked as glorified by its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes. She created an illusion that became one of the greatest start-up stories. She kept her contraption’s malfunctions and her company’s problems shockingly well hidden—even from her distinguished board of directors.

At the core of Holmes’s sham was how she controlled the company’s flow of information

Holmes and her associate (and then-lover) Sunny Balwani operated a culture of fear and intimidation at Theranos. They went to such lengths as hiring superstar lawyers to intimidate and silence employees and anyone else who dared to challenge their methods or expose their devices’ deficiencies.

Holmes had the charade going for so long by keeping a tight rein on who talked to whom. She controlled the flow of information within the company. Not only that, she swiftly fired people who dared to question her approach. She also forcefully imposed non-disclosure agreements even for those exiting the company.

In other words, Holmes went to incredible lengths to create and maintain a silo mentality in her startup. Her intention was to wield much power, prevent employees from talking to each other, and perpetuate her deceit.

A recipe for disaster at Theranos: Silo mentality and intimidation approach

Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (2018; my summary) is full of stories of how Holmes went out of her way to restrain employees from conferring about what they were working on. Even if they worked on the same project, Holmes made siloed functional teams report to her directly. She would edit progress reports before redirecting problems to other team heads.

Consider designer Ed Ku’s mechatronics team responsible for designing all the intricate mechanisms that control the measured flow of biochemical fluids. Some of his team’s widgets were overheating, impinging on one another and cross-contaminating the clinical fluids. Holmes wouldn’t allow Ku and his team to talk to the teams that improved the biochemical processes.

Silo mentality can become very problematic when communication channels become too constricted and organizational processes too bureaucratic. Creativity gets stifled, collaboration limited, mistakes—misdeeds in the case of Theranos—suppressed, and collective objectives misaligned.

Idea for Impact: Functional silos make organizations slow, bureaucratic, and complicated

Innovation hinges increasingly on interdisciplinary cooperation. Examine if your leadership attitude or culture is unintentionally contributing to insufficient accountability, inadequate information-sharing, and limited collaboration between departments—especially on enterprise-wide initiatives.

Intentions, Not Resolutions

January 4, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

I think resolutions set you up for failure because they’re usually daunting, and they don’t give you a plan for how to realize what you want to achieve. More to the point, you underestimate how long it’ll take you to kick a bad habit or adopt a good one.

On the other hand, intentions propose paths forward—they can keep you accountable in the process.

Intentions dig into the WHY

Change is hard—change requires real commitment, planning, and follow-through. Intentions help by grounding you to what you can commit to today and tomorrow. Intentions will remind you of the kind of person you want to be and the kind of life you want to live.

Intentions don’t demand perfection, and intentions leave some room for error. Intentions will help you commit yourself and not fill you with guilt and shame if you fall off the wagon for a short period. With intentions, you can anticipate lapses and plan for them.

Setting intentions and then taking action becomes an exciting path of self-discovery rather than a guilt-trap set up with broken resolutions.

Idea for Impact: Set Intentions Instead of Yearly Resolutions

Put less pressure on yourself and set yourself up for success by making regular daily, weekly, and monthly intentions. Once you set the intention, focus on getting to the first step. Then, regroup and think about step two. This way, you target short-term achievable results, and the intention orients you.

Don’t make intentions for the entire year. It’s just hard to keep up with something and stay excited about it year-round.

What the Duck!

December 28, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

There’s a popular technique among programmers called “rubber duck debugging:” put a rubber duck (or a cardboard cutout of a dog) next to your computer, and whenever you get stuck, you talk to the duck.

Yes, you talk your problem and walk your code with that inanimate object. And you perpetuate the stereotype that we geeks are a socially awkward bunch.

“Showing It to Someone Else” isn’t just a way of telling the other what you think; it’s a way of telling yourself what you think. Just the act of slowing down and explaining your problem and its context can bring about a moment of illumination.

Rubber duck debugging is related to what psychologists call “incubation.” The best solutions can strike suddenly and unexpectedly when you aren’t actively working on your problem. Think of Archimedes and his Eureka moment.

Idea for Impact: Talking is often a part of thought. After many failed attempts, switching your brain from problem-solving to problem-explaining—even to a cat, parent, sympathetic coworker, or somebody who may not know much about whatever it is that’s bothering you—can break you free from fixation and trigger creative breakthroughs.

Hat tip to reader Nick Ashcroft.

Saying is Believing: Why People Are Reluctant to Change an Expressed Opinion

November 30, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Politicians shift their views shamelessly with the winds of opportunism. To their defense, they must choose to stand up for what they believe or risk political capital.

Most politicians believe in one thing—winning elections and latching on to power. Seems they’ll say anything that can get them in the office and stay there. Like when, during the 2004 presidential elections, Democratic nominee John Kerry famously proclaimed, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against” funding to rebuild Iraq.

Politicians Will Often Flip-flop to Maximize Their Popularity

Well, that’s the nature of the beast. Politicians enter politics for ideological reasons but must readily sell their souls to prolong their political careers. Politicians never seem to be willing to say, “I was wrong” or “Upon mature reflection, I’ve changed my mind on such and such.”

But what about the rest of us? It seems that, unlike the politicians, we’re shamed relatively easily when we change our mind and adjust our approach. Admitting we’ve made a mistake is too threatening to our sense of self. We end up over-compensating by denying fault and refusing ownership of our own mistakes, thereby protecting our self-image.

There’s evidence that suggests that saying is believing. Making a known pronouncement strengthens our commitment to that point of view. By committing ourselves openly to our present opinions, we may be hardening ourselves to future information that would otherwise change our minds.

The ‘Saying-Is-Believing’ Effect

According to Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2006,) social psychologists have shown that openly committing to an opinion makes you less willing to change your mind.

Cialdini cites an experiment by social psychologists in which three sets of students were shown a group of lines. One set of students was asked to write down estimates of the lines’ length and turn their estimates to the experimenter. The second set was asked to write down their estimates on a Magic Pad and then wipe out their estimates before anyone else could see them. The third set of students didn’t write down their estimates at all. After the students were shown new evidence that suggested that their initial estimates were wrong,

The students who had never written down their first choices were least loyal to those choices. … By far, it was the students who had publicly recorded their initial positions who most resolutely refused to shift from those positions later. Public commitment had hardened them into the most stubborn of all.

Publicly committing to an answer makes people less receptive to information suggesting they were wrong

Yup, the act of publicly documenting your opinion enforces the feeling of others knowing what your opinion was. This produces fear of being judged.

The hard part about admitting you’re wrong is, well, admitting you’re wrong. This may induce you to refuse to accept new ideas.

The American economist Paul Krugman has remarked on the “epidemic of infallibility,”

Just to be clear, everyone makes mistakes. Nobody is perfect. When you’re committed to a fundamentally false narrative, facing up to facts becomes an act of political disloyalty. What’s going on with Mr. Trump and his inner circle seems to have less to do with ideology than with fragile egos. To admit having been wrong about anything, they seem to imagine, would brand them as losers and make them look small. In reality, of course, the inability to engage in reflection and self-criticism is the mark of a tiny, shriveled soul.

Idea for Impact: Changing Your Mind is Actually a Good Thing

Changing your mind based on new information isn’t bad. It’s something to be encouraged. As the Transcendentalist essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

In our vigilant, hypercritical, and judgmental society, the problem isn’t with people voicing and documenting their opinions (particularly on social media) but with people not being OK with someone changing theirs.

A professed commitment shouldn’t cause reluctance to change your opinion.

Moderate Politics is the Most Sensible Way Forward

September 17, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

A sharp observation on political extremism in this 1987 TV ad by comedian John Cleese for the Social Democratic Party-Liberal Party Alliance (1981–88) in the United Kingdom:

Extremism has its advantages … the biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good because it provides you with enemies. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the whole world is in you. If you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway, and you, therefore, enjoy abusing people, then you can pretend that you’re only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons and that if it wasn’t for them, you’d actually be good-natured and courteous and rational all the time.

I don’t belong to a political party, and I don’t think I’ll ever join one. Partisan talking points irritate me no end. I’ll watch the upcoming debates, though, because I’ll find all the onstage mudslinging and the impulsive provocations very entertaining.

In politics, everyone tries to push emotional buttons. Few seem to talk about an evidence-based attitude for making decisions and allocating society’s resources where they’ll make the most impact.

Besides, the media today have made the exchange of ideas particularly charged and increasingly polarized. The only way to be heeded to in a screaming vortex is to scream louder and resort to premeditated ad hominum.

Idea for Impact: Wisdom doesn’t reside solely on one side of the center. I am partial to those moderates whose political stance often varies with the issue. Contrary to popular perception, they aren’t tuned-out or ill-informed. Instead, they’re disposed to see both sides of the complex problems, disregard the left and the right’s excessively ideological positions, and seek the middle ground.

The Power of Asking Open-Ended Questions

August 24, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

When Bill Gates first met Warren Buffett, Gates was dazzled particularly by how Buffett asked open-ended “big questions”:

I have to admit, when I first met Warren, the fact that he had this framework was a real surprise to me. I met him at a dinner my mother had put together. On my way there, I thought, “Why would I want to meet this guy who picks stocks?” I thought he just used various market-related things—like volume, or how the price had changed over time—to make his decisions. But when we started talking that day, he didn’t ask me about any of those things. Instead he started asking big questions about the fundamentals of our business. “Why can’t IBM do what Microsoft does? Why has Microsoft been so profitable?” That’s when I realized he thought about business in a much more profound way than I’d given him credit for.

“What are My Questions?”

Asking great questions is a skill, but doesn’t come as you would expect. One contributing factor is that, with age, education, and experience, we become conditioned to cogitate in very rigid terms. Heuristics and mental shortcuts become deep-seated and instinctual to allow for faster problem-solving and programmed decision-making.

Idea for Impact: Don’t ask the same questions most people ask. The smartest people I know don’t begin with answers; they start by asking, “what are our questions?”

Make inquiries using open-ended questions that can’t be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Effective questions will help you think deeper, generate meaningful explorations, and yield far more interesting insights.

How You See is What You See

August 15, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

So very often, we don’t give ourselves to allow for new understandings, new perspectives, and new interpretations to emerge.

Three people were visiting and viewing the Grand Canyon—an artist, a pastor and a cowboy. As they stood on the edge of that massive abyss, each one responded with a cry of exclamation. The artist said, “Ah, what a beautiful scene to paint!” The minister cried, “What a wonderful example of the handiwork of God!” The cowboy mused, “What a terrible place to lose a cow!”

Idea for Impact: Work to overcome the strong waves of conditioning that you’ve been exposed to your whole life.

Take a step back and consider how you’re responding to a situation emotionally and intellectually.

Free up your mind from the conditioning that may be restraining it.

Don’t let your narrow perspectives—those comfortable walls within which you confine yourself—to make you lose touch with what’s possible.

Explore. Discover. Discern. Open your mind to new frontiers.

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Thought Process

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Be wary of the influences that can put you at risk for magical thinking.

Wondering what to read next?

At the core of Holmes’s sham was how she controlled the company’s flow of information

A recipe for disaster at Theranos: Silo mentality and intimidation approach

Idea for Impact: Functional silos make organizations slow, bureaucratic, and complicated

Wondering what to read next?

Intentions dig into the WHY

Idea for Impact: Set Intentions Instead of Yearly Resolutions

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Politicians Will Often Flip-flop to Maximize Their Popularity

The ‘Saying-Is-Believing’ Effect

Publicly committing to an answer makes people less receptive to information suggesting they were wrong

Idea for Impact: Changing Your Mind is Actually a Good Thing

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

“What are My Questions?”

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?