Given enough time and stupidity, we can rationalise almost anything.
Impatience = 90% errors.
Our psychological state (A.K.A the state of mind) is far more important in making a decision than data or fact-checking.
Thinking Shorts (3)
Illusion of control i.e. The faith in our ability to fix a crisis is often built on:
1. Baseless assumptions. Being either lazy or scared to question our unverified theories or inferences. We love mental inertia.
2. Belief in monocausal explanations. There is never only a single factor that caused something.
3. Biased to think that we are free from bias. We are the irrational apes. We believe in flat earth, mermaids, and witches.
Thinking shorts (1)
Discovery isn’t about novelty alone.
Not just finding new things
but also to discard old ways of looking at the problem.
Time
One, time corrupts memory. When recalled, we often exaggerate or understate what exactly happened. This was seen clearly when 9/11 survivors told the things that never happened to the media, that’s why so many rumors and gossip have cropped up. Second, we are poor long-term decision-makers. The brain has a ‘Now bias’, that is only to think of short-term consequences and effects and nudge us to do things that give fruits at this moment. The serious long-term effects are thrown away and never shown to us in the fullest sense, hence we often procrastinate or ignore important tasks and do silly things that usually won’t matter down the line.
Questions
Very simple questions often unlock great mysteries of the universe and the world. Newton’s why things fall down? or Wittgenstein’s what is language? or Ramana Maharshi’s who am I? or the great question of why there is something instead of nothing.
Humble questions provoke greatly because we can relate to them and are very much grounded in the human experience. However, few are interested in them. People dare to become millionaires and billionaires but none bother except a few to ask the question what is money? In fact, in universities, few lectures are devoted to the simplest things like definitions and basic elements of the subject. People are given degrees without asking them to inquire about things like what is thought? and what is space?
It’s better to come down than go up in search of exotic knowledge.
The one thing
In mathematics, multiplying by zero gives us a zero. No matter how complex the multiplication is, if in the end it is multiplied by a zero, we end up with a zero. It’s a powerful metaphor that we can apply in life. Even if we take high-value productive choices consecutively like acing tests, going to a top-tier university, learning life and job skills, taking good enough risks, and landing up with a good enough business to take care of, one bad choice like the zero will spoil everything and make the pack of cards fall just like that. It could be doing drugs or cheating or stealing and selling the company’s secrets, one wrong friendship, or something else. The point is one thing if it has the good potential can blow up everything that one has built thus far. Thus, beware of the zero.
Boiling frog syndrome
Small, steady, and incremental changes are often ignored and tend to go unnoticed. If someone takes away 1$ every day for 365 days from our bank then it doesn’t matter to us and it is not attention-worthy enough. We step into action or focus only when 365$ is taken away in a single day even though the quantum of the amount is the same except for the time. The frog too as the myth says jumps out of a pot filled with boiling water but stays comfortably in normal water even though we slowly raise the temperature to a boiling point that might kill it.
Size and Decision
If there are 10 options before us, then suppose we have picked option number 3. Here we can easily judge and evaluate whether we opted for the right one or not. In other words, we can say how good our picking was based on a comparison with the other 9 options. (Assuming that you have a decent amount of time on your hands)
However, if there is an overload in a number of options, probably 10 million or so then we can never know whether our decision was accurate or not. we can only at best assume that we made a smart choice. As the sample size (Using the lingo of statistics here) increases, our ability to decide decreases, and the analysis falter. Unless we have a supercomputer in our heads, it is hard as we progress into the information age. Big data and AI will aid us for sure but a common man or an ordinary individual (not organizations) neither have the resources nor the technical know-how under the belt to do so.
Unable to handle this gap, the mind invents more heuristics, shortcuts, use-less logical fallacies, and unknown biases which hide in the Freudian unconscious rarely accessible to 6-7 seconds attention-owning sapiens.
Anecdotal Fallacy
Exceptions should not be used to dismiss sound arguments. Yes, the chain smokers lived till 98, Yes, the alcoholics
reached full life expectancy, Yes, the guy didn’t study and got straight A’s, Yes, toxic work culture gave huge profits for the company, Yes, eating high-fat foods didn’t give the heart attack, Yes, all these things did happen.
There’s no doubt about that but they do not in any way nullify the general rules and principles. Believing contrarily is the perfect example of anecdotal fallacy.
By the way, high-school drop-outs have become billionaires but it doesn’t mean you drop out of it now.
Thy Vox 