Thinking in Bets

our default is to believe what we hear

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens
to him

There is a big difference between getting experience and becoming an expert. That difference lies in the ability to identify when the outcomes of our decisions have something to teach us and what that lesson might be.

The surprise is that blind-spot bias is greater the smarter you are.

Remember the order in which we form abstract beliefs:

We hear something;
We believe it;
Only sometimes, later, if we have the time or the inclination, we think about it and vet it, determining whether or not it is true.

The more we recognize that we are betting on our beliefs (with our happiness, attention, health, money, time, or some other limited resource), the more we are likely to temper our statements, getting closer to the truth as we acknowledge the risk inherent in what we believe.

If one person expresses a belief as absolutely true, and someone else expresses a belief by saying, “I believe this to be true, and I’m 80% on it,” who are you more likely to believe? The fact that the person is expressing their confidence as less than 100% signals that they are trying to get at the truth, that they have considered the quantity and quality of their information with thoughtfulness and self-awareness. And thoughtful and self-aware people are more believable.

Poker players live in a world where that risk is made explicit. They can get comfortable with uncertainty because they put it up front in their decisions

People are credulous creatures who find it
very easy to believe and very difficult to doubt

For survival-essential skills, type I errors (false positives) were less costly than type II errors (false negatives).