Action Figure Daniel

Blog

  • “Nudge” by Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein

    • Choice architects know how to promote the good even if not perfect
    • “Liberal paternalism” is the goal
      • Liberty to choose
      • Make it difficult to make ‘bad’ decisions
    • The default option is the path of least resistance that people tend to most frequently go with
    • Well-chosen defaults are a great way of subtly nudging
    • People do well choosing in context where they have experience and feedback as rapid
    • Nudging is better governance in general
    • Reactance is when people do the opposite of the default out of protest
    • We have two thinking systems one fast and automatic, the other slow and reflective
    • People are dynamically inconsistent; wanting to go for a run later in the day but later skipping the run because they are lazing
    • Temptation is when we consume more in a hot state than we planned to in a cold state
    • People conform more readily when stating things publicly
    • Groups tend towards Collective Conservatism (groups working to preserve the status quo)
    • Businesses find ways to support what people want, whether it is good for them or not
    • Providential norms trump demographic norms
    • Implementation plans help improve follow through
    • Feedback timing is crucial to improvement
    • Less understanding should translate to fewer options or better nudges
    • “No one makes money convincing people to not buy snake oil.”
    • Incentive choices
      • Who chooses
      • Who uses
      • Who pays
      • Who profits
    • Salience is understanding the incentives before you
    • Dairy Farmer and the Pasture problem
      • Conditional cooperatives
    • Liberty to choose
    • Make it difficult to make ‘bad’ decisions

  • “The First 90 Days” by Michael D Watkins

    • What made you successful before is not likely to keep being successful
    • When one is in transition, all are in transition
    • Promotions
      • You need to see things at a higher level than before
      • What you delegate needs to change
    • Onboarding
      • Understand what they want to do differently
      • You are the transplant, be wary of the org’s immune system
      • Orient to the business
      • Develop stakeholder connections, horizontally and vertically
      • Have frequent objective check-ins
      • Adapt to the culture
    • Pay attention to
      • How do people get support (vertical or horizontal)
      • Meetings (discussions or rubber-stamps)
      • Execution (process or people)
      • Conflict (encouraged or avoided)
      • Recognition (personal or team)
      • Objectives (ends or means)
    • Look for a cultural interpreter
    • Be wary of the problems you like to solve; “To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”
    • Always ask, “How did we get here?” to understand the history and see a path forward
    • There are
      • Start-ups
      • Turn arounds
      • Accelerating
      • Realignment
      • Sustaining success
    • Negotiating success with your new boss
      • Do not take “the extra rope”
      • Meet regularly, even if you do not like them
    • Do not surprise bosses
    • Early wins should fit into longer term goals, even if you forgo “low hanging fruit”

  • “What Happened To You” by Bruce D Pretty and Oprah Winfrey

    • All information processing goes bottom up
    • Brains develop from the bottom up
    • The younger you are, the more impressionable you are, even if you do not understand what is going on
    • Trauma is more severe when we do not have the language to describe it
    • Rhythm calms and leads to regulation
    • Infants cannot self-regulate
    • We have three neural systems: regulation, relationship, and rewards
    • Fight, flight, freeze, or disengage
      • We tend to disengage when we cannot otherwise fight or flee (we are too young or small)
    • Intense self-medication is often an attempt to soothe trauma
    • Experience is important to changing how the brain works
    • For infants, care is love
    • Controllability of stress is what is important
    • Flock (check to see what everyone else is doing), freeze (to assess what is going on), fight, or flee
    • There is a difference between believing you deserve happiness and knowing you are worthy of it
    • Trauma has three key aspects: event, experience, and effects
    • Timing makes a huge difference
      • The younger the trauma, the worse the effects
    • Early on, we can only take small doses of therapeutic revisiting
    • “What happened to us?” Is also important to ask
    • We inherit through genes, gene expression, behavior, and traditions
    • Infants need a few deep, consistent relationships
    • We are most comfortable when our experience lines up with our world view
      • This is why we sabotage relationships
      • (We are taught how to be treated then we teach people how to treat us)
    • “We feel better with the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty.”
    • Children are malleable not resilient
      • (Children are anti-fragile)
    • Regulate, relate, and then reason

  • “Unwinding Anxiety” by Judson Brewer

    • “The less you know, the more you say”
    • There is a spectrum between insufficient and excessive
    • Anxiety is born from overactive fear
    • Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC) predicts the future based on information
    • When information is lacking PFC runs scenarios
    • Reflexes are immediate, learning is seconds to minutes, anxiety is months to years
    • Post adrenaline energy discharge is important to avoid PTSD
    • Break the cycle by
      • Recognize the onset of anxiety
      • Identify what it leads to
      • Reflect on how you felt (without judgement or editorial)
    • The more you wear glasses, the more they alter your perspective and the more comfortable they are
    • All experiences can move us forward if we learn from them
    • We only service pleasure when paying attention
    • Habits without immediate rewards are difficult to make
    • Beating yourself up about the past is not learning
    • “Forgiveness is giving up on having a better past”
    • There is Interest and Depravation Curiosity
      • Depravation is the stress of not knowing
      • Interest is when you explore something new
    • Rewards Based Learning triggers the same brain parts as meeting bodily needs
    • “If someone dies, first take your own pulse.”
    • Lean into oncoming anxiety. There is no way to avoid it, so make the most of it. This is your experience, experience it.
    • Recognize, accept, investigate, note.
    • Focus on what triggered you not why you are triggered
    • Focus on “one day at a time”, it is less scary than next year

  • “The Data Detective” by Tim Harford

    • Search your feelings
      • Excited, for or against, can be a sign of bad data
    • Ponder your personal experience
      • “Naïve reality” is when we think our perceptions are more accurate than they really are (most often because the news weights our perceptions to the novel)
      • We often substitute a hard question for an easier one, without knowing it
      • (Instead of “how many pregnant teenagers are there?” we ask “have I recently experienced a news story about pregnant teenagers”)
      • Be careful of how metrics are being leveraged
    • Avoid premature enumeration
      • Definitions can skew enumerations
      • Start by understanding what was meant
      • Once you learn something, it is difficult to remember that everyone else is not familiar
      • Inference is an easy way
    • Step back and enjoy the view
      • Carrying around reference numbers can help context
      • Good news tends to unfold slowly while bad news happens radiply
      • Reporting cadence can have a powerful effect on context
    • Get the backstory
      • Survivorship bias pervades… No one is interested is the expected
      • This is especially true with replication studies
      • Be wary of hypothesis made after the study is started
    • Ask who is missing
      • Females are almost always missing from studies
      • Almost every audience (especially “found” data) has response bias
      • “n=all” usually really means “n=all the people who do or have a thing“
    • Demand transparency when the computer says “No”
      • Look for algorithm’s explanatory power or else they may be associating “winter trends” with flu cases
      • Algorithms are built by human and so can easily have bias built-in (hiring algorithms trained to hire men)
      • Transparency is what killed alchemy and brought science
      • We should question which algorithms we can trust
    • Don’t take statistical bedrock for granted
      • Basic understandings are important for building senses of the world
    • Remember that misinformation can be beautiful, too
      • Graphics lend authenticity, the more beautiful the more believable
      • Florence Nightingale was a statistician
    • Keep an open mind
      • We naturally fill in data blanks
      • “Things are going badly, so do something different”
      • Making public commitments makes it harder to take back
      • When information changes, change your conclusions
    • Be curious
      • Confirmation bias is real and powerful
      • Scientific curiosity is key (not scientific literacy)
      • Asking people to rate their knowledge, then explain how something works, can reduce stubbornness
      • “Please explain that” can do a lot to soften extreme stances