Seeking wisdom
What we think effects the brain. Placebo actually causes changes in brain neurons.
- Try not to think negative. Because it might not help. But if you have to it's ok.
- Even more powerful- think positive even if it's not. Brain will actually feel it.
- When sick, tell yourself it will heal soon. And it will.
Natural selection - Evolution favored traits that helps (or helped) humans survive. Most of our decision making and instincts are developed because of natural selection. (ex: over eating, uncomfortable sleep in new place)
- Most of these traits are developed when we were hunter gathers (which was 99% of human evolution)
- Humans are selfish. Being selfish worked well in hunter gatherer times (but also altruism when on display)
- Fear, fast judgement, looking for trust-able traits in strangers - products on natural selection and what was reinforced.
- Human’s primary role in evolution is to reproduce. Status and wealth were instincts that favored higher chance of reproduction.
- Are people altruistic by nature? - Altruism developed to help build status. Are people co-operative by nature? - When it helped.
- Prisoner’s Dilemma - If you both deny the crime, both go to jail for 1 year. Both confess - 3 years. One confesses and other denies. Confessor goes free, other for 10 years. Without communication, logical decision would be for both to deny. But isolated to one person - fear of ‘failure’ (in this case, failed person denies and other accepts) has very high loss. But given communication and iteration, cooperation is learnt and trust is built.
- Dissatisfaction if weak we call regret, and if severe remorse. Dissatisfaction is caused by conscience.
- Effective long term strategies that worked
- Tit for tat and circle back to trust
- Reciprocation
- Fear of disapproval keeps a society intact - Fear of god, police, judgement of neighbors.
- Put a group of hens together. After chaos, a social order with hierarchy is established.
- When placed with a robot that was staring while donating, people donated twice.
- Why we make bad decisions
- Ego, fear, greed, envy. mindless imitation of other people.
- IQ + talent. Club it with rationality for final result.
Psychological reasons for mistakes
- Mere association: we most easily associate to the events whose consequences we have experienced must often and the ones we eailsily remember.
- Association can influence immune system
- Persian Messenger syndrome - bad news is associated with the bearer
- Reward and punishment: we do what is rewarding and avoid what we are punished for
- Behavior that is rewarded on an unpredictable basis had highest rate of response - gambling
- If it's easy to steal, people steal
- In NYPD, pension is based on last year salary, every officer in last year gets over time hours from all others. No one feels shame. They feel entitled. It's a cycle.
- Players wear lucky t-shirts for last matches. Pigeons bob their head if food appeared when they bobbed last few times. Ritual and favorable conequence create superstitions on repetition irrespective of causation
- Fedex paid by hour when packages wer shifted - moral suasation, threats nothing worked to stop chaos and delays. What worked is paying by shift. Right incentives are important.
- Praise is more effective in changing behavior than punishment
- Don't overlearn from your own or others bad or good experiences. Everything comes with a context. Judge based on its own merit.
- An example of a really responsible system is the system Romans used when they built an arch. The guy who created the arc stood under it as scaffolding was removed.
- People are self serving. Make sure incentives are placed right.
- Teachers help students cheat if their pay depends on the outcome
- When police branch with improvement in crime statistics was rewarded, other branches started classifying serius crimes as petty akd stopped investigating.
- Self serving tendencies and optimism
- People tend to put higher probability on desired events.
- When successful we attribute it to our character and failure to external events.
- An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red spotlight. Truly wise person is colorblind.
- First principle is that you must but fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool
- Consistency
- Why do politicians continue fighting wars long after it is clear war is a bad idea?
- Sunk cost fallacy
- Do-nothing syndrome
- Decision to do nothing is also a decision
- Contrast comparison
- We go across town to save 10$ on a radio but not to save 10$ on large TV
- Order of information matters
- We judge by relative units, not absolute