Inconsistencies reduce the ease of our thoughts and the clarity of our feelings.
Statistical results with a causal interpretation have a stronger effect on our thinking than non-causal information. But even compelling causal statistics will not change long-held beliefs or beliefs rooted in personal experience.
The automatic processes of the mental shotgun and intensity matching often make available one or more answers to easy questions that could be mapped onto the target question.
System 1 runs ahead of the facts in constructing a rich image on the basis of scraps of evidence.
Intuitive predictions are almost completely insensitive to the actual predictive quality of the evidence.
The list of indications of depletion is also highly diverse: deviating from one’s diet overspending on impulsive purchases reacting aggressively to provocation persisting less time in a handgrip task performing poorly in cognitive tasks and logical decision making.
We are confident when the story we tell ourselves comes easily to mind, with no contradiction and no competing scenario. But.
Correcting your predictions may complicate your life.
The remembering self is the one that answers the question: “How was it, on the whole?” Memories are all we get to keep from our experience of living, and the only perspective that we can adopt as we think about our lives is therefore that of the remembering self.
Those who know more forecast very slightly better than those who know less. But those with the most knowledge are often less reliable. The reason is that the person who acquires more knowledge develops an enhanced illusion of her skill and becomes unrealistically overconfident. “We reach the point of diminishing marginal predictive returns for knowledge disconcertingly quickly,” Tetlock writes.
We focus on what we want to do and can do, neglecting the plans and skills of others.
However, we are not all rational, and some of us may need the security of distorted estimates to avoid paralysis.
In a memorable example, Dawes showed that marital stability is well predicted by a formula: frequency of lovemaking minus frequency of quarrels You don’t want your result to be a negative number.
Betty is much more likely to take her chances, as others do when faced with very bad options. As.
When you take the long view of many similar decisions, you can see that paying a premium to avoid a small risk of a large loss is costly. A similar analysis applies to each of the cells of the fourfold pattern: systematic deviations from expected value are costly in the long run – and this rule applies to both risk aversion and risk seeing. Consistent overweighting of improbable outcomes – a feature of intuitive decision making – eventually leads to inferior outcomes.
In the competition with the inside view, the outside view doesn’t stand a chance.
The list of situations and tasks that are now known to deplete self-control is long and varied. All involve conflict and the need to suppress a natural tendency. They include:.
And the more luck was involved, the less there is to be learned.
Tetlock also found that experts resisted admitting that they had been wrong, and when they were compelled to admit error, they had a large collection of excuses: they had been wrong only in their timing, an unforeseeable event had intervened, or they had been wrong but for the right reasons.
But those with the most knowledge are often less reliable. The reason is that the person who acquires more knowledge develops an enhanced illusion of her skill and becomes unrealistically overconfident. “We reach the point of diminishing marginal predictive returns.