Bullet-riddled Fighter Planes

/

During World War II, researchers from the non-profit research group the Center for Naval Analyses were tasked with a problem. They needed to reinforce the military’s fighter planes at their weakest spots. To accomplish this, they turned to data. They examined every plane that came back from a combat mission and made note of where bullets had hit the aircraft. Based on that information, they recommended that the planes be reinforced at those precise spots.

Do you see any problems with this approach?

The problem, of course, was that they only looked at the planes that returned and not at the planes that didn’t. Of course, data from the planes that had been shot down would almost certainly have been much more useful in determining where fatal damage to a plane was likely to have occurred, as those were the ones that suffered catastrophic damage.

The research team suffered from survivorship bias: they just looked at the data that was available to them without analyzing the larger situation. This is a form of selection bias in which we implicitly filter data based on some arbitrary criteria and then try to make sense out of it without realizing or acknowledging that we’re working with incomplete data.

Rahul Agarwal writing in Built in

Systems not just goals

/

Every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Every candidate wants to get the job. And if successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers. It was only when they implemented a system of continuous small improvements that they achieved a different outcome.

Imagine you have a messy room and you set a goal to clean it. If you summon the energy to tidy up, then you will have a clean room—for now. But if you maintain the same sloppy, pack-rat habits that led to a messy room in the first place, soon you’ll be looking at a new pile of clutter and hoping for another burst of motivation. You’re left chasing the same outcome because you never changed the system behind it. You treated a symptom without addressing the cause. 

James Clear, Atomic Habits

Superforecasters

/

They are called “superforecasters” and they make surprisingly accurate predictions about world events. Tara Law writes about these semi-professional forecasters in TIME magazine:

Superforecasters tend to share certain personality traits, including humility, reflectiveness and comfort with numbers. These characteristics might mean that they’re better at putting their ego aside, and are willing to change their minds when challenged with new data or ideas…they may also be more flexible than traditional scientists, because they’re not bound to a particular discipline or approach. Their predictions incorporate research and hard data, but also news reports and gut feelings. They tend to be actively open-minded and curious. They’re in “perpetual beta” mode—always striving to update their beliefs and improve themselves. A willingness to change your mind when presented with new information, contend with your biases, challenge one another’s ideas, and break down problems into specific questions are all desirable qualities in people who make big, important decisions.  

The Cause of Overspending

/

Ample market research shows that people who overspend usually do it to feel good or to feel in control, not because they need the items they buy. Slapping down the plastic makes them feel powerful, secure, able to make their way in the world. 

So chiding your spouse, or even just stressing the virtues of scrimping and saving, is going to backfire. The more you talk about that stuff, the more your spouse will feel out of control - the same emotion that drives the indulgences in the first place. 

A more effective strategy is to encourage your spouse to own the problem. Keep track of what your household spends, weekly or monthly, and ask him or her to review those accounts. Don't say anything else. That way the choice to cut back is under your spouse's control, making it more likely to happen. 

If that doesn't work? You know the time has come to get separate bank accounts. 

Finally, you might consider lightening up a little. Marriage is one of life's great blessings. If you think the occasional iToy is expensive, wait until you see how much a divorce costs.  

Tyler Cowen in Money Magazine

Forgive release and be free

/

Forgiveness, of others and one’s self, can be a powerful, life-altering process. It can change the trajectory of a relationship or even one’s life. It is not the only response one can make to being hurt or hurting others, but it is an effective way to manage the inevitable moments of conflict, disappointment, and pain in our lives.

Forgiveness embraces both the reality of the offence and the empathy and compassion needed to move on. True forgiveness doesn’t shy away from responsibility, recompense or justice. By definition, it recognises that something painful, even wrong, has been done. Simultaneously, forgiveness helps us to embrace something beyond the immediate gut-reaction of anger and pain and the simmering bitterness that can result. Forgiveness encourages a deeper, more compassionate understanding that we are all flawed in our different ways and that we all need to be forgiven at times.

Nathaniel Wade writing in Aeon

Increase your confidence and determination by self-distancing 

/

Adopting an alter ego is an extreme form of ‘self-distancing’, which involves taking a step back from our immediate feelings to allow us to view a situation more dispassionately.

“Self-distancing gives us a little bit of extra space to think rationally about the situation,” says Rachel White, assistant professor of psychology at Hamilton College in New York State. It allows us to rein in undesirable feelings like anxiety, increases our perseverance on challenging tasks, and boosts our self-control.

In one study, participants were asked to think about a challenging event in the future, such as an important exam, in one of two different ways. The group in the “immersed” condition were told to picture it from the inside, as if they were in the middle of the situation, whereas those in the “distanced” condition were asked to picture it from afar – as if they were a fly on the wall. The differences were striking, with those taking the distanced viewpoint feeling much less anxious about the event, compared to the immersed group. The self-distancing also encouraged greater feelings of self-efficacy – the sense that they could pro-actively cope with the situation and achieve their goal. 

Self-distancing seems to enable people to reap these positive effects by leading them to focus on the bigger picture – it’s possible to see events as part of a broader plan rather than getting bogged down in immediate feelings. 

David Robson writing for the BBC

 

Universal Beliefs

/

The generic nature of human beings and the ordered nature of the world in which we live tend to evoke very similar beliefs in all of us, which we have called universal beliefs. They include:

1. adherence to a law of noncontratidiction,

2. belief in a an external world of orderly processes,

3. belief in the existence of other persons who share our world and with whom we communicate and live,

4. and belief in also in some ultimate reality with which we must eventually reckon.

Beliefs such as these are a practical necessity if we are to think and function at all.

Arthur Holmes, Contours of a World View

The Best Advice I Ever Got.. Mohomed El-Erian

/

I remember asking my father, Why do we need four newspapers? He said to me, “Unless you read different points of view, your mind will eventually close, and you’ll become a prisoner to a certain point of view that you’ll never question.” There’s a tendency to operate in a comfort zone and to want to read what is familiar to them. But if you are just used to following one person or one newspaper, you will miss the big shifts.

Mohomed El-Erian, Pimco, quoted in Fortune Magazine

When things go wrong

/

People need to recognize that life can be unfair, that accidents will happen. None of this is to say that people have to acquiesce to the threats of life, to lie down and not attempt to change anything. There is nothing wrong with positive thinking and the hope that today will go well or that people might repent and treat others better. But (you) should not be shocked and angered when something does go wrong… cultivate the attitude that life is something to work at and that problems are normal. Learning to laugh at normal failures and irritations has been shown to be effective in defusing anger.

Mark Cosgrove, Counseling for Anger