Julian 's Key Ideas from Thinking 101
by Woo-kyoung Ahn

We have a tendency to confirm what we already believe.

Because of this, we only focus on finding confirming evidences, even though seeking evidences that will say otherwise is equally important.

This is dangerous for us, especially if what we believe is not a factual truth.

If we’re looking for truth, we must look for disconfirming evidence even though it makes us uncomfortable.

We often underestimate time and effort required to complete a task. That’s why we miss deadlines, exceed our budget, or run out of energy before we finish.

To overcome this, we need to come up with specific and detailed plan. We need to divide the task into smaller ones that we can estimate more accurately.

There are multiple cues that people use to infer causality of an event:

• Similarity
• Sufficiency
• Necessity
• Abnormality
• Recency
• Controllability

We often feel anecdotes from people we know more persuasive than scientific evidence. This is because we don’t understand statistics well.

3 key concepts we must always remember:

1. Law of Large Number (more data in a sample, more accurate conclusion)
2. Regression Toward the Mean (extreme result will be followed by moderate ones)
3. Bayes’ Theorem (just because probability of A given that B occurs is high, it doesn’t mean that probability of B given A occurs is also high)

People weigh negative information more than positive information.

According to revolutionary work by Kahneman and Tvetsky, we treat the same monetary values differently, depending on whether they are gains or losses. This is called loss aversion.

We have this bias because our ancestors were living on the line, small error can cost them their life. So it’s better to play safe.

When we see or experience new things, our existing belief and knowledge will color our judgment and interpretation about it. This is how our cognition works.

This top down processing happens automatically and spontaneously, whether we want it or not.

To overcome this, we need external help to review our perspective and change it into a more healthier view of the world.

When we perceive something, we interpret it based on what we already know.

We believe that everybody else, including people who don’t posses what we know, would see the situation similarly that we do.

This is a common cause of communication problem.

We need to put ourselves in everybody else’s shoes and take their perspective to be better at communication. We also need to ask questions more.

An ability to delay short term rewards to prioritize long term outcomes is a positive trait and it highly correlates with success in the long run.

However, it’s also important for us to enjoy the process, not just the final goal. This will increase our probability to avoid physical and mental health issues at our young age.