<ul><li>Annie uses the example of poker, but it applies to other areas as well. There are uncertain systems where outcomes and decisions are loosely linked.</li><li>In poker, you can have the best hand and get crushed or a poor hand and win</li><li>How do you separate yourself from the outcomes and sift through the noisey feedback?</li><li>You have to figure it out after the fact and after memory has gotten in the way</li></ul>

Outcomes and decisions are loosely linked in some games

<ul><li>how are you constructing a model of your opponent?</li><li>how are you figuring out what the right strategy against them is?</li><li>how are you picking the signal out?</li><li></li></ul>

An effective approach to uncertain systems is based on cognitive psychology

<ul><li>Decisions --> actions --> outcomes --> rewards or pain (ie positive or negative consequences)</li></ul>

Learning occurs when there's a lot of feedback tied closely in time to decisions and actions

<ul><li>We all have some sort of model(s) of how the world works and what's true and what's not</li><li>That's what we're always doing - building models so we can act in it with intention</li></ul>

We all use mental models to help us predict the world around us

<ul><li>You need the pain in order for it to matter to you to learn</li><li>but pain can get in the way of learning</li><li>But when you're losing, your limbic system lights up and gets in the way of learning</li><li>It does not feel good to lose</li><li>It particularly gets in the way when you're playing a game or doing something where you can attribute learning to your own decisions</li><li>These are decisions you've made based on your mental model of the world and attributing loss to it is perceived by you as an attack on your identity</li></ul>

Pain gets in the way of learning

<ul><li>Kanheman: we're all trying to create a positive narrative of our life story</li><li>Identity protective cognition</li><li>With the pain / loss, our identity gets attacked if we attribute it to our poor decision making</li><li>So instead, we attribute it to luck</li></ul>

We process the world in a way that protects our identity

<ul><li>I'm willing to take this pain that doesn't feel very good because in the long run it's going to help me learn</li><li>I'm going to go in, examine my decision and see where I could have improved that would have increased the likelihood of a better outcome</li></ul>

Humans have a choice: I can take the pain in the short term in order to learn in the long term or attribute it to luck and not learn

<ul><li>People are willing to take a discount to preserve their self narrative</li><li>They attribute the poor outcomes to luck</li><li>Socialised the result to the world, ie it wasn't my fault, the outcome wasn't in my control</li><li>You don't need to update your identity in anyway - you need to update your beliefs, or made poor choices or the outcome was something you caused</li><li>This choice is devastating to learning</li></ul>

Most people choose not to feel pain now

<ul><li>I tell a "bad luck" story</li><li>You sympathise and then share your own</li><li>We both agree it was bad luck that was the cause</li><li>Neither one of us learns</li></ul>

Most people enable the second choice

<ul><li>If you really lost because of bad luck, what's the point of telling a story about it</li><li>There's nothing you can learn from it</li></ul>

Bad luck stories have no point

<ul><li>If you're in a group of people who attribute outcomes to bad luck, you won't learn</li><li>Surrounding yourself with people who constantly seek to update their mental models puts you on a very different learning trajectory</li></ul>

Peer groups are highly influential on your learning

<ul><li>Even if you are aware of the biases, you're still susceptible to them</li><li>Smarter people who know about them are even worse because:</li></ul><ol><li>Once they know about the bias, they're overconfident in thinking they can avoid them</li><li>The better you are at slicing data, the better you are at slicing it in a way that tells a story that doesn't sound biased</li></ol>

On our own, we have a very natural tendency to process the world in a way that supports our prior view of the world

<ul><li>It's much easier to spot someone elses' bias vs your own</li></ul>

You need to be in a group to overcome the bias

<ul><li>Groups that have a confirmatory style of thought enable one another to not learn and preserve identity</li><li>Instead, create a group that has an exploratory style of thought</li><li>The goal of the group is to create a more accurate mental model of the world</li><li>The group agrees:</li></ul><ol><li>there's an objective truth in the world</li><li>our beliefs are in progress and under construction</li><li>our goal is to help each other to construct better models of the world</li><li>We may disagree with each and that's ok. We may have different values, we may have different strategies that work for us, etc. We may come to different conclusions as a result</li></ol>

Create a group that consciously decides to spot biases for each other

<ul><li>Reasoning to be right affirms your priors</li><li>Reasoning to be accurate helps develop a more accurate mental model of the world</li></ul>

Don't reason to be right, reason to be accurate

<ul><li>Getting a respected peer to think you're good, worthwhile to talk to, an equal --> that feels really good</li><li>The goal of each person is to make better decisions and increase the probability of better outcomes</li><li>Example: I won this hand of poker, but I think I played badly</li><li>The group reinforces learning behavior</li><li>Rewards in the long-term are poor motivators (ie knowing you're a better decision maker in the future isn't a strong reward).</li><li>The short term reward becomes gratification / approval / admiration from the group</li></ul>

A social group can be a strong motivator to get better

<ul><li>You know a conversation about the decisions you made is going to happen </li><li>You want to have interesting things to ask later</li></ul>

Having this type of group incentivises you to pay more attention to decisions as you make them

<ul><li>The idea that you're different from other people is an important feeling you get from your tribe</li><li>Since most people have confirmatory thinking, having a group that you identify with that values exploratory thinking helps you feel different and that you're doing something difficult</li><li>It makes your tribe special and you special by association </li></ul>

The group can help create a feeling of tribalism

<ul><li>We want to focus on accuracy, not on being right</li><li>We want to hold each other accountable</li><li>We want to disagree without being disagreeable</li><li>No one is defensive</li></ul>

Create a charter for your group

<ul><li>There's 100 learning opportunities and left to your own devices, you catch 5 of them</li><li>The learning pod helps you catch 5 more</li><li>That has a huge impact on your learning</li></ul>

The learning pod helps you catch more mistakes

<ul><li>Knowing you're going to be accountable to a group helps you catch mistakes in the moment or right after making them</li><li>Gets you to recognize mistakes in a window that you can actually do something about it</li></ul>

The learning pod helps you catch mistakes faster

<ul><li>When someone disagrees with us, we can often feel it as an attack on our identity</li><li>That can cause disagreeableness because the information being told is perceived as a threat</li><li>Cause you to:</li><li>be defensive or angry</li><li>be dismissive</li><li>discredit the other person or decide they aren't worth listening to or they have ill intent</li></ul>

The learning pod helps you disagree better (without being disagreeable)

<ul><li>We've agreed that our beliefs are in progress and under construction</li><li>You are no longer certain about your beliefs</li><li>You have to be willing to hear the other side in order to make progress</li><li>Your identity becomes about acknowledging uncertainty, how good are you at listening to the other side, how good are you at analysing</li><li>Stops you from having that defensive reaction</li><li>You become agreeable in disagreement because you view the disagreement as helpful</li></ul>

Once you've agreed your beliefs are in progress, they aren't entrenched as your identity

Annie Duke discusses how to disagree without being disagreeable, spotting self-sabotage, decision-making models for high stakes, high-pressure situations, and so much more.

Getting Better by Being Wrong with Annie Duke

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