Listened this podcast about decision making with light reference or background of Poker. But it was a mini class in observational nature of people and some of the reflections - nothing I love more. Annotations: Particularly, the following are some of my thoughts - would make more sense or one could relate better after listening to the podcast episode:
    • Early on she says humans would like to differentiate themselves. I get that in the context, but it is equally true as saying humans would like to find commonality and a sense of belonging. Which is why networks and communities and interest-based groups thrive. But I do get her point.
    • When she talked about mental models and decision making, couldn't not think about Ray Dalio. In particular, his podcast with Freakonomics ( parts of which I didn't like but is good in many ways) , or his Principles web series. Specifically, Ray talks about triangulation, relying on best arguments, feedback and so on. It is also interesting that Ray's line of work and Anne's are not very dissimilar. Both can be misunderstood as gambling, both are very uncertain due to market and external conditions, and both are about making money by placing bets. Anne talked about trying to be accurate vs trying to be right - that is a great way of looking at it. Its implications or usage in a business environment are really valuable.
    • She gave one of the most compelling examples of how "a man is average of five people he hangs out with" should work. It is not just hanging out with but it is the people who can challenge and guide you. Fortunate are those who are able to surround themselves or engage themselves with experts in the field but also who can guide and coach.
    • Loss aversion theory - which both host and guest - took efforts to dissect or express interest about or explain in detail isn't new. In fact just in past one month I heard the same explanation with examples from Adam Grant and Maxwell - they both talked how loss aversion makes leaders to not be innovative, and risk takers as the failure would be more noticable than not winning and being conservative.
    • Probabilistic thinking: Some of the probability related decision making reminded me of one of my favorite subjects in MBA- aptly named as Risks and Decisions. It covered expected value calculation and application. When she said no one usually makes a decision like that - it reminded me of this example of Dell that we learned in a marketing class. We followed the probability based decision model only to find that Dell must not have made a decision, which indeed in real life became successful. The conclusion can either be, that not all information is available for decisions to be successful or sometimes keen insight into the market, coupled with gut and execution matter more than decision making. Because unlike in Poker, business sometimes fails or wins due to one big decision, and is not a game of averages.
    • I also remembered one of the examples in MBA where our marketing professor invited us to his place for wine tasting. Instead of getting a poll of how many can make it, he asked the probability from each person - from his experience over many years, he said the probability provided more accurate estimates for him to plan than if the answers were in binary.
    • She compared IBM vs Apple and I chuckled. Not that it was a wrong example but, being from the generation and culture I'm from, Microsoft vs Apple ; Sony vs Apple (iPod), or even recently Apple vs Amazon in case of voice assistants such as Echo are more relevant examples.
    • Talking of game-related decision making, saw this paper recently. So fun.
    • At the end, she suggests having a future version of ours being involved in the decision making - though it sounded like a novel idea on its face yet it is very lame. Other than really ethical decisions,  the imaginary future version won't help much because we struggle with decision making because of the uncertainty of how they will turn out. If we were certain, (as a future version can tell), we wouldn't be having so much difficulty. It's the unknowns that make it difficult, and not usually wisdom. Also, the future us can only help because of the experience, which of course wouldn't be available when we involve hypothetical future us. In addition, she said include a past version of me - but isn't that present me who is making the decision anyways. There is some merit to what she suggested - such as advising to children. Often if you imagine someone else asking input from you, you would be surprised that you would have some answer. I tried when I mentored - many of the questions I got were what I used to have, but I was able to answer better just because someone asked me.
There were so many other thoughts that ran through my mind when I heard this podcast - including new perspectives, references to similar concepts I heard elsewhere, and some minor disagreements. Great listen.