Sendhil Mullainathan
Professor of Economics and EECS, MIT · 1 appearance on the record.
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academicauthorscientistfounder@m_sendhil ↗scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan ↗Wikipedia ↗
He conducts research at the intersection of behavioral economics and machine learning, studying human decision-making, algorithmic bias, and applications of AI in healthcare. A MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient, he co-authored Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much and co-founded organizations including ideas42, J-PAL, and Dandelion Health.
24statements → 3claims → 0claims resolved → 3.67/5average certainty → 2.21/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →
3 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
3 predictions · 21 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Sendhil argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
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Everything Sendhil Mullainathan said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Mullainathan: Overfitting is a necessary first stage of learning
“I think the first stage of learning is overfitting.”
Mullainathan: People mistakenly assign profound meaning to random neurological noise
“I think this is this crazy view we have of the brain is that like, we know that we belch and fart, and we don't attribute deep meaning to belches or farts. But the same belches and farts produced by the firing of our neurons are like, oh, I thought about that.…”
Mullainathan: Academic psychology will inevitably pivot toward applied self-help
“I think we're going to see a revolution both in behavioral science as a research discipline. So for example, here's a telltale sign. Psychologists don't work on self-help. That doesn't make any sense. There's a whole ocean of people who in good faith want to i…”
Mullainathan: High-fidelity articulation of others' views reveals arbitrage opportunities
“If you can describe someone else's perspective on a problem so well that they themselves say, oh yeah, that is what I'm thinking. Then, you know, you have an arbitrage opportunity because you've said it as well as they have, and yet you see something they don'…”
Mullainathan: Algorithmic feedback avoids the personal sting of human judgment
“So I actually think that the advantage of the algorithm over the person is what you said, which is that once you get used to it, you know, even your friend, when you told him this fact, partly he must have, however nicely you said it, felt the sting of judgmen…”
Mullainathan: Academia mistakenly views knowledge flow as purely one-way
“I think academia has this illusion that it can, it's going this way as the only
Force, but there's a strong feedback loop.”
Mullainathan: Creativity requires marrying opposing processes of ideation and filtration
“Which is, I think a lot of people forget that creativity is the marrying of ideation and filtration. That you need the capacity to generate ideas, but you also need the capacity to filter ideas. And these processes are in such fundamental opposition.”
Mullainathan: Trust granular criticism over summary judgment on creative ideas
“Most people don't do that. They give you the summary judgment. Oh, I think this is not a good idea. Oh, I think this, you know, there are very few people for whom you can trust their summary judgment. So I think for me, the first issue is trying to be very ope…”
Mullainathan: Alternating blocks of bold ideation and brutal pragmatism beats continuous balance
“I think they imagine the way things should look is A nice balance of boldness and pragmatism at every minute or hour. But really, I think it works much more effectively to be bold for days, and then switch on a dime and just be pragmatic for days. Because it's…”
Mullainathan: Creators should take radical risks during ideation before execution
“Look, you could, you're just thinking you're not doing yet. So don't worry if you think, and the idea turns out to be awful, like a negative tail. You'll find out. It's okay. You'll find out in your head or while talking to people. Like, if you don't take risk…”
Mullainathan: Test new ideas by spotting real-world examples before judging correctness
“That way of thinking of like, you receive a new idea, don't judge it as rightness or correctness internally. Just use that as a way to spend the day looking for that thing in the world.”
Mullainathan: Ideas should be graded by their generative depth, not mere recognition
“A lot of ideas have recognition capacity, meaning you can see them in the world, but they don't have generation capacity. What I mean is Once I've noticed this thing, so, you know opportunity cost. Once I've noticed this is an example of an opportunity cost th…”
Mullainathan: Opportunity costs are hidden consequences excluded by decision framing
“And so I think opportunity costs are the hidden consequences that are left outside of your frame, whether it's for money or time, it's those things that then are neglected because they're exactly not part of how you frame this problem.”
Mullainathan: Time is unlike money because its utility ranges from negative to positive
“Time doesn't operate like money. Time is a unit of object whose value can range from the negative to the positive, like, huge values.”
Mullainathan: People want more time but dislike the perception of stretched time
“The irony of it is that when that's happening, you don't think to yourself, I've gotten more time.
You're like, oh, this day is dragging.
So there's something peculiar about our hedonic experience.
We all wish we had more time on, you know, our mortal coil wou…”
Mullainathan: People operate in acquisition mode rather than mental consumption mode
“It sounds so trivial, but we just don't do it. We don't actually engage in mental consumption. It's bizarre. We're in acquisition mode, not in consumption mode.”
Mullainathan: Digital footprints will improve human cognition over the next 20 years
“In the next 20 years, I think we'll be able to improve what's happening in our heads using digital tools because so much of what happened in our heads is now digitized. So we can look at that digital footprints and use that to improve how we're thinking. And f…”
Mullainathan: Daily habits are easier to maintain than four-day-a-week routines
“One thing I learned was every day is much easier than four days a week. You might think four days a week is easier because it's less often, but every day removes the most difficult thing about life is choosing and every day removes choice.”
Mullainathan: Setting an ultra-low execution bar makes habits sustainable
“Once you get yourself with the low expectation of the low bar, it works. Cause then some days, many days after the a hundred words, you're like, Ooh, I can keep going.”
Mullainathan: Impulsive personal rules lead to failure or misery
“Well thought out rules have the property that they are ones that many parts of ourselves subscribe to. Poorly thought out rules, I think don't have that property and are doomed, if not to failure, to misery at some level.”
Mullainathan: Designing for leader obsolescence forces founders to distill essential skills
“And if you think about this phrase program cell death, if you just ask yourself, what can I do with this idea, this research or with this organization that would let it do what it wants to do, but that makes me obsolete. That's actually a much better heuristic…”
Mullainathan: Articulated knowledge is always superior because others can improve it
“Articulated knowledge is always better than unarticulated second. Sure. You think you have good taste, but once you've tried to articulate those rules and communicate it, guess what? Other people can improve on that.”
Mullainathan: Knowledge workers will increasingly review objective 'game tape' of decisions
“I think where we're going to head with this is already seen in sports is that an athlete has a coach who sits with them and looks at the tape.
Shane Parrish: Right.
Sendhil Mullainathan: The tape is the objective.
Shane Parrish: And I'm going to help you inter…”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| #102 Sendhil Mullainathan: The Chaos Inside Us | Feb 2, 2021 | 59m |