Author and former poker champion Annie Duke discusses cognitive science research on biases and decision-making with Shane Parrish.
Insight
Duke: Forcing colleagues to argue opposing positions moderates views and improves decisions
“If you have people in the room who really disagree on what the probability of a particular outcome is, which will happen, force them to change sides, and we disagree. You're at 30% and I'm at 70%. Wow, we're way off. First of all, cool. We're probably going to…”
Insight
Duke: Documenting scenario probabilities in advance prevents outcome bias ('resulting')
“You create now, ok, we're going to go with decision A. Here are the scenarios we think might occur. Here are stabs at the probabilities. And you memorialize it. So now, when the thing happens that's right up there on the whiteboard, you took a picture of it. T…”
Insight
Duke: Decision quality and outcomes are loosely linked in poker
“Outcomes and decisions are so loosely linked in that game. I mean, you know, you have the best hand, you get crushed, you have the worst hand, you win sometimes, and there's so much hidden information, the cards are face down”
Insight
Duke: Fast, abundant feedback does not prevent people from repeating mistakes
“As I continued to play poker, I noticed this over and over again, that people really persisted in their mistakes, despite the fact that there was very clear feedback That was very quick, and there was a lot of it.”
Opinion
Duke: IBM lost to Apple due to a culture of outcome bias
“And it's, I've always felt that it's because IBM is operating under a culture of resulting, and Apple isn't. Apple can't possibly be Operating under they're doing something unconventional by definition. Their whole business model is to make unconventional choi…”
Opinion
Duke: Gambling is morally equivalent to voluntary market participation
“I think that that's a perfectly moral thing to do, and so that's the lens through which I view it, is that there's a market, and everybody's playing in the market, and they're voluntarily playing in the market”