Seeking Wisdom

1， I’m superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully.

2， I think it’s huge mistake not to absorb elementary worldly wisdom if you’re capable of doing it because it makes you better able to serve others, it makes you better able to serve yourself and it makes life more fun…I’m passionate about wisdom.

3， Do our genes have a life of their own?

No, genes expression depends on environmental conditions.

4， Neural connections are shaped by life experiences.

5， Behavior is influenced by our state of mind

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

6， What drives us?

We are driven by our need to avoid pain (and punishment) and a desire to gain pleasure (and reward)

7， The study also showed that a man felt most jealous when his woman was having sex with someone else, A woman felt most jealous when her man became emotionally attached to someone else.

8， Warren Buffett gives us some introductory remarks on why even smart people get bad results.

It’s ego. It’s greed. It’s fear. It’s mindless imitation of other people.

I would day if Charlie and I have any advantage it’s not because we are so smart, it is because we are rational and we very seldom let extraneous factors interfere with our thoughts. We don’t let other people’s opinion interfere with it. we try to get fearful when others are greedy. We try to get greedy when others are fearful.

I always look at IQ and talent as representing the horsepower of the motor, but then in terms of the output, the efficiency with which the motor works, depends on rationality. That’s because a lot of people start our with 400-horsepower motor and get a hundred horsepower of output. It’s way better to have a 200-horsepower motor and get it all into output. So why do smart people do things that interfere with getting the output they’re entitled to? It gets into the habits, and character and temperament（气质）, and it really gets into having in a rational manner.

A list of reasons for misjudgments and mistakes 1. Bias from mere association - automatically connecting a stimulus with pain or pleasure; including liking or disliking something associated with something bad or good. Includes seeing situations as identical because they seem similar. Also bias from Persian Messenger Syndrome - not wanting to be the carrier of bad news. • Evaluate things, situations and people on their own merits. • Individuals are neither good nor bad merely because we associate them with something positive or negative. • Encourage people to tell you bad news immediately. • Merely because you associate some stimulus with earlier pain or pleasure doesn't mean the stimulus will cause the same pain or pleasure today. Past experiences are often context dependent. • Create a negative emotion if you want to end a certain behavior. If you want someone to stop smoking, one way could be to show them what they stand to lose. Terrifying pictures may cause them to associate smoking with death. 2. Underestimating the power of rewards and punishment - people repeat actions that result in rewards and avoid actions that they are punished for. 3. Underestimating bias from own self-interest and incentives. • Don't automatically trust people who have something at stake from your decision. Ask: What are the interests? Who benefits? • Understand people's motivations. Money, status, love of work, reputation, position, power, envy? What are they rewarded or punished for? Are they benefiting or losing from the present system? • People's interests are not only financial. They could also be social or moral. For example, public embarrassment, social exclusion, conscience, shame or guilt may cause people to stop some undesirable behavior. For example, by requiring restaurants to post hygiene quality scores in their front windows, the Los Angeles county health department caused a dramatic improvement in restaurant hygiene and a reduction in food-related illnesses. • The ancient Greek philosopher Plato said: "Do not train boys to learning by force and harshness, but lead them by what amuses them, so that they may better discover the bent of their minds." Pressuring people or giving them orders often doesn't work. It is better to convince people by asking questions that illuminate consequences. This causes them to think for themselves and makes it more likely that they discover what's in their best interest. 4. Self-serving bias - overly positive view of our abilities and future. Includes over-optimism. • German missionary Dr. Albert Schweitzer said: ''An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red stoplight. The truly wise person is colorblind." • Overconfidence can cause unreal expectations and make us more vulnerable to disappointment. • Recognize your limits. How well do you know what you don't know? Don't let your ego determine what you should do. Charles Munger says, "It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying: 'It's the strong swimmers who drown.'" • Warren Buffett says: "We won't do anything that we don't think we understand ourselves." • Focus on what can go wrong and the consequences. Build in some margin of safety in decisions. Know how you will handle things if they go wrong. Surprises occur in many unlikely ways. Ask: How can I be wrong? Who can tell me ifI'm wrong? • By developing only a handful of strengths, we have an impoverished toolbox - only hammers. We need a full toolkit. Since problems don't follow territorial boundaries, we must compensate for the bias of one idea by using important ideas from other disciplines. • Consider people's actual accomplishments and past behavior over a long period of time rather than first impressions. Since people leave track records in life, an individual's paper record is often predictive of future performance and behavior. • When comparing records or performances, remember that successes draw far more attention than failures. 5. Self-deception and denial- distortion of reality to reduce pain or increase pleasure. Includes wishful thinking. 6. Bias from consistency tendency - being consistent with our prior commitments and ideas even when acting against our best interest or in the face of disconfirming evidence. Includes confirmation bias - looking for evidence that confirms our actions and beliefs and ignoring or distorting disconfirming evidence. 7. Bias from deprival syndrome - strongly reacting (including desiring and valuing more) when something we like and have (or almost have) is (or threatens to be) taken away or "lost." Includes desiring and valuing more what we can't have or what is (or threatens to be) less available. 8. Status quo bias and do-nothing syndrome - keeping things the way they are. Includes minimizing effort and a preference for default options. 9. Impatience - valuing the present more highly than the future. 10. Bias from envy and jealousy. 11. Distortion by contrast comparison - judging and perceiving the absolute magnitude of something not by itself but based only on its difference to something else presented closely in time or space or to some earlier adaptation level. Also underestimating the consequences over time of gradual changes. 12. Bias from anchoring - over-weighing certain initial information as a reference point for future decisions. 13. Over-influence by vivid or the most recent information. 14. Omission and abstract blindness - only seeing stimuli we encounter or that grabs our attention, and neglecting important missing information or the abstract. Includes inattentional blindness. 15. Bias from reciprocation tendency - repaying in kind what others have done for or to us like favors, concessions, information and attitudes. 16. Bias from over-influence by liking tendency - believing, trusting and agreeing with people we know and like. Includes bias from over-desire for liking and social acceptance and for avoiding social disapproval. Also bias from disliking - our tendency to avoid and disagree with people we don't like. 17. Bias from over-influence by social proof - imitating the behavior of many others or similar others. Includes crowd folly. 18. Bias from over-influence by authority - trusting and obeying a perceived authority or expert. 19. Sensemaking - Constructing explanations that fit an outcome. Includes being too quick in drawing conclusions. Also thinking events that have happened were more predictable than they were. 20. Reason-respecting - complying with requests merely because we've been given a reason. Includes underestimating the power in giving people reasons. 21. Believing first and doubting later - believing what is not true, especially when distracted. 22. Memory limitations - remembering selectively and wrong. Includes influence by suggestions. 23. Do-something syndrome - acting without a sensible reason. 24. Mental confusion from say-something syndrome - feeling a need to say something when we have nothing to say. 25. Emotional arousal- making hasty judgments under the influence of intense emotions. Includes exaggerating the emotional impact of future events. 26. Mental confusion from stress. 27. Mental confusion from physical or psychological pain, the influence of chemicals or diseases. 28. Bias from over-influence by the combined effect of many psychological tendencies operating together.

The forces that influence and set the limits for our judgements: 1. Genes 2. Life experiences 3. Present environment 4. Randomness

The connections in our brain are constantly strengthened and weakened, developing and changing. The more we are exposed to certain experiences, the more the specific connections are strengthened, and the better we learn and remember those experiences. We then use these stored representations of what works when we respond to people and situations. Essentially what we do today is a function of what worked in the past. We adapt to our environment by learning from the consequences of our actions. We do things that we associate with pleasure and avoid things that we associate with pain.