Chapter I

Question 1

inverse thinking

Answer 1

Inverting your thought process, goal.

Instead of being right more, be wrong less.

Instead of trying to make the most money investing, try to lose the least money.

Question 2

antifragile

Answer 2

Concept from Nassim Taleb, opposite of fragility.

Beyond resilience or robustness, getting stronger with shocks, volatility, randomness

Question 3

first principles thinking

Answer 3

thinking from the bottom up, using basic building blocks of what you think is true to build sound conclusions

Question 4

de-risking

Answer 4

testing your component assumptions of a larger assumption to better assert that your conclusion is correct

Question 5

mvp

Minimum Viable Product

Answer 5

Early and often prototyping an idea

“if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late,” - Reid Hoffman

Question 6

Ockham’s Razor

Answer 6

The simplest explanation is the most likely.

Break down assumptions into component assumptions, ask yourself:

“What evidence do I have that this is true? Is this a false dependency?”

Question 7

Conjunction fallacy

Answer 7

latching onto unnecessary assumptions based on component data:

Lisa is concerned with social justice and majored in philosophy. She is outspoken at anti-nuclear demonstrations. Is it more likely that she is:
A. a bank teller
B. a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement

Question 8

overfitting

Answer 8

when you use an overly complicated explanation when instead a simpler one will do

Question 9

frame of reference

Answer 9

Heeding the influence of perspective, realizing that people/events can be unknowingly influenced by context.

Question 10

framing

Answer 10

The way you present a situation or explanation. Think how Fox news and CNN may present the same story

Question 11

nudging

Answer 11

Giving soft cues to push someone in a certain direction

Question 12

anchoring

Answer 12

relying too heavily on first impressions when making decisions

Question 13

availability bias

Answer 13

bias, distortion that creeps into your objective decision-making thanks to information recently made available to you

Question 14

filter bubble

Answer 14

filtering out of information that is unfamiliar, opposing to your viewpoints, placing you in a bubble

Question 15

third story

Answer 15

the story that a third, impartial observer would recount. Forcing yourself to think as an impartial observer

Question 16

most respectful interpretation

Answer 16

explaining a person’s behavior in the most respectful way possible

Question 17

hanlon’s razor

Answer 17

never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by carelessness

Question 18

fundamental attribution error

Answer 18

where you make errors by attributing others’ behaviors to their internal, or fundamental motivations rather than external factors. (Someone is tired, stressed by a client, rather than they ARE some certain characteristic [mean, not very thoughtful])

Question 19

self serving bias

Answer 19

when you are the actor, you often have self-serving reasons for your behavior, but when you’re the observer you tend to blame others’ intrinsic values

Question 20

veil of ignorance

Answer 20

imagining ourselves ignorant of our particular place in the world, preventing us from knowing who we are when making decisions that affect others

Question 21

just world of hypothesis

Answer 21

where people get what they deserve, good or bad, because of their actions alone, not accounting for luck or randomness ( you reap what you sow)

Question 22

victim-blame

Answer 22

victims of circumstance are blamed for their circumstances, with no accounting for other factors of randomness, birth lottery

Question 23

learned helplessness

Answer 23

tendency to stop trying to escape difficult situations because we have gotten used to difficult conditions over time

Question 24

paradigm shift

Answer 24

‘progress one funeral at a time’

Question 25

semmelweis reflex

Answer 25

when explanations are not in line with conventional thinking and immediately rejected before being thought through

Question 26

confirmation bias

Answer 26

human tendency to gather and interpret new information in a biased way to confirm pre-existing beliefs

Question 27

backfire effect

Answer 27

digging in further on a position when faced with clear evidence that disproves it

Question 28

disconfirmation bias

Answer 28

where you impose a stronger burden of proof on ideas you don’t want to believe

Question 29

cognitive dissonance

Answer 29

stress felt by holding two contradictory beliefs at once

Question 30

thinking grey

Answer 30

Idea attributed to Steven Sample, instead of thinking about issues in terms of black and white, the truth is somewhere in the middle, a shade of grey

Question 31

intuition-based decision making

Answer 31

realizing that trusting your gut will lead to anchoring, availability bias, framing, and other pitfalls. Slowing down and thinking deliberately.

You can use your intuition to guide investigation, but investigation itself should be done with clear thoughtful awareness and first principles thinking

Question 32

proximate cause

Answer 32

the thing that immediately caused a reaction (where people may look and blame) instead of the root cause (which actually caused the issue):

Ex: Challenger explosion - hydrogen tank explosion (proximate cause) that was caused by endemic internal mismanagement (root cause)

Question 33

postmortem

Answer 33

examination of a prior situation to understand what happened and how it could go better next time

Question 34

5 whys

Answer 34

keep asking ‘why did that happen’ until you reach root causes (the number of whys isn’t all that important, can be more or less than 5)

Question 35

optimistic probability bias

Answer 35

where you want something to be true so badly that you fool yourself into thinking it is likely true

Question 36

Feynman’s warning

Answer 36

You must not fool yourself- - and you are the easiest person to fool.