Outside View Flashcards
What is inside view ?
is the view of the world through your own perspective, your own beliefs, and your own experiences.
Many common cognitive biases are, in part, the product of the inside view. Pros and cons lists amplify the inside view.
What is outside view ?
is the way that others would see your situation, or what’s true of the world in general, independent of your own perspective.
Why is outside view important ?
It’s important to explore the outside view even if you think you’ve got your facts straight, because it’s possible other people could look at the same facts and come to different conclusions.
The outside view acts to discipline the biases and inaccuracies that live in the inside view, which is why you want to ‘anchor first’ to the outside view.
Where does accuracy lie ?
Accuracy lives at the “intersection” between the inside view and the outside view.
The things that are “particular” to your situation ‘matter’, but those particulars should be married with the things that are “true of the world in general”.
What is motivated reasoning ?
Motivated reasoning is the tendency to process information to get a conclusion we want rather than to discover what is true.
‘Smart people’ aren’t immune to motivated reasoning and the inside view. In fact, being smart can make it worse because smart people have more confidence in the truth of their beliefs and can spin better narratives to sway other people (and themselves) toward their point of view
Three ways to seek outside view
- Base rates
- other people’s perspectives and feedback
- Perspective Tracking
What do you mean by base rate ?
how likely something is to happen in situations similar to the one you are considering.
Particulars of “your” situation matter but whatever your forecast of the future is, it needs to be in orbit of the base rate. Base rate gives you center of gravity
What is important while you seek other people’s perspectives and feedback ?
It is another way to get to the outside view
It’s important, however, that they feel ‘comfortable’ expressing disagreement or a perspective that might cast you in an unflattering light.
Otherwise, they’re only ‘amplifying the inside view’, strengthening your belief in your accuracy because it feels certified by others.
You should be “eager” to hear people disagree with you and “motivate” them to do so.
What is Perspective Tracking ?
I) is Intentionally considering your situation entirely from the ‘outside view’
- what is true of world in general
- how other people might view your situation
- 2 tactics
- Ask your self if a co-worker/friend/family member were to have this problem, a) how would you view their problem ? b) How might your perspective differ from them ? c) What advice would you give them ? d) What kind of solution would you offer them ?
- Ask yourself it there are any relevant base rates or information you could find about what’s true of people in your situation in general.
II) then entirely from the inside view can get you to a more accurate view that incorporates both.
