A Learning a Day

This week’s book learning is from ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman –

“Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As as student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.”

Which alternative is more probable?

1. Linda is a bank teller.

2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

When posed with this question and asked to answer, 85% of Stanford Graduate Business School students, all of whom had taken several advanced courses in probability, statistics, and decision theory, along with about 85% to 90% of undergraduates at several major universities chose option 2.

Think about it for a moment though: Every feminist bank teller is a bank teller! Picking Number 2 nearly violates the basic laws of logic, not to mention probability. Yet nearly everyone failed. Why?

Daniel Kahneman points out that we have 2 processing systems – the intuitive and quick to respond

System 1 that ‘thinks fast’ and the more lazy, calculative and deliberate System 2 that ‘thinks slow’.

The point Kahneman makes here is that we often jump to conclusions on many problems without thinking ‘twice’ i.e. engaging our system 2.

I found this insight fascinating.. And more learnings to follow on the 2 systems..

Here’s to observing our 2 systems in action this week!

PS: Apologies to feed readers who are seeing this twice. Some posting issues!

Soundtrack: Divenire by Ludovico Einaudi

I was walking back home after a spot of grocery shopping an hour or so ago. I wasn’t in any particular hurry and found myself observing the many faces that passed by. Some looked relaxed, a couple looked really worried and yet some others looked blank and expressionless.

At that moment, it struck me that we must walk by millions of faces in a lifetime. Add in a bit of travel in densely populated nations to that and the number would easily be in the hundreds of millions..

That’s a hundred million stories. Every person walking has a story of his/her own – a past, hopes about a future, a mood, a reason for the mood, an outlook, a belief system, some sadness, some happiness. We might have passed by many who are in the midst of the best time of their lives and yet some others going through their worst.

But, each with their own story.

Now, consider this for a moment – by smiling, by saying a nice word, by being appreciative, by holding the door open, by showing a bit of kindness, a bit of consideration, we have probably positively impacted so many of these stories. We may have turned many a mood from bad to good, we may have turned a day around, sprinkled a bit of hope, added a bit of joy.. and maybe even saved a life.

There is often talk about changing the world by building great things. But imagine just walking around being the best we can be – and changing the world by being kind, nice and humane to one person at a time. Maybe we’d impact a 100 million souls over the course of a life time..

If we aren’t doing that, I wonder.. I just wonder.. what the hell else are we doing that’s more important?

“Be excellent to each other.“

Words to live by.

I’m really beginning to enjoy the ‘Feel Good Friday’ series. After Caine’s Arcade and the brilliant Olympics Mother’s video, it’s a tough act to follow but I think we have a winner.

This is a 5 and a half video called ‘A story for tomorrow’ that is profound and inspiring at the same time that I stumbled onto at a friend’s blog.