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Research notes

Decision making

Crony beliefs

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https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/⁠

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What are Crony beliefs:

Beliefs that you adopted not because you think is correct but because you acquired to explain something that you could not explain (and gives you social value)

Climate change is a crony belief

Meritocracy, where we monitor beliefs for accuracy out of fear that we'll stumble by acting on a false belief; and

Cronyism, where we don't care about accuracy so much as whether our beliefs make the right impressions on others.

Why they happen

So if a brain anticipates that it will be rewarded for adopting a particular belief, it's perfectly happy to do so, and doesn't much care where the reward comes from — whether it's pragmatic (better outcomes resulting from better decisions), social (better treatment from one's peers), or some mix of the two.

these incentives are also pervasive. Everywhere we turn, we face pressure to adopt crony beliefs. At work, we're rewarded for believing good things about the company. At church, we earn trust in exchange for faith, while facing severe sanctions for heresy. In politics, our allies support us when we toe the party line, and withdraw support when we refuse

In extreme environments, like the French Revolution, a brain that rejects crony beliefs, however spurious, may even find itself forcibly removed from its body and left to rot on a pike. Faced with such incentives, is it any wonder our brains fall in line?

Identifying crony beliefs

learn how to not judge beliefs be curious how to disarm

It's important to remember that merit beliefs aren't necessarily true, nor are crony beliefs necessarily false.

-corporate dissonance - sometimes crony belief is better for organization

Abstract and impractical. Merit beliefs have value only insofar as we're able to make use of them for choosing actions; we need some "skin in the game." If a belief isn't actionable, or if the actions we might take based on the belief (e.g., voting) don't provide material benefits one way or the other, then it's more likely to be a crony.

Benefit of the doubt. When we have social incentives to believe something, we stack the deck in its favor. Or to use another metaphor, we put our thumbs on the scale as we weigh the evidence. Blind faith — religious, political, or otherwise — is simply "benefit of the doubt" taken to its logical extreme.

Conspicuousness. The whole point of a crony belief is to reap social and political rewards, but in order to get these rewards, we need to advertise the belief in question. So the greater our urge to talk about a belief, to wear it like a badge, the more likely it is to be a crony.

Overconfidence. Related to the above, crony beliefs will typically provide more social value the more confident we seem in them. (If Acme hires the mayor's nephew, but seems constantly on the verge of firing him, the mayor isn't going to be happy.) Overconfidence also acts as a form of protection for beliefs that can't survive on their own within the meritocracy.

Reluctance to bet. Betting on a belief is just as good as acting on it; both mechanisms create incentives for accuracy. If we're reluctant to bet on a belief, then, it's often because some parts of our psyche know that the belief is unlikely to be true. Hence the challenge: "Put up or shut up."

But perhaps the biggest hallmark of epistemic cronyism is exhibiting strong emotions, as when we feel proud of a belief, anguish over changing our minds, or anger at being challenged or criticized.

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How to solve (better incentives)

fix root cause political

Teach Rationality and critical thinking to everyone

you cannot solve on your own

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Annie Duke - Thinking in bets

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https://waiyancan.com/summary-how-to-decide-by-annie-duke/⁠

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Loading www.youtube.com⁠

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Decision outcome = Quality of decisions. + luck

every decision is a bet

Resulting: we tend to associate the quality of the outcome with quality of the decision

People judge decisions based on result;

we are uncomfortable with luck;

we don’t want to accept that even if we do our most biggest effort it might not pan out

Chess vs poker ♟️

Chess is all about quality of decision - a novice will never beat an expert

Poker - a novice can bean an expert - luck plays a role

Life is more about poker than chess

A different way is how can we make life more like chess and less like poker

do we ant that or take away life

Why bad decisions

uncertainty

we are build for false positives ; big at patterns

we are build for tribes

we are not build to desconfirm our beliefs

We tend to believe something is true by default

Mindset: How to learn from the results of your decision

Redefining wrong - if a 20% chance happen is not wrong - better to use shades of grey

Tools to disconfirm your beliefs

Ask what would you think of your enemy was doing that - is it luck

Decision group that thinks same way

Explore decisions that lead to good outcome and evaluate what you took wrote.

Focus on accuracy over confirmation

how to get to Truth seeking convos

Express uncertainty

Lead with ascent

Ask for temporary agreement to go on truth seeking (are you only venting or asking for advice)

Focus on the future

Techniques to think future self and past self

temporary discount- discount

imagine your future self

Put regret upfront the decision

10-10-10

How think you would think on 10min, 10min, 10years

The way we feel about outcomes is path dependent

losing $100 after initially being losing $500 is different than losing $100 after being winning $500

Be like Ullysses, prepare yourself for the future and attach

Ullysses siren - attached to the ship’s wheel and put the crew closed in the corridor to pass the mermaids

Automate your decisions as much as possible (set and forget)

Decision swear jar

Examples of things that we are not looking into a decision correctly

Signals of illusion of certainty : I’m sure; I’m 100% sure ; best or worse

Overconfidence

Irrational outcome feeling : I planned perfectly top of my game why do they always get lucky; they brought it on themselves

complaint about bad luck

General characterization “another typical XXX”

Signals that we zoomed in a moment without sense of time

Conventional wisdom; if you ask anybody echo chamber

Wrong : is a conclusion not a rationale

Lack of self compassion

Scenario planning when taking a decision

think about the scenarios and what is probability of each

Do two techniques to plan the success

Backcasting - define success and what define the steps and what is the path to get there

Important to think what are the obstacles and think how you will overocme

Premortem - think that the project failed and describe what went wrong

Crony beliefs

Annie Duke - Thinking in bets

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