Quotes About Decision-making

Steve Jobs: «La gente pensa che essere concentrati significhi dire sì alla cosa sulla quale ci si deve focalizzare. Ma non è affatto così. Significa dire no ad altre cento buone idee. Dovete scegliere con cura. Di fatto io sono orgoglioso delle cose che non abbiamo fatto tanto quanto lo sono di quelle che ho fatto. Innovazione significa dire no a mille cose».

how people can cherry-pick ethical rules to fit their actions.

It means that rational thinking has little, very little, to do with risk avoidance. Much of what rational thinking seems to do is rationalize one's actions by fitting some logic to them.

One of the methods, called sortes virgilianae (fate as decided by the epic poet Virgil), involved opening Virgil's Aeneid at random and interpreting the line that presented itself as direction for the course of action. You should use such method for every sticky business decision. I will repeat until I get hoarse: the ancients evolved hidden and sophisticated ways and tricks to exploit randomness. For

people's understanding of probability does not translate into their behavior).

what they have is skill in getting promoted within a company rather than pure skills in making optimal decisions—we call that "corporate political skill.

that really successful people say no to almost everything

He would be forced to act as a satisficer instead of a maximizer

The last thing a trader needs to do is be scientific or play econometrician during buisness hours.

he understood optionality mathematically, but not really outside the equation.

It will take a lot of statistical information to override your hesitation.

Actions are symmetric, do not allow cherry-picking, remove the free option.

if wealth is giving you fewer options instead of more (and more varied) options, you're doing it wrong.

This reasoning shows that sophistication can, at some level, cause degradation, what economists call "negative utility.

Not understanding that doing nothing can be much more preferable to doing something potentially harmful.

our actions are not quite guided by the parts of our brain that dictate rationality. We think with our emotions and there is no way around it.

people who are otherwise rational engage in smoking or in fights that get them no immediate benefits;

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I am convinced of that after spending almost all my adult and professional years in a fierce fight between my brain (not Fooled by Randomness) and my emotions (completely Fooled by Randomness) in which the only success I've had is in going around my emotions rather than rationalizing them.

Most of the tension in life will take place when the one who reduces and fragilizes (say the policy maker) invokes rationality.

Procrastination turned out to be a way to let events take their course and give the activists the chance to change their minds before committing to irreversible policies.

Bent Flyvbjerg (do capítulo 18) mostrou, em seu Black Swan Management [Gerenciamento do Cisne Negro], a

In fact we humans are very bad at filtering information, particularly short-term information, and procrastination can be a way for us to filter better, to resist the consequences of jumping on information, as we discuss next.

which a loss is more painful than a gain is pleasant):