preface
After recently read "Art sober thinking" this book, the book gives 52 ordinary thinking errors easy to commit, read some misunderstanding really feel sobering effect, I put the book today, I feel more Mistakes help share out the manner of their own understanding, I hope for your help
(I want to learn programming from a small partner search circle T community , more and more industry-related industry information about free video tutorials. Oh, absolutely free!)
Survivor bias
I remember from small to large, whether teachers or parents will call me to read the autobiography of successful people, or books. Understand and learn the experience of past successful people, you can learn something from this will be very helpful to your life. But here I want to ask is this all? If we like them and have accumulated much knowledge, he learned skills like them, and they try to have a similar experience, then we will be successful?
We often have this misunderstanding, we see a successful person, star or technology experts worth mentioning, deliberately to imitate them all, as long as they mimic the feeling of enough place to learn hard enough, and we will certainly be " they are "the same brilliant life. We feel that successful people who have some of the so-called "success factors", as long as we have these factors, then we can be successful.
What is it really? Author of "sober thinking art" a book from the viewpoint of probability to explain this misunderstanding, first of all for successful people, whether it is a star, technical experts, or to obtain a world-class athlete award, they are just very, very small in their fields of some people, absolutely can not explain the problem, for example, to get a gold medal athlete in the Olympic Games, we attributed his success to "hard training", "qualified and talented", "admit defeat, full of dedication to sport enthusiasm ", but if you look at the athletes who did not get a medal, there will be some of these qualifications mentioned above, or even better than the award-winning athlete, who also has what we think of" success factors ", but they without success, that's the problem.
The fundamental problem here is not to say that we chose the wrong "success factors", but that part does not represent the whole, merely referring to successful people do things that way or strategy is not enough, if you Xiangnong the truth is clear, the need to go look at the "loser's graveyard", is representing the majority of people experience here, look at those who also has a "success factor" Why is failure, we can not avoid to step on them stepped on pit? As well as our own situation, we need to need to change the "success factors" we defined? In this way we will have a more clear understanding of success and expectations, but also to recognize their own shortcomings, rather than blindly follow the trend and learn.
The results of bias
Let's look at a little story in the book is given:
We assume that there are one million monkeys on speculation in the stock market. They frantically, naturally pure random buying and selling stocks. what will happen? A year later, the monkeys have invested about half the money, the other half lose money. In the second half of this group of monkeys it is to make money, the other half lose money. Over time, 10 years later, only about 1000 monkeys, they each investment is correct. 20 years later only a monkey every investment is always right - it became a billionaire. We called him "success monkey" it.
How the media would react? They rushed to the animal, to expound his "success principles." They will find some kind of principle: Maybe this "success monkey" eat bananas than the other monkeys, maybe it's sitting in another corner of the cage, maybe it is hanging upside down from a tree, or perhaps catch him flea midnight to think very long time. It must have some kind of recipe for success, is not it? Otherwise, how would it do such a good performance? A 20-year monkey always make the right investment decisions, how could a just ignorant monkey do? impossible!
Errors result it is actually very good understanding, is that we always tend to see the results, but do not consider the process, only the results themselves or others to guess the correct approach. Just as described in the above story, "Monkey buy stocks made money, has become a billionaire," this is the result, if only based on this result, and combined with our common sense to guess, we might get a thousand kinds the answer, in fact, but in the end we do not know why he is the monkey success, we do not get the right answer.
In fact, the correct approach is without any prejudice to combine the results to see the whole thing through, analyze the reasons this happens, do not judge or decide what is correct, even if the result is very bad and sometimes good or bad based on the results, but this thing or decision, is the practice at the time of the environment or conditions, you have to take, that your decision is right, regardless of the outcome, the next time you encounter a similar problem need to do this; the contrary, the result is good, but through the analysis, you find things you do or decision which is still a problem, then the next encounter similar problems will try to adjust, for a change.
Confirmation bias
Or look at the book a little story:
A professor let his students see a set of numbers: 2,4,6, asking them to find out the basic rules for them. Professor rules written on the back of a sheet of paper. His subjects were asked to say the next number, or professor replied, "conform to the rules", or answered "do not conform to the rules." Subjects to say how many digits can say how many, but the rules can only guess once. Most of the students say is "8", the professor replied, "conform to the rules." To be safe, they also tried to "10", "12" and "14", professor always answer "conform to the rules." So students have come to a simple conclusion: "So the rule is: on the basis of a number of former plus 2." Professor shook his head:. "Written on the back of the paper rule is not the case,"
the only one shrewd students are to break out this problem in different ways. He tried "4", the professor said: "it 7" "conform to the rules." The students also used a variety of digital test children for a while, "- 24", "9", "-" does not conform to the rules. "? 43 "...... he obviously had an idea, and try to prove it wrong. Until no longer find a counter-example, he said: "The rule is: the next number must be greater than the previous one." The professor piece of paper over and above it is so written.
The scientific community will have some of the principles of things, like the theory of relativity, the Pythagorean theorem in mathematics and so on, we assume that these things are true, then our study will build on these theories, we generally do not go questioned these theories, we will not even go to prove these theories, our intuition tells us that we must unconditionally believe these things are true, if we found some doubt on these theories, we will not hesitate, unthinkingly believe that these " doubt "that there are problems, these theories without any problems. This is why when the theory of relativity is presented, the vast majority of scientists do not support, they believe that Newton's laws in order to correctly reflect the real situation of the world, their research is based on Newton's laws, Newton's laws can not be incorrect.
Sometimes we have some engrained ideas, our actions will be carried out around these ideas, we will go towards a favorable direction to carry out our ideas, ignore or circumvent those "shortcomings" in the idea of inherent or "the problem", in other words, we are in fact trying to confirm our thoughts correctly; Over time, we believe that more of our ideas, we will not be thinking about how to change, I feel very good right now.
This misconception is actually quite terrible, we were like paralyzed self, there is no clear understanding of the diversity of the world, living in their own world of illusion, sometimes our thoughts or behavior is a problem, we can hardly where is aware of the problem, it may eventually lead to very wrong conclusions. The book gives a number of recommendations, is "to get rid of their inner darling," from time to time you can write your own view of the world, life and values, marriage, love, work, health and conditioning on successful strategies and so on paper, seek out some of these theories to refute their own ideas, of course, will be very difficult to do initially, will be painful, but we want to grow, to see the world with different eyes, these are to be done.
Selection bias
I often go to the supermarket to buy food, if I want to buy only one or two brands of dishes for my choices, then I will make a decision very quickly, but whenever I want to buy brand kind of dishes more than 5, I may take relatively more time to make a choice, I would go to compare observed dishes shape, color, origin, date of production, prices and brands, etc., sometimes the last to get yourself dizzy, did not know the kind of dishes I am what I want, do not know whether to buy a. Nowadays, people make choices every day, of course, is not limited in life, as a programmer, faced with a project, we often choose between several different techniques, we often choose to spend a lot of time in the end we still do not know the kind of choice is the best, and we choose what to do.
There is an old saying called " for them is the best ," Yes, do choose to self-awareness eventually need to get back over here, no matter how many first choice, we should be clear that most of what we need, our What needs are? Before the next make choices, take a moment to think about your own needs, write down their hopes for the selected object, as well as their current problems to be solved, and then choose to do, I believe it will save a lot of time.
Sunk costs
It is difficult to give up those things that we have invested a lot of time and money, this is most evident when stocks, assuming you spend huge amounts of money invested in a stock, the stock lost money soon after, then your approach is certainly continue to wait the stock rose, and even invest more money, you basically will not go analyze the stock corresponding to the downturn in the industry view, corresponding to whether the company recently had major decisions and plans, because you have a more simple, more convincing reason, "I've been in here put a lot of money, before buying this stock I have spent a lot of time to analyze this stock, if stop now, before the loss of money and time for naught, must wait until the back after this, do consider the next step. ", in addition to stocks, in life, we will often entangled in sunk costs, for example," I have read the book so many pages ... "," I invested in this affair so much emotion ... "," I've spent months training to accept this ... "" I've been in this industry Into several years of hard work and dedication ... ", for sunk costs, citing the book is word of advice," there are many good reasons to continue to support you, but if you are just reluctant to invest because the decision has been made and continue to do something, this is not a good reason. rational decision means ignoring costs have been invested, what you have done is not important, the only important thing is your assessment of the current situation and the future. "
to sum up
We may be subject to a child living environment, parental influence, life has treated some of the habits and opinions, we rely on these things, the body in which it is difficult to clearly recognize the importance of something, some engrained ideas will hinder us to learn, to better understand the world. After reading this book, I found some wrong ideas of their own before, these ideas are subtle and difficult to detect not careful, I believe that to maintain a tolerant attitude, rational to accept some of the views or opinions, the growth of their own It is helpful.