10,000 Thumbs

Watch What They Do

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 20:28:36 GMT

I struggled with elocution while recording this episode. One might think that *checking* people are good to their word, would be so obvious and intuitive that it would never require a heuristic to manage. Yet we allow ourselves to be disoriented by speech and thought frequently, get taken for a ride, and usually we are vulnerable to such bamboozlement because we forget to notice how other people actually behave. A fascinating video on corporate fraud can be found here.

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"We All Have Strength Enough to Endure the Misfortunes of Others."

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 21:00:00 GMT

I would have written a shorter episode if I only had the time. The Maxims of Francois de la Rochefoucauld (hear my struggle to pronounce it) provide this weeks heuristic, which I could reword as 'if they don't care, why should you?' damn. Why didn't I think of that sooner. I would have put it in the script. Anyway, I apply it in the context of the spotlight effect - we tend to think people are paying more attention to us than they are. In accurately perceiving how little others care, we can relax ourselves.

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Nothing Works All The Time

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 21:29:14 GMT

Nothing endures but change. In this episode dedicated to NBA All-Time Great Bill Russell, I get to compare the wisdom of Russell to that of Miyamoto Musashi my number one philosophical influence. Basically the more successful a strategy or tactic is, the more likely it's going to find that brick wall to bump up against one day. Just add time to any successful strategy and it will fail. Names dropped are Bill Russell, Miyamoto Musashi, I also invoke Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, but I'm not going to link to that because I don't understand it. Efficiency Market Theory (Which kind of contradicts "Assume Inefficiency" or Episode 4) and Say's Law come up and I promised a link to a simple explainer video and here it is. Lastly, I recommend reading 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There' by Marshall Goldsmith. All in under 12 minutes!

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Sagan Standard ver 1.1.4

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 02:53:05 GMT

The Sagan Standard has been lauded as expressing the basis of the scientific method, but I don't know. I really like the sound of 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' but I'm just not clear on how to qualify claims and evidence as 'extraordinary'. This is my attempt to assume the burden of clarity and get a working patch out there. Also in the spirit of eating my own cooking, in this episode I make claims about the effectiveness of propaganda, for which I proffer 'Not Born Yesterday' by Hugo Mercier, see also the Influence of Mass Media.

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You Haven't Succeeded Until You Can Walk Away

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 21:00:23 GMT

Life is like one of those 'Keep your hand on the car' competitions, where you haven't succeeded until you not just regain your freedom of movement, but also win the car. Gee, that's more succinct than the episode.

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"If It Isn't Worth Doing, It Isn't Worth Doing Well"

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 21:00:00 GMT

Another heuristic for the sad indictment club, an indictment not just of humanity, but the times too. People excelling at the useless screams "SURPLUS" so perhaps it isn't all bad news. And speaking of surpluses I drop a surplus of references in this episode, here are some links: "Chmess" Dan Dennet's research article. "The 5 Types of Bullshit Jobs" with David Graeber. "We Live in an Unreal World" excerpt from "Hypernormalization" Adam Curtis Documentary. Chesterton's Fence. Prisoner's Dilemma. Sayre's Law. Parkinson's Law of Triviality/Bike Shedding. Whew. I should make note to do an episode on 'The Opposite of Success isn't Failure. It is namedropping.'...

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Professionalism Defined

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 21:00:00 GMT

Such a simple rule, why is it so hard to follow? And how did I manage to speak for almost 14 minutes on the subject? Personally I wish it were longer, given how rampant unprofessional conduct has become. Also worth checking out is Sam Harris' interview with Jason Fried Episode #253 of Making Sense: Corporate Courage for a lucid argument about activism in the workplace. Especially if you disagree.

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The Markets of "Want" and "Is"

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 21:00:01 GMT

Can we agree in principle that we want to be sceptics? This episode is a hefty first step in trying to intelligence proof ourselves from being beguiled, bedazzled, bedecked in a foil hat... and good news! it's never been harder to be a sceptic.

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The Golden, Silver and Platinum Rules in Review

Sat, 27 Aug 2022 23:04:23 GMT

My first review of any heuristics, and this review comes in a convenient three pack. Here I hope to expound the superiority, once again of proscriptive over prescriptive. The articles I used to research 'the platinum rule' is here.

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4-way Irresponsibility

Sat, 27 Aug 2022 22:46:06 GMT

This is a deep dive into the archetypes of irresponsibility. Important, I feel, for anyone in customer service or management roles to be able to recognize in themselves and others. What I hope is having the 4 tactics pointed out to a listener, they can never not recognize them as and when they arise.

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Map-Ground Errors

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 21:00:00 GMT

Not one of mine, but a profound one that in the magical land of "should" - should not exist. I look at three types of 'maps' that can be mistaken for grounds - organizational charts, test scores, and GDP/GNP. Alas, map ground errors abound - like medallions on wine labels, laurels on movie posters, credit risk ratings, dating profiles. Just having the dichotomy of 'map-ground' error be salient in your mind can help you navigate the dangerous territory of life.

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Empathy's Value Is Measured by Distance

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 21:00:33 GMT

Empathy, empathy, empathy. One of the millenniums hottest buzzwords, and sometimes touted as a panacea for all of societies woes. But how to know if you're doing it right? Or at all? And if we're all doing it, how come it took so long to communicate the '1.5m rule' for physical distancing in the recent pandemic? This episode dives in.

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Not What, But How

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 23:10:53 GMT

I do not know how many employees share the frustration of hands on managers rendering their work redundant. But having had some time during the pandemic to manage a team that knew the ins-and-outs of their jobs far better than I could *aspire* to, I can testify this heuristic is a really useful one for managers to live by. Don't shirk your due diligence though: Read those reports!

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Hanlon's Razor

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 21:00:38 GMT

Hanlon's razor is a heuristic in the family of Occam's Razor* and in this episode I describe how I apply it, and try to argue it's benefits for mental health including a story about a cursed bank note. Something in here to turn off the lucrative conspiracy theory crowd.

*In the episode I mistakenly describe Occam's Razor as 'All else being equal, the simplest solution is most likely the correct one." it should be "explanation" not "solution."

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Don't Blame the Audience

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 21:00:22 GMT

My most ambitious offering yet, but relax the rule is simple. 'Don't blame the audience' is a self prohibition to avoid stagnating in our communications skills. In my experience blaming the audience is most likely an ego defense and need not be malicious, often it is a shrug of the shoulders and throwing hands up in the air. 'We've got the greatest product in the world, but nobody wants to listen.' Better than blaming the audience is asking them. So please comment.

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Assuming Inefficiency

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 21:00:16 GMT

In my fourth episode I open up a planning heuristic. "Assume Inefficiency" I couldn't find a poetic way to word it, however the wording is ironically, quite efficient at conveying its contents. Oh well 'failure must be an option' which in this case is efficiently getting the point across that assuming anything is optimally (or otherwise) efficient is generally a bad bet. Inspired by reading 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman and a lot of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

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The Fundamental Rule of Taking Risks

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 21:00:20 GMT

I was never going to go far into the heuristic woods without addressing risk taking. For a long time 'Don't risk something important, to gain something unimportant' was on the top of my list. It's certainly not the end of the discussion of risk, but for me it is certainly the beginning of any discussion on risk. Look forward to further episodes on this topic like 'The Greatest Risk is Taking No Risk At All.'

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Failure MUST Be An Option

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 00:51:13 GMT

Our first feature heuristic: 'Failure must be an option" What? That won't motivate the troops! Precisely. It won't motivate them to cut corners, beg, borrow and steal to get their way. Conducting business, and ourselves, ethically in an increasingly complex world is a difficult but admirable undertaking. Recognizing the necessary condition of failure will get you a long way towards that goal. In this episode I try to explain why. I might fail though, because 'Failure must be an option.'

btw. had I watched it before writing, recording and editing this episode I would have tightened up my duelling pistols analogy with it, highly recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfhVQ0YbixA Sandrhoman History's "How Duelling Worked in Early-Modern Europe"

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Introduction to Heuristics aka Rules of Thumb

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 00:08:52 GMT

The longest journey begins with a single step and the world of heuristics begins with a single thumb...that holds the dictionary open to the page that defines heuristics. What are heuristics and why should I care? Why does tohm care? Why would "Public Imbeciles" be a good thing? These questions and more answered in 10,000 Thumbs introductory episode.

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