Tag: Ed Smith

💎 On progress being made when you’re prepared to accept a decline in a metric others aren’t

The shift towards 3-point shots had broad consequences for overall basketball tactics. But without the original and founding insight – that the game had been too cautious in accepting the increased risk of missing the shot altogether – there would have been no great leap forward. Whenever someone innovates in business or in life,’ argues the poker player Caspar Berry, ‘they almost inevitably do so by accepting a negative metric that other people are unwilling to accept.’ (My emphasis.)

Excerpt from: Making Decisions: Putting the human back in the machine by Ed Smith

💎 On the importance of avoiding black and white thinking

The physicist Richard Feynman put it like this: ‘Statements of science are not of what is true and what is untrue, but statements of what is known to different degrees of certainty … Every one of the concepts of science is on a scale graduated somewhere between, but at neither end of, absolute truth and absolute falsity.’

Excerpt from: Making Decisions: Putting the human back in the machine by Ed Smith

💎 On the benefit of willing yourself into a state of relative indifference when it comes to negotiations

This is connected with the art of negotiation. The game theorist John Nash demonstrated that protagonists bargain more effectively when they are less needy. The less you fear not getting what you want, the more likely you are to get what you want. The logical conclusion follows: in any negotiation, your best strategy is an internal as well as external question. Can you ‘will’ yourself into a state of relative indifference, and thereby negate anxiety-induced neediness?

Excerpt from: Making Decisions: Putting the human back in the machine by Ed Smith