How to Make Better Decisions
Filed under Psychology, 9 Comments,
We are bad at making decisions. According to science, our decisions are based on oversimplification, laziness and prejudice.
And that’s assuming that we haven’t already been hijacked by our surroundings or led astray by our subconscious!
Featuring exclusive footage of experiments that show how our choices can be confounded by temperature, warped by post-rationalisation and even manipulated by the future, Horizon presents a guide to better decision making, and introduces you to Mathematician Garth Sundem, who is convinced that conclusions can best be reached using simple maths and a pencil! (Excerpt from bbc.co.uk)
Part 1
Part 2
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September 4th, 2009 at 06:18
If you’d want to know what decision to make according to math, you’d almost need to know the position and velocity of EVERY atom in the universe, but that’s impossible, since you can’t know the position ANNNND the velocity of anything at the same time.
September 6th, 2009 at 15:49
Fascinating information.
Indeed the human mind may be the ultimate fronteir to explore.
As for conscious decision making tools I have always taught 3 to help knowledge workers make better decisions.
1 The Benjamin Franklyn test. A simple pro/con either or model, but puts you way further ahead than when you don’t use any tool at all.
2. Mind mapping (allows you to do a mind dump, see the big picture, see parts of the puzzle, and also enlist brainstorming. Developed by Tony Buzan http://www.buzanworld.com or http://www.mindmap.com
3. 80/20 Rule 20% of your items give you 80% of your success, focus on the 20. IE: 20% of your thinking gives you 80% of the results. :>)
The biggest decison… to use the tools or not :>)
October 29th, 2009 at 06:53
Amazing show. Great information. This certainly changed my perspective on making decisions
October 30th, 2009 at 18:24
Very helpful information, only to start us to think about making decisions and how we stick to them later on.
Each message in the movie provokes new questions and is a research subject of its own.
For example, how much emotional center(amygdala) and reasoning center (frontal cortex) of the brain contribute to decision making and, to the quality of the outcome?
Is precognition a form of premonition, such that, humans actually can see the near future as well as a few seconds ahead? When does a premonition turn into a vision that actually shapes it?
And, yes, in how may different ways can we be manipulated by subliminal signals and messages? How much of our decisions are based on subconscious content and how much are really made consciously? I bet ya, for most of us, much basis of decision making resides in the subconscious. But, do we dare to study ‘consciousness’? Or are we lost in scientific bigotry to take on brave subjects like that?
November 6th, 2009 at 05:12
I didnt even watch past the six minute mark, 1st off the guy that says that he can get you a date doesn’t wear a helmet on his bike, what kind of “good decision” making does he have,
and second off, if your really smart and you want to pick up women you should look at documentaries about Pick Up Artists, for example the mystery method
November 27th, 2009 at 18:36
This vid mixes some legitimate ideas (prospect theory, priming) with bullshit (“math” guy’s formulas, psychics). Overall, a rather mediocre documentary.
December 4th, 2009 at 13:05
there was one instant where they contradicted themselves. They said at the beginning that you need to make decisions without being emotional or without thinking before acting (the betting example or the shoes picking), and then at the end they tell us that intuition should be trusted (the pilots example) “where we can actually predict the near future”..that’s what i hate about many documentaries like this where they lay out some great new idea at the beginning and grab your attention only to dismiss it (i dont know if it was intentional) towards the end..
January 23rd, 2010 at 16:34
excellent. part 2 sometimes doesn’t show image ?
January 29th, 2010 at 08:39
I agree with Clray. Mixing in precognition is just silly and there was wayyy too much cred given to our wacky math professor. His equations were such a sideshow. What a gimmick. A grade 3 student’s conception of odds would yield the same thing. Am I better looking than her? Is she fairly drunk? (let’s hope a grade 3 never asks this one…) Have any other guys hit on her? Looks like I have a chance. You don’t need algebra for that one, folks. You don’t even need grade 4.
I’d also like to take a peek at the COMPLETE data for that hot/cold drink experiment. And what kind of experiment let’s a confederate ask questions when he has an obvious bias? tsk tsk. The slightest difference in facial expression is all it would take to lean the interviewee in one direction or the next. It might not be the drink at all. It just might be the interviewer.
By far the most fascinating part of the doc was the card trick/faces thing. Watching people justify a choice they did not make was really interesting. But the doc should have mentioned that this would only work when the faces are quite similar. If the question was ‘which person is more attractive?’ There is no way I’d confuse an ugly girl and a beautiful girl.
what’s crucial here is that the individuals are close enough in appearance that the differences between them are negligible, or that the interviewee’s decision is whimsical and not based on anything substantial.