[HN Gopher] The Decision Book: Fifty models for strategic thinki...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The Decision Book: Fifty models for strategic thinking (2019)
        
       Author : walterbell
       Score  : 148 points
       Date   : 2023-01-28 08:04 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
        
       | AstixAndBelix wrote:
       | 50???
       | 
       | this man doesn't seem to be aware of decision fatigue
        
       | wiz21c wrote:
       | FTA: The rightness of a decision will vary with time, what seems
       | wrong today may in the future seem to have been the right
       | decision
       | 
       | ah ah ah. That's the easy case. Things get into problems when
       | what sounded right yesterday now feels completely wrong.
       | 
       | There are so many variables and people are not completely dumb so
       | that usually, any decision will do. The trick is to be able to
       | convince others that you are right (and that happens mostly in an
       | irrational space); before and after the decision is/was taken...
        
         | Swizec wrote:
         | Like when I sold 2 BTC at the first peak in ~2013. Oops.
         | 
         | BUT that $1200 represented a 400% gain, paid my rent (which I
         | was short for), and it took almost 5 years for bitcoin to come
         | back to the same value. Would it have been better to wait until
         | 2021? Yes. Was it a bad decision? Not at all.
        
           | troebr wrote:
           | I don't play poker, but it's interesting there that the right
           | play (because sound statistically) can make you lose the
           | game. Over time a player that makes better decisions will
           | come out on top.
           | 
           | It makes me think sometimes about how the right decision can
           | still end up exploding in your face: it was the best decision
           | with the information at your disposal at the time.
        
             | Swizec wrote:
             | > the right decision can still end up exploding in your
             | face
             | 
             | Nassim Taleb talks about this a lot - never risk ruin.
             | 
             | Because yes, _on average_ it works out in the long run, but
             | _you_ are not average, _you_ have 1 playthrough. Before you
             | can win, you have to survive.
        
               | seanhunter wrote:
               | Risk of ruin doesn't apply in poker decision-making
               | except in the "metagame" (ie which stakes you play and
               | how much you actually put on the table etc).
               | 
               | In hands themselves poker is played for "table stakes"
               | (ie in a given hand you can only lose the chips that are
               | in front of you at the beginning of that hand). Because
               | of the table stakes rule, avoiding risk of ruin in poker
               | is literally as simple as keeping some money as cash and
               | not putting it on the table.
               | 
               | The thing that happens in movies where someone makes a
               | bet their opponent can't call so they throw the deeds to
               | their house/title to their gold mine/keys to their car
               | into the pot literally can't happen in poker. You can
               | only bet what you have on the table at the beginning of
               | the hand and if you call all-in (all those chips) you get
               | to see the hand to conclusion regardless of what the
               | opponent bet.
        
             | fronterablog wrote:
             | Oh, indeed.
             | 
             | Annie Duke (professional poker player) had a great book on
             | this called "Thinking in Bets."
             | 
             | The main idea is that good decisions can create bad
             | outcomes. And bad decisions can create good ones (because
             | of luck).
             | 
             | So she suggests making decisions by calculating expected
             | value like a poker player. And separating the outcome from
             | the quality of the decision.
        
           | monksy wrote:
           | Was this a bad decision or a good decision?
           | 
           | If you didn't pay rent, how would that have influenced your
           | future to where you're at today?
           | 
           | 400% Gain is a lot. How often do you think that 400% gains
           | come arround, and how would you feel if the evaluation today
           | was -50%?
           | 
           | I think the major lession here was: Have a backup reserve in
           | which you can tap into to prevent from needing to liquidate
           | higher risk assets.
        
       | totetsu wrote:
       | Oh I bought this book many years ago. Its a family members
       | bookshelf somewhere.
        
         | Swizec wrote:
         | Got it as a present 4 to 5 years ago. It's been in my to-read
         | pile ever since.
         | 
         | Looks promising. But never quite enough to get started
        
       | walterbell wrote:
       | If these are too fluffy, here's an older (1305) mental model,
       | https://socks-studio.com/2021/11/03/constructing-knowledge-t...
       | 
       |  _> Catalan polymath, Ramon Llull was the first person to
       | conceive a device able to externalise the human mind. In his
       | seminal opus, the Ars Magna, Llull conceived a series of figures
       | that could replicate the mental ability to connect information in
       | order to acquire knowledge. Thanks to these studies, he is
       | considered a precursor of artificial intelligence research.
       | 
       | > The Llullian figures, a series of instruments that organise and
       | place concepts into relationships, exploit the ability of
       | geometry to produce interconnections on two-dimensional, paper
       | surfaces. They employ lines, concentric shapes, ladders and
       | frames bearing a visual quality similar to that of architectural
       | plans ... it revealed an intrinsic potential to work as a "logic
       | machine", an instrument producing knowledge in different fields
       | through multiple combinations of ideas. Llull constructed the
       | very first demonstration that showed that human way of thinking
       | could be imitated by a device._
        
         | mooneater wrote:
         | In those images I see: - complete graphs (the triangle
         | matrices) - incomplete graphs (the circular ones with only some
         | segments conntected)
         | 
         | And those are excellent ways to visualize these types of
         | objects.
         | 
         | He built knowledge graphs.
        
         | kindalikeright wrote:
         | This reminds me of The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game
         | 
         | But also of this:
         | 
         | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9752.1...
        
       | ChildOfChaos wrote:
       | I find models are great and all, but in the end to me it's just
       | intellectual pornography, when it comes time to make choices, i
       | don't have the mental capacity or brain bandwidth to start
       | running through 50 different models that i once read about to try
       | and figure out what is the best choice, that's just too
       | exhausting.
        
       | iamsanteri wrote:
       | What's your favorite here?
        
       | black_13 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | emehex wrote:
       | I really didn't enjoy this book. Too fluffy for me.
       | 
       | Better alternatives: The Model Thinker, or Algorithms to Live By!
        
         | arnejenssen wrote:
         | Agree. I felt i could have written it better myself.
        
         | fronterablog wrote:
         | Algorithms to Live By is a good book.
         | 
         | But my favorite is Antifragile from Taleb.
        
         | chrisweekly wrote:
         | ATLB was a game-changer for me; highly recommended!
        
       | MountainMan1312 wrote:
       | Keeping knowledge behind a paywall is a crime against humanity.
       | Here's a link to a free PDF of the book OP linked:
       | https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781846683954
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-01-31 23:01 UTC)