Consider a low probability yet disastrous event, which has a 1% probability of happening. How does that risk feel? It depends… One thing this feeling depends on is the source of the information. A. Description by an expert: Say an expert is telling us about this risk. When we hear…

There’s a relatively new decision bias that’s rampant in business. We could call it the “machine learning illusion.” We don’t mean that machine learning isn’t useful. It clearly can be. From banking to medicine, we’re seeing the various benefits of this statistical tool in relevant decisions. Thanks to advances in…

The world is dealing with multiple major crises, which are causing daily struggles and uncertainties for all types of organizations. There’s also no shortage of other upcoming potential disasters due to worrying trends like climate change and resource constraints. Decision strategies that got us here won’t likely be of much…

“Failure is needed to become successful.” “Even the most successful people have failed.” “Don’t be afraid to fail.” A lot of self-help advice emphasizes the importance of failing. It grabs attention, sounds true, and aims to motivate decision makers to act. But like in most such generic advice, there are…

Are you usually polite? When are you not? Where do you draw the line? Are you always polite to those who are polite to you? What about those who are not polite to you? What about those you meet only once? Are you polite to waiters? Are you polite to…

When we plant a seed, we don’t expect to harvest the fruit immediately. When we go to school, we don’t receive the returns right away. If we wish to have a healthy body, we don’t get to achieve it instantly. Almost everything worthwhile in life takes will and effort. And…

How can you make others pay attention to, understand, and then possibly share your ideas? It’s not easy. There are a lot of ideas, but not enough time and attention. The topic and the product should be attractive. But that’s not enough. They should also be presented in a fascinating…

While circling Mars in 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft took pictures of its surface. It’s impossible not to see immediately the pattern on one of the images. It’s right there. The “Face on Mars” created much speculation about aliens and extraterrestrial life on the red planet. There must be a…

In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche warns that “partial knowledge is more often victorious than full knowledge: it conceives things as simpler than they are and therefore makes its opinion easier to grasp and more persuasive.” We rarely have all the information we need when we make decisions. This doesn’t…