Pay more attention to whether the decision-making system is fair than whether you get your way.
Source: Ray Dalio's Book Principles
Disagreeing must be done efficiently.
1. Know when to stop debating and move on to agreeing about what should be done. 2. Use believability weighting as a tool rather than a substitute for decision making by Responsible Parties. 3. Since you don’t have the time to thoroughly
Recognize that everyone has the right and responsibility to try to make sense of important things.
1. Communications aimed at getting the best answer should involve the most relevant people. 2. Communication aimed at educating or boosting cohesion should involve a broader set of people than would be needed if the aim were just getting the best answer.
Understand how people came by their opinions.
1. If you ask someone a question, they will probably give you an answer, so think through to whom you should address your questions. 2. Having everyone randomly probe everyone else is an unproductive waste of time. 3. Beware of statements that
Think about whether you are playing the role of a teacher, a student, or a peer and whether you should be teaching, asking questions, or debating.
1. It’s more important that the student understand the teacher than that the teacher understand the student, though both are important. 2. Recognize that while everyone has the right and responsibility to try to make sense of important things, they must do
Find the most believable people possible who disagree with you and try to understand their reasoning.
1. Think about people’s believability in order to assess the likelihood that their opinions are good. 2. Remember that believable opinions are most likely to come from people 1) who have successfully accomplished the thing in question at least three times, and
Recognize that having an effective idea meritocracy requires that you understand the merit of each person’s ideas.
1. If you can’t successfully do something, don’t think you can tell others how it should be done. 2. Remember that everyone has opinions and they are often bad. Source: Ray Dalio's Book Principles
Availability Bias
“People tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.” Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
Loss Aversion
“People’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains.” (related: diminishing marginal utility) - Gabriel Weinberg "In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it's better to not lose $5
Sunk Cost
“A cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered.” (related: “throwing good money after bad”, “in for a penny, in for a pound”) Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful