'How to Expect the Unexpected' Review: Stop Thinking Straight | Hacker News Reader

'How to Expect the Unexpected' Review: Stop Thinking Straight

wsj.com

24 pointslxm7 comments

What is amusing is that he goes on to prove his own point, when saying that Trump benefited from the underdog effect. The best pollsters had him at about 40% to win (538).

That is an underdog win. But far from an unexpected win.

Overall: Think sideways? No. Think for yourself.

Also if the entire world is going one way... and you think differently. Stop a moment and ask someone: Am I crazy or is the world crazy and lay out your logic. You may discover... the world is crazy.

In a world with so much cargo-culting etc. Insanity is around the bend.

https://archive.ph/m3FqT

I find there’s a straightforward method to thinking sideways - look at what everybody else is doing, and do the exact opposite, or at the very least, head off on a tangent. People talk about the wisdom of crowds, but in general, as a population increases, the net intelligence of decisions decreases. Buy when everybody is selling, sell when everyone is buying, and if people tell you your idea is crazy and terrible, it’s almost certainly a good one. Likewise, if people think your idea is good, it’s probably mundane at best.

There's a simpler point, though: if everyone is going one way, even if they're right it's still hard to get ahead of that curve; you don't have to be cynical about everyone, just notice what a bell curve looks like as the population increases. By diverting even a little you can get into a space where it's easier to standout, without having to go full retro - after all, sometimes the crowd is actually running from the tsunami :-)

Personally I find my own most innovative ideas come when I don't consider what other people think at all, but just look at the problem domain and try to really get inside the dynamics or constraints of the problem and then try to solve that.

Also, really unclear how you can look at human history and conclude that the intelligence of our decisions are decreasing. I'm not aware of any domain where people now don't outperform the past significantly. Even today's run of the mill violin players are equal to the virtuosi of the past. We've mostly gotten rid of slavery and war; have far excelled any prior time for medicine. Science is still doubling every decade or what ever it is. Even our propaganda is more effective - never before have there been so many organizations dedicated to a flat earth.

I don’t mean population as a whole, I mean sample population. 1000 people will act with less intelligence than 100.

Yet a billion people with have better mathematicians and software makers than 1000 people.

You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.

Likewise, you're not opposing the crowd, you are part of the mechanism of a shifting and unpredictable crowd.

It's not an uncommon experience, when seeing a crowd one would like to avoid, to take an action that leads to another smaller crowd.

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