A Self-Made Billionaire Uses This Easy Trick for Decisions | Hacker News Reader

A Self-Made Billionaire Uses This Easy Trick for Decisions

time.com

38 pointscharlieirish47 comments

Interestingly this really is a click bait title, rather than the usual one that we misidentify identify as such as "Ten Ways a Programming Language is like a Religion."

This time.com title encourages you to click it with the bait of finding out who the billionaire is, the implication that they became self-made because of this easy trick and not stating the trick. Thus it is bait to lure a user in.

The misdiagnosed versions state exactly what the topic is about but encourages you with the promise of good content. The sting the user gets is that they notice that it is bad content, and the user reacts based on their experience.

In summary, a click bait title, like in this submission is a finely crafted memetic call. The more common observed "click bait" articles are more disappointing in content.

Click bait is about the click, not the content.

My response to this kind of article is I clicked to read the comments but not on the article. Comments don't indicate anything all that interesting in the article, so I won't bother to click on the article.

And yeah, it is a very click-baity title. "One weird decision-making trick you can use to become a billionaire!" would be another phrasing of it.

Would like to disagree on that... If you saw an article, for example 'FTL travel is possible'. You think 'Oh lol wtf, impossible' but you still click on it.

Inside you find a clear well-formed proof and whatever else you need to believe that it is indeed possible. Does that qualify as a clickbait as well?

> Inside you find a clear well-formed proof and whatever else you need to believe that it is indeed possible. Does that qualify as a clickbait as well?

No, and you stated why: The article delivers on its promise. If you had said instead "Inside you find a theory suggested by a discredited maniac who scribbles nonsense on his psych ward walls" then yes, it would have been click bait.

Click bait is about the click, not the content.

Which is why I don't click in the first place. Professional writers know exactly when their title looks like cheap crap. If they use it anyway, I'm just not their audience. If the content were legit they would have better ways of wrapping it.

A chap I know uses a 'trick' to help him make decisions - he doesn't make them unless they're important. In a restaurant he'll just tell the waiter to bring him something good. In a bar he'll go for whatever is closest. And so on. The theory, called ego depletion[1], says that you have a limited amount of energy for making decisions and once you use it up you'll find it much harder to make good choices. My friend sold his first company for upwards of $100m, so maybe there's something to it.

I've tried it but I found it incredibly hard. I want to feel in control over the little things too much.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

> In a restaurant he'll just tell the waiter to bring him something good.

I've seen people do this, and my first thought is "what happens when the waiter brings him something he's allergic to?" The patron didn't make the conscious decision to order that specific food, which makes me think the restaurant is now open to a lawsuit. If I were the waiter in that scenario, I'd ask the patron if he's allergic to any of the foods the restaurant serves, which would probably ruin his ego depletion game but would at least cover the restaurant (hopefully) if he then succumbs to his dinner.

If you're allergic to something and you tell a waiter to just bring you anything I think you have about 100% of the responsibility all by your lonesome and if you sue the restaurant from that situation I sincerely hope that you not only lose but will be forced to cough up the legal fees for the defending party.

I'd like to think you are correct, but (at least here in the United States) I can see the lawsuits piling up. People here sue over spilled coffee, it's not out of the realm of possibility.

The "spilled coffee" case was not a frivolous lawsuit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaur...

The woman suffered third-degree burns _to where bone was exposed_ on her groin and legs from coffee served at a negligently high temperature:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

This wasn't some get rich quick scheme or frivolity. The settlement money paid for a live-in nurse for the rest of her life.

If he was allergic to anything, surely he wouldn't make the request?

I love beer but generally dislike lagers (or at least american style lagers), so I'll often ask for a mystery beer and specify "anything except for a lager." I've truly yet to be disappointed. It's hard to imagine you couldn't do the same with food.

I'm not sure how looking at a menu for 30 seconds makes a massive difference in your life. I'm definitely a person who tries to look at the big picture and not get bogged down in details, but this just seems like laziness.

Meanwhile, the book being touted on the article does not have a Kindle version. Not really great for a book touted for quick decision makers on the go.

Agreed. It's like the recent fad of people wanting to own only one outfit repeated 10 times so they don't have to "choose" what clothes to wear.

Picking clothes can be as simple as a 10 second decision on a par with deciding whether to take a pee here or wait until I get to my destination.. andI ain't wearing a diaper to take away that decision ;-)

A similar trick I've sometimes used to pull myself out of analysis paralysis (or "death by choice") is to toss a coin or roll a die - then often I find I either just go with the random choice or suddenly have a specific preference for the other. Either that or soon down the randomly chosen path I find an issue and restart on another path - but starting at random highlighted that key decision making point I was previously not seeing.

It sounds glib, and doesn't always work, but sometimes it is surprisingly effective. When it doesn't work you are in no worse position than you started.

"Ego depletion" is probably related to/is the same as the articles I've seen on how willpower is something that you can fatigue/exhaust. No wonder it is hard to have willpower in modern society, when you need so much of it (because so much is just right there).

People with the least power tend to desire assertion of control of minutia and others (probably a sizable portion of LEOs). By contrast, people with more power delegate and are fine to live with the decision of others because it doesn't matter. It's like the guy that won't pull over and ask for directions, or the small coffee shop that has a key to use a restroom (permission-based, control-freak culture, e.g., dog people) instead of an internal lock (delegation, freedom, e.g., cat people).

Wasted energy is the absence of strategic laziness.

If ordering "something good" is too bold for anyone's taste, try this: Look at the menu, but as soon as you see something good stop reading and order that. Then sip on your water while everyone else at your table re-reads the menu five times...

Excellent Aeon article on randomness in decisionmaking:

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/is-the-most-rational-choi...

When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the dark

As moderns, we take it for granted that the best decisions stem from a process of empirical analysis and informed choice, with a clear goal in mind. That kind of decision-making, at least in theory, undergirds the ways that we choose political leaders, play the stock market, and select candidates for schools and jobs. It also shapes the way in which we critique the rituals and superstitions of others. But, as the Kantu’ illustrate, there are plenty of situations when random chance really is your best option. And those situations might be far more prevalent in our modern lives than we generally admit.

So we went from one hard problem (the decision itself), to another another harder problem (ranking things on a scale).

No, we went from one big unwieldy problem to several smaller more manageable problems.

That's true of some decisions, but not all. It's a divide-and-conquer strategy. In some situations, ranking would be easier than the decision itself otherwise would be. In others, the method wouldn't necessarily be easier, but it would be more accurate. For weighty decisions, accuracy trumps ease.

You might also find Charlie Munger's mental models useful:

http://www.thinkmentalmodels.com/

Too bad it only works with iPhone. Is there a android / web book for this?

Check out, "Poor Charlie's Almanac" by Peter D. Kaufman [1].

Also this essay [2] is a good intro.

[1] https://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/

[2] http://www.focusinvestor.com/FocusSeriesPart3.pdf

I usually just flip a coin. If I have considered a problem for a significant amount of time and still have not come to a conclusion, it probably means that the two sides of an argument probably has equal weight and it doesn't matter which I choose. On the other hand, if I see the coin has landed on heads and I suddenly don't want to go through with the coin's choice, it probably means that I knew all along which was the better choice for me.

An optimization is to notice which side you wish the coin lands at before it lands.

So HN now contains click-bait links that are not sarcastically click-baity titled, but are actual trash links without substance? Who upvotes this? Can we make a system where a mod would honey-pot users who upvote titles like this, black list them and make their upvotes not count?

If you want something like that but with more rigor check out http://lesswrong.com/lw/gu1/decision_theory_faq/.

The summary is by Shane Parrish. I can really recommend his site Farnam Street http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/ for lots of good summaries.

Would be nice to use for political elections! So that the least hated / most liked candidate gets elected.

When was the last time you elected someone you didn't like or did hate?

I mean the average among all voters. It relates to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

See how the "Cookie Consent" button overlays the "scroll down" button?

Don't do that.

See the "Cookie Consent"?

Don't do that.

My understanding is that under some interpretations of recently still valid EU regulations it's legally required to have some sort of explicit cookie notification and consent.

I'm willing to be corrected, and specific references would be especially valuable.

I don't think it's as important any more. They relaxed the rules a bit.

I ignored them from day 1 and I'm fairly confident in that this will not lead to any trouble on my part. The best ones are the websites that block access until you've clicked the 'I agree' button without an 'I disagree' option (that still allows you to view the content).

Shift-ctrl-P should be the default anyway.

Please give a source about that perceived relaxation.

Please always give a source when writing about things on the internet.

http://www.theeucookielaw.com/

or more technical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Privacy_and_Elect...

The UK requires a cookie-consent to be accepted before any tracking is performed. Caused a bit of an uproar a year or two ago but nobody seems to mind now.

The simple and correct response to this is to not track people.

Which would immediately shut down every web site you don't pay for.

Clearly they didn't read the article before making the decision.

Why not go the full distance and use the analytical hierarchy process?

"Decision-makers hate it."

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