Lessons from blackjack

“History would teach us it is better to fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally”
– John Maynard Keynes

Watched the movie 21 who was actually based on a dude named Jeff Ma (Chinese American baby, whoo hoo). Found an interesting talk he did at Google recently

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AtGoogleTalks#p/u/15/uMxnxifmsuw

The types of behavioral tricks we play on ourselves was fascinating:

– Confirmation bias – bad outcome = bad decision doesn’t mean its true, separate decision from outcome because you happen to be unlucky. Try to replay decision in your head 1000s of times and be in position to make good decisions many times.

– Cognitive bias – Loss aversion, we are more impacted by loss (people sell into a rising stock because afraid of it going down) – make decision from a “true zero” standpoint

– Omission bias – people favor status quo over making active decision, must think of decision vs indecision equally

– Groupthink – decisions influenced by people thinking you are an idiot pressure to go with the group, even if it means walking off a cliff together