Story

Fold a paper

Fold a paper

Your youngest son challenges you to guess the thickness!
Your son is back from the school. He looks very excited and runs towards you. Pulls out a paper and hands over to you.
He asks you to fold the paper in two half, then in half again, again and again.
He wants to know how thick it will be after 50 folds?
Photo Adaptation /Flickr/71344537@N07
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Abhinav
Abhinav
To calculate the thickness of the paper after 50 folds, we first need to know the thickness of the sheet of paper. Considering the thickness is X cm. After each fold, the thickness increases by 2. Hence the final thickness after 50 folds would be (2^50)*X cm.

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The mistakes we make in our everyday life

• We are hardwired to make these mistakes • Few biases are simply evolutionary • These errors affect all of us including the bright ones • Experience is just not enough to overcome • but expertise is required to recognize and overcome

Few of biases as below · Anchoring - When an individual depends too heavily on an initial piece of information during decision making · Fixed pie - When we assume that our interests conflict with the other party's interests and we play adversarial · Framing - When we decide on our options differently when the options are presented with positive or negative connotations · Vividness – When we pay attention to strong features at the expense of less, that could be more impactful · Over confidence – When our subjective confidence is greater than the objective accuracy · Escalation – When initial decision is followed up with an irrational decision to justify the initial decision

Few ways to mitigate these biases are · Learn to recognize the bias · Use slow, effortful and logical thinking (System 2) · Avoid fast, automatic and effortless thinking (System 1) · Avoid negotiations which are thrust upon when not ready · Learn through use of stories, examples, exercises · Bring an outsider perspective