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How will we break free?

How will we break free?

There is an old story told..
A passer-by sees a big elephant with a short rope around its leg tied to a small peg.
The trainer explains to the man that the elephant has become conditioned and has learnt that it can’t break free from chain. As a young elephant, every time it struggled to break free from the rope, it would hurt its leg.
Now even as a grown up elephant tied on the same rope, it does not dare break free.
What have we learnt to give up without trying?
How can we avoid it?
Photo Adaptation https://pixabay.com/vectors/elephant-rope-tied-up-drawing-304777/
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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