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Opportunity to profit

Opportunity to profit

Monkey menace is a big nuisance in your village. An entrepreneur and his assistant set up a shop. The owner announces $5 for every monkey brought to him.
The villagers catch few monkeys. Every monkey deposited, gets them $5. Over next few weeks, the monkey population dwindles. The owner decides to raise the price to $10 per monkey to reward the increased effort.
Over next 2 months, very few monkeys are left. Now it takes couple of days to catch even a single monkey. The cage is almost full. The owner announces his visit to the city to get a bigger cage and raises the price to $35 for every monkey once the bigger cage arrives.
In absence of the owner, few villagers strike a deal with the assistant to buy some monkeys at $15 and sell back monkey at $35 once the bigger cage arrives. The news spreads, people rush to the assistant to strike a deal before the owner returns tomorrow.
How many monkeys will you buy and at what price?
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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