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The evil moneylender

The evil moneylender

Your father has taken a loan from an ugly and old moneylender, who invites you and your father to his farm. He proposes that he would forgo the debt if you marry him. You and your father are horrified by the suggestion.
He informs that he would put a black and a white pebble into an empty money bag. The girl will choose, if she picks the black pebble, she would become his wife and debt would be forgiven. If she picks the white, she need not marry him and debt would still be forgiven. But if she refuses to pick a pebble, her father would be sent to the jail. The law permits immediate jail term in case of loan default.
While walking on the pebble strewn path, he picks up two pebbles. You notice that he picked up two black pebbles and he put them into the bag.
Now he invites you to pick a pebble from the bag.
What will you do?
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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