Decision theory- books and resources

[rayfinkle]

I just listened to this podcast. It had some fascinating anecdotes about processes to make decisions. Does anyone have interesting books, etc. to get deeper on this? For example, I've read a bunch on similar topics and this podcast introduced me to a concept that was net new to me.

 

Thanks all!

[Spooky]

Highly recommend Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.

[james22]

Everything Taleb.

[jfan]

Daniel Kahneman, who many are familiar with. Pioneered the concept of System 1 and System 2, along with risk aversion bias, base rates, etc.

 

Gerd Gigerenzer, is quoted less in general media, but a really big academic in the world of heuristics and decision-making in wicked environments.

 

Gary Klein has done alot of qualitative research on naturalistic decision making by experts and intuition. He has also done work on guided learning via case scenarios. He also has a structured way of conducting pre-mortems in groups.

 

Phil Tetlock and his superforecasting book. (Fermi method, starting with base rates, adjusting priors, successful group forecasting)

 

Garrett Hardin's Filters against Folly is classic.

 

Shane Parrish has a whole collection of writing on decision making, utility of journaling, and has a course on decision making. 

 

Alot of focus by the above is on the cognitive aspects of decision-making. Less is focused on the affective side. I haven't found alot of good sources but Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir is really good on understanding how environmental and social stresses can affect cognitive bandwidth. Robert Cialdini's Pre-suasion book is also great as well.

 

Hope this helps.

[weighingmachine]

"Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser" by Dan Levy

 

"Investing in the Unknown and Unknowable" by Richard Zeckhauser

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/rzeckhauser/files/investing_in_unknown_and_unknowable.pdf

[nafregnum]

+1 to Shane Parrish and his "Knowledge Project" podcast, as well as his "The Great Mental Models" books.

 

A real classic, something I consider to be a class in "defense against the dark arts" for decision making, is "Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini.  

 

https://smile.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-New-Expanded/dp/0063138808

 

One more book I really enjoyed is "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer.  It apparently went out of print and is expensive now, but you can probably find it at libraries.  Each chapter started with a very memorable story to introduce the concept.

 

https://smile.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0618620117

 

[rayfinkle]

great recs, thank you! good fodder for reading list.

[jfan]

On 9/19/2022 at 9:17 AM, weighingmachine said:

"Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The wisdom of legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser" by Dan Levy

 

"Investing in the Unknown and Unknowable" by Richard Zeckhauser

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/rzeckhauser/files/investing_in_unknown_and_unknowable.pdf

thanks for this paper. I read this a while ago but got more out of it second, third time around

[JAK]

On 9/19/2022 at 7:56 PM, nafregnum said:

+1 to Shane Parrish and his "Knowledge Project" podcast, as well as his "The Great Mental Models" books.

 

A real classic, something I consider to be a class in "defense against the dark arts" for decision making, is "Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini.  

 

https://smile.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-New-Expanded/dp/0063138808

 

One more book I really enjoyed is "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer.  It apparently went out of print and is expensive now, but you can probably find it at libraries.  Each chapter started with a very memorable story to introduce the concept.

 

https://smile.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0618620117

 

Based on this suggestion, I searched Amazon France for "How We Decide". Picked up a pristine used hardback for $10, compared with $30 on the US site. Not sure about import taxes, but thought I'd mention it in case anyone is looking for one. Only two chapters in, but I like it so far. Good call! Thanks!

[flesh]

Against the gods, plus one on taleb books and superforecasting and kahneman. Between all those you should be securely feeling insecure about whether your

presumed knowledge is actually belief. Or if maybe everything is.