242. Biases -- Math Is Hard (Refreshed Episode)

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today’s episode is one that originally aired on June 14, 2019, as part of an 8-part series I called “All the Biases” which took hundreds of biases and sorted them into different categories. Because our brains are complex interconnected webs, this could have been done in many ways and the biases mentioned could belong in multiple areas. I selected groupings based on what I thought would make the most sense to this audience and applying the information about our biased brains into business. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This episode goes through a lot of concepts at a very high level. Unlike the foundations episodes of the podcast, which sometimes have a full hour dedicated to a full concept, many of these will get a sentence or only a few points. This episode is more about bringing your attention to the concepts, what is out there, and to scratch the surface of the complexity of our brains. I chose this episode as the refresh for this week because it mentions ambiguity and uncertainty aversion, which is the topic for this coming Friday’s brand new foundations episode, so it felt like a nice way to set the stage for that. Ready to dig in on all the biases? Let’s go…</span></p> <h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">Show Notes:</span></h3> <ul> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">[00:39] Today’s episode is one that originally aired on June 14, 2019, as part of an 8-part series I did called “All the Biases” which sorted hundreds of biases into different categories.</span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">[03:14] Our brains are lazy and they like to take the path of least resistance to get to what they believe to be a good enough answer as quickly as possible.  </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">[04:51] Because we are particularly lazy with math, we rely on the source of whatever is thrown our way. The brain would rather risk being wrong than take the time to do the numbers in everyday interactions. </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">