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Monday 30 July 2018

Thinking in Bets - Questions to examine the accuracy of our beliefs

Extract 3

1. Why might my belief not be true?

2. What other evidence might be out there bearing on my belief?

3. Are there similar areas I can look toward to gauge whether similar beliefs to mine are true?

4. What sources of information could I have missed or minimized on the way to reaching my belief?

5. What are the reasons someone else could have a different belief, what’s their support, and why might they be right instead of me?

6. What other perspectives are there as to why things turned out the way they did?


A good strategy for figuring out which way to bet would be to imagine if the outcome has happened to us. If a competitor closes a big sale, we know about our tendency to discount their skill. But if we imagine that we had been the one who closed the sale, we are more likely to find the things to give them credit for, that they did well and that we can learn from. Likewise, when we close the big sale, let’s spare a little of the self-congratulations and, instead, examine that great result the way we’d examine it if it happened to someone else.

Treating outcomes as bets constantly reminds us that outcomes are rarely attributable to a single cause and there is almost always uncertainty in figuring out the various causes. Identifying a negative outcome doesn’t have the same personal sting if you turn it into a positive by finding things to learn from it. You don’t have to be on the defensive side of every negative outcome because you can recognize, in addition to things you can improve, things you did well and things outside your control. You realise that not knowing is okay.

Friday 27 July 2018

On Imran Khan's Rigged Victory

Welcome to “New” Pakistan!


Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

Before the elections, every political party (except PTI), every foreign newspaper and every independent journalist had concluded that The Aliens, Khalai Makhluk, Agriculture Department, Miltablishment, Whatever, had conclusively pre-rigged the elections in an unprecedented manner. A day after the elections, every political party (except PTI), every foreign newspaper and every independent journalist has confirmed the finding. Before the elections, the Miltablishment, Supreme Court and Media were on trial. After the elections, the Election Commission of Pakistan has joined them in the dock.

The ECP claims that “the Remote Transmission System (RTS) broke down, hence the announcement of results was delayed by a few hours.” Was the RTS deliberately glitched because the Agriculture Department panicked when the opposition began to weigh in and something had to be done to get things back on track? Even if it was an unforeseen breakdown, this does not explain why the polling agents were kicked out while the votes were being tabulated or why such lengthy delays ensued.

In the next year or so, we should expect scores of petitions to be filed wherever the margin of PTI’s victory is less than 10,000 or thereabouts. Thousands of bags will be opened and hundreds of thousands of ballots recounted and thumbprints matched. Thousands of Form 45 will be scrutinized. But none of this huffing and puffing will bring Imran Khan’s house down because he is protected and propped up by the Miltablishment.

Imran Khan will be Prime Minister, he will choose the next President of Pakistan and the PTI will rule in Islamabad, KP and possibly even in Punjab while mounting stiff opposition to the PPP in Sindh. Why was such a sweeping victory required of it? What should we expect in the new Pakistan?

To be fair, Imran Khan cannot be denied his fair share of the voter, especially among the new youth, urbanising white-collar middle-class and rich. His prospects became brighter after he started to enroll “electables” regardless of the colour of their money or character. Equally, the PMLN, whatever its self-righteous claims or principles, was well and truly on a suicidal path. But electoral engineering on such a large scale was still necessary to provide legitimacy for a constitutional and political overhaul. What’s on the cards?

A State of Emergency could be imposed under the garb of financial necessity pinned to the alleged misdeeds of the previous regimes. The numbers in parliament will not be too difficult to get. Such an Emergency would restrict fundamental rights and pave the way for a witch hunt of political and media opponents in order to satisfy the bloodlust of the winners (IK has said he won’t do that), protect them from any potential buffeting by a disgruntled opposition and detract criticism from unpopular policy decisions or incompetent and corrupt mismanagement. If that happens, we should expect NAB, FIA, FBR and IB to get hyper active after all state institutions are brought on the same page.

The constitution may also be targeted for amendment. The 18th Amendment, for starters, has become irksome because it shaves the federal pool — which is required to pay for increasing defense expenditures and pensions— by devolving financial resources to the provinces. A need may also be felt to reduce the size and strength of Punjab in the scheme of things, especially since the development of a critical fissure in the historical pro-Miltablishment character of the province. Plans remain on the anvil to carve it up into three or more “units” that are politically more “manageable”.

But the “new dream team” that is lining up to run the “new Pakistan” will not find it easy going. The economy needs more than a shot in the arm. Hard times are upon us and the very middle-classes and rich that have catapulted Imran Khan to office will have to pay the price of their convictions. The value of their rupee is going to fall, so their everyday needs will become expensive; they will have to pay more indirect taxes and duties; and IMF structural reforms will dampen infrastructural growth and employment. This will give grist to the opposition, media and judiciary to stand up and create hurdles in his path.

Admittedly, the Miltablishment has stitched up an extraordinary political dispensation in difficult times. But, unlike Nawaz, the person they have chosen to lead it is strong-willed and unpredictable. In fact, Nawaz was eminently pliant. Yet, after a while, he felt compelled, given the nature of power, to try and be his own man. But this was unacceptable and he had to pay the price for even thinking such rash thoughts. Imran Khan, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish. He may have embraced the Miltablishment as a tactical move but sooner rather than later he will begin to challenge the conventional wisdom of the national security state handed down to him. That’s when all bets will be off.

Meanwhile, let us not spoil their honeymoon with grudging digs and pin pricks.

Thursday 26 July 2018

How do beliefs arise - Thinking in Bets – Making smarter decisions when you don’t have all the facts – by Annie Duke Part 2

Excerpts


How we think we form abstract beliefs:
1.       We hear something.
2.       We think about it and vet it, determining whether it is true or false; only after that.
3.       We form our belief.

We actually form abstract beliefs this way:
1.       We hear something.
2.       We believe it to be true.
3.       Only sometimes, later, if we have the time or the inclination, we think about it and vet it, determining whether it is, in fact, true or false.

If we were good at updating our beliefs based on new information, our haphazard belief formation process might cause us relatively few problems. Sadly, this is not the way it works. We form beliefs without vetting most of them and maintain them even after receiving clear, corrective information.

Truthseeking, the desire to know the truth regardless of whether the truth aligns with the beliefs we currently hold, is not naturally supported by the way we process information. We might think of ourselves as open-minded and capable of updating our beliefs based on new information, but the research conclusively shows otherwise. Instead of altering our beliefs to fit new information, we do the opposite, altering our interpretation of that information to fit our beliefs.

“We do not simply react to an event…. We behave according to what we bring to the occasion” (Hastorf and Cantrill). Our beliefs affect how we process all new things, ‘whether the thing is a football game, a presidential candidate, Communism or spinach.”

Once a belief is lodged, it becomes difficult to dislodge. It takes a life on its own, leading us to notice and seek out evidence conforming our belief, rarely challenge the validity of confirming evidence, and ignore or work hard to actively discredit information contradicting the belief. This irrational circular information processing pattern is called motivated reasoning.

Wednesday 25 July 2018

Thinking in Bets – Making smarter decisions when you don’t have all the facts – by Annie Duke

Some Excerpts


CHESS V POKER

- Chess, for all its strategic complexity, isn’t a great model for decision making in life, where most of our decisions involve hidden information and a much greater influence of luck.



- Poker, in contrast, is a game of incomplete information. It is a game of decision making under conditions of uncertainty over time. Valuable information remains hidden. There is always an element of luck in any outcome. You could make the best possible decision at every point and still lose the hand; because you don’t know what new cards will be dealt and revealed. Once the game is finished and you try to learn from the results, separating the quality of your decisions from the influence of luck is difficult.



- Incomplete information poses a challenge not just for split second decision making, but also for learning from past decisions. Imagine my difficulty in trying to figure out if I played my hand correctly when my opponents cards were never revealed for e.g. if the hand concluded after I made a bet and my opponents folded. All I know is that I won the chips. Did I play poorly and get lucky? Or did I play well?



- Life resembles poker, where all the uncertainty gives us the room to deceive ourselves and misinterpret the data.

- Poker gives us the leeway to make mistakes that we never spot because we win the hand anyway and so don’t go looking for them or

- The leeway to do everything right, still lose and treat the losing result as proof that we made a mistake. 



REDEFINING Wrong

- When we think in advance about the chances of alternative outcomes and make a decision based on those chances, it doesn’t automatically make us wrong when things don’t work out. It just means that one event in a set of possible futures occurred.



BACKCASTING AND PRE MORTEM



- Backcasting means working backwards from a positive future.

- When it comes to thinking about the future – stand at the end (the outcome) and look backwards. This is more effective than looking forwards from the beginning.

- i.e. by working backwards from the goal, we plan our decision tree in more depth.

- We imagine we’ve already achieved a positive outcome, holding up a newspaper headline “We’ve Achieved our Goal” Then we think about how we got there.

- Identify the reasons they got there, what events occurred, what decisions were made, what went their way to get to the goal.

- It makes it possible to identify low probability events that must occur to reach the goal You then develop strategies to increase the chances of such events occurring or recognizing the goal is too ambitious.

- You can also develop responses to developments that interfere with reaching the goal and identify inflection points for re-evaluating the plan as the future unfolds.



- Pre mortem means working backwards from a negative future.



- Pre mortem is an investigation into something awful but before it happens.



- Imagine a headline “We failed to reach our Goals” challenges us to think about ways in which things could go wrong.



- People who imagine obstacles in the way of reaching their goals are more likely to achieve success (Research p223)



- A pre mortem helps us to anticipate potential obstacles.



- Come up with ways things can go wrong so that you can plan for them



- The exercise forces everyone to identify potential points of failure without fear of being viewed as a naysayer.





- Imagining both positive and negative futures helps us to build a realistic plan to achieve our goals.

How to win an argument online


Friday 20 July 2018

Pakistan's Trials

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

Let’s face it. Whatever some may think of Nawaz Sharif’s omissions and however much others may hate him for his commissions, the fact remains that he has demonstrated the courage of his conviction that the unaccountable Miltablishment has no business interfering in the affairs of an elected government, much less in engineering its rise or fall.

Nawaz has held firm to this conviction since 1993 when he was dismissed from office, restored by the Supreme Court and then compelled to step aside. He met the same fate in 1999 and spent seven years in forced exile. Now he is behind the bars for the same “crime” (he insisted on putting General Pervez Musharraf on trial for treason and demanding an end to the politics of non-state actors in domestic and foreign policy). He could have spent another ten years in exile in the comfort of his luxury flats in London – much like Benazir Bhutto, General Musharraf or Altaf Hussain, closer to home, and Lenin, Khomeini and many others in historical time — and looked after his ailing wife. But he chose instead to return, along with his daughter, and go straight to jail “to honour the sanctity of the ballet box”.

This is an unprecedented political act with far reaching consequences. It has driven a spike in the Punjabi heartland of the Miltablishment and irrevocably degraded the ultimate source of its power and legitimacy. The provinces of Balochistan, Sindh and KP have witnessed outbursts of anti-”Punjabi Miltablishment” sub-nationalism from time to time but this is the first time in 70 years that a sizeable chunk of Punjab is simmering not against the “subversive” parties and leaders of other provinces but against its very own “patriotic” sons of the soil. This is that process whereby the social contract of overly centralized and undemocratic states is rent asunder. In that sense, it is the Miltablishment which is on trial.

Unfortunately, the judiciary, too, is on trial. In a democratic dispensation, it is expected to fulfil three core conditions of existence. First, to provide justice to lay citizens in everyday matters. Second, to uphold the supremacy of parliament. Third, to remain above the political fray as a supremely neutral arbiter between contending parties and institutions. On each count, tragically, it seems amiss. Hundreds of thousands of civil petitioners have been awaiting “insaf” for decades. The apex courts are making laws instead of simply interpreting them. And the mainstream parties and leaders are at the receiving end of the stick while “ladla” sons and militants are getting away with impunity. At some time or the other in the past or present, controversy has dogged one or more judges. But the institution of the judiciary is in the dock of the people today because it is perceived as aiding and abetting the erosion of justice, neutrality and vote-sanctity. In 2007, the “judicial movement for independence” erupted against an arbitrary act by a dictator against a judge. In that historical movement, the PMLN was fully behind the lawyers and judges. The irony in 2018, however, is that the same lawyers and judges are standing on the side of authoritarian forces against the PMLN.

The third “pillar” of the state – Media – is no less on trial. It is expected to “freely” inform the people so that they can make fair and unbiased choices. But it is doing exactly the opposite. A couple of media houses have succumbed to severe arm-twisting and opted to gag themselves; many have meekly submitted to censorship “advice”; most are silent for or blind for material gains. The proliferation of TV channels was meant to be a bulwark against authoritarian or unaccountable forces. But a failing economy and political uncertainty has pitted the channels against one other for the crumbs, which has given a leg up to those on the “right side” of the fence. At any rate, the corporatization of the media by big capitalist interests has served to protect the powerful at the expense of the weak.

Finally, the fourth pillar of the state — Parliament — is about to be stripped of its representative credentials. The castration of the two mainstream parties and their leaders is aimed at empowering one “ladla” leader and his party, a host of militant religious groups and a clutch of opportunist “independents” to storm the citadels of the legislature.

Is all hope lost? Are we collectively fated to be victims of a creeping authoritarian and unaccountable coup by the “pillars” of the state in tandem?

No. Sooner than later, the media and judiciary will begin to crack. Neither can survive by being “pro-government” for long. Every chief justice seeks to make his own mark on history as distinct from his predecessor and no judge can shrug away the weight of popular opinion for long. The electronic and print media, too, cannot allow social media to run away with independent digital news and analysis pegged to financial sources outside Pakistan.

Meanwhile, we, the people, must get ready to suffer.

Our job as scientists is to find the truth. But we must also be storytellers

Nick Enfield in The Guardian

Scientists often struggle to communicate the findings of research. Our subject matter can be technical and not easily digested by a general audience. And our discoveries – from a new type of tessellating pentagon to the presence of gravitational waves in space – have no meaning until that meaning can be defined and agreed upon. To address this, we are often advised to use the tools of narrative.






This advice is now found everywhere from training sessions to blogs to the most prominent scientific journals. An article in Nature magazine advises scientists to relate data to the world by using “the age-old custom of telling a story.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences cites the “increased comprehension, interest, and engagement” that narrative offers. And another study shows that writing in a narrative style increases uptake of scientific results.

What is a story? Here is screenwriting guru John Truby’s definition: “A speaker tells a listener what someone did to get what he wanted and why.” This is every Hollywood film. At the centre is a person with a well-defined goal. They pursue that goal, against the odds, and after various twists and turns the story comes to a satisfying end. Most importantly, as writer John Collee explains, a good story will have a meaning, a relatable moral with universal resonance for audiences.

How can scientists be expected to use storytelling when we are not trained in the craft? True, we are not professional screenwriters. But like everyone we are nevertheless well-practiced storytellers. When you tell someone about a frightening incident that happened on the bus to work, your narrative may be ordinary but it has the core elements of story: situation, complication, resolution, and most importantly, meaning. You are not just telling me what happened, you are telling me what it means to you, how you feel about it. And you are inviting me to feel the same. In this way, stories are one of our most important social bonding mechanisms.

So, what could be wrong with urging scientists to take advantage of our natural storytelling skills? In an article titled “Against storytelling of scientific results”, Yarden Katz explains that certain defining features of narrative – someone pursing a goal; a satisfying resolution that resolves this; a meaning that draws people in – are antithetical to key ideals and practices of scientific work.


Human beings, scientists included, have brains that are not evolved for dispassionate thinking

One objection is that, according to the scientific norm known as disinterestedness, scientists should not aim for any particular result. Our job is to find the truth. So, we should first establish the facts, and then use those facts to decide what our conclusions are. But too often, people have it the wrong way around. We start with our pre-established beliefs, and then look for evidence to support them. Another objection is that because science is a permanently unfinished line of business, there can be no satisfying endings.

Further, the scientist’s job is to inform, not persuade. Advice in Nature from authors Martin Krzywinski and Alberto Cairo seems to challenge this norm: “Maintain focus of your presentation by leaving out detail that does not advance the plot”; “inviting readers to draw their own conclusions is risky.” Most scientists would agree that this is going too far.

Katz’s concerns are well taken. But what should be done? Can we be truly dispassionate about what we are doing in science? There are reasons to think that even when we are operating in the rarefied atmosphere of scientific endeavor, we are never not wrapping our lives in stories.

Human beings, scientists included, have brains that are not evolved for dispassionate thinking. Bugs in our reasoning from the confirmation bias to the gambler’s fallacy make our natural thought processes deeply subjective and partial. And these are precisely the kinds of cognitive propensities that make storytelling stick so well. Even if an exemplary scientist has trained herself to be utterly objective, her audience will always bring their biased, story-gobbling minds.

This is why we have little choice but to apply the philosophy of judo to the problem of communicating scientific work and findings. Rather than struggle against cognitive biases, we need to work with them if we are going to keep them in check. Facts can be collected but they need to be interpreted. To interpret a fact is to give it meaning. And this is nothing other than storytelling. Only with a story can the facts be communicated, and only then can they become part of the received knowledge that drives the very possibility of scientific progress.

Scientists do not have the luxury of forgoing storytelling. We need not fear that storytelling will compromise our objectivity. If we believe that we have the right story, then we should tell it. Only then can it be evaluated. Because science is a collective enterprise, our stories will succeed when they are validated by broad agreement in our community.

It is our responsibility to become at least literate, if not masterly, in storytelling about our work. Our audiences need stories. So we must tell the right stories about our findings, if we are going to treat those findings with the respect they need.