We put knowledge into silos
But there’s value in the wisdom that comes from “thinking like” someone else (from the work of @ShaneAParrish @JamesClear @ScottAdamsSays )
Think like a behavioral psychologist: what are the incentives? What are the relevant cognitive biases in play? What are the second order effects
Like an evolutionary biologist: what are the underlying motivations?
Like an economist: what are the cost/benefits, what are the assumptions? What’s supply and demand?
Like a scientist: skeptical of co-incidence, require evidence for correlation/ causation, what’s the base rate? What’s my starting hypothesis?
Like a philosopher: inversion, what’s the opposite of what we want, (how do we avoid that)
Like a physicist: when do we reach critical mass, where’s the momentum?
Like an entrepreneur: how can we test this quickly? What’s the smallest step we can take now to move forward?
Like an engineer: what’s the required margin of safety? Is there leverage? Systems, is there redundancy in the system?
Like an asset manager: what’s the risk/ return?
Like an actuary: what’s the future expected value of that?
Like a leader/politician: what’s most persuasive?
Like a journalist – “what’s the story here? Where’s the tension?”
Like a military strategist – “what’s the decisive objective, how can I project force, what fronts are there in the battle?”
Like a trader – where do I have optionality? or how do I get it?
Like a designer: how are other people going to interact with this? What are my assumptions about the way it works that others won’t have?
Like a hacker: how can I break this? What are all the other ways I can use this in other ways?
Like a statistician: what’s the underlying distribution? Are there fat tails in play? Where is 80/20 rule relevant?
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