How many thoughts can you have in your mind in your life? The Nobel Laureate in physics Wilczek gave an answer in his book the principles of everything: 1 billion times. We won't discuss how many ideas of 1 billion flashes of light will be put into action. Today, we want to focus on the intermediate link from idea to action: decision-making.
Every decision can be made with great and small mistakes, but even if we make decisions with great and small mistakes, we need to be cautious every day. As a complex organism mixed with rationality and sensibility, in the process of decision-making, we are inevitably affected by some interfering factors, such as sentiment, comparison, prejudice, experience and so on. How to improve the correctness of decision-making, the following three kinds of thinking can give some reference answers.
Asshole thinking
A big problem in decision-making is human face. Many times we take into account the feelings of others and hesitate when we should act. But there is a kind of people, who are not affected by affection at all, act firmly towards their own goals, and even look like some jerks. In earlier years, Buffett was a typical example. His child had a car accident. He went home and told him about it. He didn't lift his head. The next day he remembered to see the situation. The founder of the company he bought, hoping to retain a small part of his equity as a family memorial, was also ruthlessly rejected by Buffett. There is also the muddy side, as well as Google founder Larry Page. In 2001, despite the opposition of other executives, he directly announced the dismissal of all project managers in front of more than 130 colleagues without any notice in advance.
In order to better understand hunqiu's thinking, we first need to understand a very interesting mechanism in the brain. Decades ago, cognitive neuroscientist Michael gazaniga thought about the question: "if our brain has independent systems, does this mean that the brain has a unified consciousness?" Through long-term research, gazaniga finally found that the external information received by the brain is discontinuous fragments, just like independent pictures. How does the coherent consciousness come into being? Gazaniga's research points out that there is a narrative system in the left brain, which he named "interpreter".
The "interpreter" will make up the story and form the fragment information into a logical story. It's like playing pictures continuously and turning them into movies. However, in this process, in order to make the story seem self explanatory, it may also tamper with the facts and impose non-existent causality. Therefore, the unity consciousness in the brain is the script after the artistic processing of the "interpreter". Most people are unconsciously dominated by this "interpreter". Our consciousness and feeling are actually "illusions" processed by the brain. Because of this, the smarter people, the more they feel they can understand the world, the easier it is to deceive themselves and others. However, people with muddy ball thinking do not succumb to the script arranged by the "interpreter".
The bastards don't deceive themselves. They don't care about things. They dare to knock hard and have no heart and no lung. Thanks to these seemingly unreasonable shortcomings, they have some kind of "super rationality". It can be said that muddy ball thinking has the "innate immune ability" of the brain. Specifically, "muddy ball thinking" includes the following six characteristics:
① not defending his correctness: jobs is a typical example. He is notoriously capricious. During company meetings, jobs often scolded other people's ideas for being worthless. Even if some ideas are denied by him, if he later thinks that the idea is really good, he will still adopt it and will never defend his authority and correctness.
② don't care about other people's evaluation: take Buffett for example. He thinks that the most important wealth in his investment career and the most important point in his personal quality is the internal scorecard, that is, the score he gives himself. The corresponding external scorecard is the score given to you by the outside world. We don't need evaluation feedback, but we need to find out which evaluation should be used as the criterion of self challenge. Buffett believes that listening to his heart is more important than listening to the outside world.
③ not subject to other people's emotional fluctuations: this does not mean that the muddy balls will not fluctuate their own emotions, but that the muddy balls are not easy to be affected by other people's emotional fluctuations, which is also a quality that excellent athletes must have. Li changho, a famous go player in South Korea, has a nickname called "stone Buddha", which means he has no expression when playing chess. In a competition, the reporter took more than 100 photos of Li changho. When he washed them out, he was full of one expression.
④ cruel honesty is not taboo: extreme honesty is the most efficient way of communication, although it is often cruel. Dalio felt why he should waste his time on these things, so he established a corporate culture of "extreme honesty and transparency" within qiaoshui fund.
⑤ be indifferent to their own experiences: hunqiu almost doesn't feel self pity, which makes them remain extremely optimistic in difficulties. After Elon Musk's SpaceX suffered a rocket crash, a group of people were drinking in a bar. Although musk was also worried about his financial situation, he was very optimistic and set a new goal - to launch the rocket again in six months.
⑥ always pursue great significance: This is the biggest difference between a person with muddy ball thinking and a real muddy ball. As Emerson said, "the world will make way for the man who is bent on moving towards his goal." Ashley Vance, the author of Silicon Valley iron man, once commented on musk. I think it's a good description of people with muddy thinking. He wrote:
Musk is a man of love and righteousness. He presents his joys and sorrows in an epic way. What he feels most is his mission to change the fate of mankind. Therefore, it is difficult for him to be aware of the strong emotions of others, so that his human side will be covered up, making him appear ruthless and indifferent to individual ideas and needs. But it is likely that only such people can turn the whimsy of space networks into reality.
First principle
In 2014, Elon Musk left a wonderful five minute sharing in his graduation speech at USC business school. He summarized his thoughts on work and life into five points, one of which talked about his decision-making method:
Don't follow others to catch up with the trend. From the perspective of the first principle, don't use analogy to demonstrate, but infer through the most essential elements. In this way, you can distinguish what you should do and what you are just following in the footsteps of others. Of course, it's hard, but it's the best way.
This is not the first time musk has mentioned his highly respected thinking framework: the first principle in public. In an earlier interview with Ted, musk explained this concept in more detail, He said: "There is a good thinking framework, which is something in physics. It is a bit like first principle reasoning. The thinking mode of first principle is to look at the world from the perspective of physics. It is very important for us to use first principle thinking instead of comparative thinking to think about problems. In daily life, we always tend to compare what others have done or are doing , we'll do it.
The result of such thinking and decision-making is that it can only produce small iterative development. The thinking mode of first principle thinking is to look at the world from the perspective of physics, that is, peel off the appearance of things layer by layer, see the essence inside, and then go up from the essence layer by layer. It takes a lot of brain power. "
How does the first principle play a role in practical decision-making? Taking Musk's vacuum capsule high-speed railway as an example, if we use comparative thinking or empirical thinking to design new train products, most people's idea is to improve the existing functions to make the power stronger and the fluid mechanics better. However, if we use the first principle to analyze the product demand, we must return to the essential purpose of the means of transport: to transport more goods from point a to point B, which is the purpose of initially manufacturing trains and other means of transport, and we do not have to use traction to upgrade. Supported by the first principle, musk proposed the mode of magnetic levitation and low vacuum to create a vacuum capsule high-speed railway.
Musk also cited an example in the interview: during Tesla's development of electric vehicles, it encountered a problem: the cost of batteries remained high. At that time, the market price of energy storage battery was $600 per kilowatt hour. The market price was very stable and would not change much in the short term. But musk thinks from the perspective of first principle: what material is the battery pack made of? What is the market price of these battery materials? If we buy these raw materials and then combine them into batteries, how much does it cost? The answer is that it costs only $80 per kilowatt hour. From the most essential point of view, study what materials the battery is made of, and then calculate the price of these raw materials, so as to get the lowest price of the battery. Through this way of thinking, musk makes the commercialization of electric vehicles possible. The starting point of most people's consideration of the problem is that the current situation of this matter is an established fact, and I can't change it, but Musk's idea is that if it works at the physical level, I can do it.
Looking at the world from the perspective of physics and looking at specific decisions, we can start from the essence of things, not bound by past experience, and avoid excessive analogy with similar things around. We can see the essence of things most quickly through heavy fog. This is Musk's decision logic. Looking at the world through the basic theory of physics, in addition to musk, there is another scholar, who is the Nobel Laureate in physics we mentioned at the beginning: Professor vilchek.
Professor vilchek wrote in his book the principles of all things: from the middle of the 16th century to the present, human exploration in space has expanded from the solar system to galaxies, nebulae and the whole universe; From Galileo's rolling ball a few centimeters large, it focuses on elementary particles less than 10-15 meters. In terms of time, humans can not only describe the evolution of the universe for 13 billion years, but also track the Higgs particles with a lifetime of only 10-22 seconds. Finally, human beings found that the complex universe is only composed of a few very simple basic particles and operates according to a few basic physical laws. These most basic laws not only explain the operation law of the universe, but also reveal or remind us to look at the world and think about the basic laws that all things should follow.
Musk once gave physics a high evaluation. He said: "the basic theory of physics is the most useful. The thinking framework of physics is the most useful framework so far". How does the universe work? What is the principle of all things? Understanding these problems is not only to satisfy our curiosity about the world, but also to learn the most basic truth about the operation of all things from the study of the physical world, including ourselves.
Gray cognition, black and white decision
From obtaining information to taking action, the brain needs to go through four steps: perception, cognition, decision-making and action. When intuitive thinking makes decisions, it often skips the middle two steps, directly from perception to action. Conversely, if we want to make a good decision, cognition and decision-making are very important.
We all know that gray is between white and black. When we want to describe it accurately, we need to add a percentage to it. Gray cognition means that in the stage of evaluating options, don't rush to judge whether it is black or white, and maintain a certain gray level. It's best to have a value for this gray level. On the contrary, black-and-white decision-making means that when we form the final decision, we must have a clear choice, not ambiguous. But in reality, we are just easy to confuse the two, either black or white in the cognitive link and hesitant in the decision-making link.
Let's look at an interesting case that can help you deeply understand the problems in the process of cognition and decision-making. Copper prices fell sharply in the mid-1990s. The head office of a copper mine in the United States under the Canadian immet mining company has difficulties in operation. It wants to close it, but it also faces resistance from various parties. The copper mine with more than 1000 miners is almost the only local enterprise. If it is closed, it will undoubtedly have a huge negative impact on the local economy. In addition, the closure of the copper mine means that the local management team admits to making mistakes, and they are unwilling to do so in order to preserve their reputation. In addition to closing the copper mine, the mining company actually has two other options: one is not to refine locally, but to transport the ore to Canada and refine it in a new furnace; Second, continue mining to the north, because there may be many mineral deposits in the north of the copper mine.
The company's executives tend to close the copper mine, while the mine manager believes that it should continue to operate. All parties are quarrelling. The meeting has been held for hours without progress, and everyone is very depressed. The resistance to closing the copper mine is just like many problems we encounter in real life: various factors are intertwined, and the choices in front of us have their own advantages and disadvantages, which is difficult to clarify at once. At this time, a young man named Martin suddenly asked a question: "what conditions must this choice have in order to become the correct answer?" The young man was invited by the mining company and came from a professional consulting company. He keenly found that everyone made a mistake when discussing options. Everyone was eager to prove that their options were the best and tried to convince each other. In fact, discussion is a process of forming cognition of things. Gray cognition requires people to comprehensively evaluate the possibility of various options. If everyone sticks to their own views and opposes the cognition of others, and no one really thinks about the feasibility, cost and benefit of each scheme like an analyst, the meeting will not go on.
Martin advocated listing every possibility as much as possible and analyzing them. In this way, we can rationally evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each option. In fact, once we start thinking like this, the way we look at the problem will change, because it pulls us back from a black-and-white dispute of right and wrong to the judgment of the fact itself. In other words, in the cognitive stage, there is no need to be either black or white, and don't turn the discussion plan into an offensive and defensive war that sticks to its position. When the personnel of the mining company changed from "black-and-white cognition" to "gray cognition", the situation immediately changed, and the feasibility of the three schemes became clear at a glance: the option of transporting ore from sea to Canada sounds good, but once you calculate the account, you will find that the cost is far higher than expected, so you can only give up; The option of expanding the mining area is also attractive, but from a technical point of view, there is a huge rock wall between the old and new veins, and the cost of breaking through the rock wall is too high, so it is not feasible; In the end, it was found that although the decision to "close the copper mine" was difficult, it was the only feasible option.
Compared with gray cognition, black-and-white decision-making is relatively simple, that is, we should dare to make decisions and make decisions that are either black or white, without ambiguity and hesitation. Decision makers are responsible for others. Just like fighting on the battlefield, the instructions must be clear and unambiguous. This is the meaning and value of leadership. Therefore, for the decision-maker, his responsibility is to tell his partners whether to do it or not, when to do it and how much resources to invest. In fact, with good gray cognition, black-and-white decision-making is not a problem. From the decision-making method of qiaoshui fund, we can get inspiration: the weighted opinion of a group of professionals is far more reliable than that of one person. Therefore, we can create an expert opinion group for ourselves to improve our winning rate in the face of uncertain and complex decisions.
In his book the principles of all things, Professor vilchek said that the universe is extremely rich in time. In front of the length of time dating back to the big bang, our human life suddenly becomes insignificant. However, a person's complete life contains far more conscious moments than the amount of human life contained in the history of the universe, We are endowed with a rich inner.
Compared with the long time of the universe, the time of our human existence is insignificant, but our thoughts and decisions these conscious moments give great significance to this life. From this perspective, our life is extremely rich and vast.
