From Charlie Munger’s “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”
“When one sperm gets into a human egg, there’s an automatic shut off device that bars any other sperm from getting in. The human mind tends strongly toward the same sort of result.” (p. 461)
“People tend to accumulate large mental holdings of fixed conclusions and attitudes that are not often reexamined or changed, even though there is plenty of good evidence that they are wrong.” (p.461)
“It is easy to see that a quickly reached conclusion, triggered by Doubt-Avoidance Tendency, which combined with a tendency to resist any change in that conclusion, will naturally cause a lot of errors in cognition for modern man.” (p. 461)
“We all deal much with others whom we correctly diagnose as imprisoned in poor conclusions that are maintained by mental habit they formed early and will carry to their graves.” (p. 461)
How to help prevent Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency?
“One of the most successful users of an antidote to first conclusion bias was Charles Darwin. He trained himself, early, to intensively consider any evidence tending tending to disconfirm any hypothesis of his, more so if he thought his hypothesis was a particular good one.” (p.462)
Einstein was a great destroyer of his own ideas.
Judges and juries are required to hear counter arguments.
Modern decision makers are forced to hear skillful counter arguments before making a decision.
“Few people can list a lot of bad habits that they have eliminated, and some people cannot identify even one of these.” (p. 460)
To prevent bad habits, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”- Ben Franklin