Why do you need to consult with other people to see things more objectively?

From Annie Duke’s “How to Decide“

Why do you need to consult with other people to see things more objectively?

• “It works to your benefit to assume that you may not know as much as you think you do, that your beliefs may not be as accurate as you think they are, and that you may need more help from others than you think you do. Approach the quality of the stuff you think you know with more skepticism. That skepticism will make you more willing to question your own beliefs and more eager to seek out what other people know. And that will improve the quality of your decisions.” (p. 115)
  
  
• “The shock test showed that we are pretty bad at figuring out what we don’t know. We’re pretty bad at figuring out when our beliefs are inaccurate. We have too much confidence in what we think we know. One reason for these weaknesses is that it’s very hard for us to see the world from outside our own perspective.” (p. 125)
  
  
• “We naturally make decisions from inside our own perspective. Often, however, the world looks very different from the outside. We’ve all experienced this when we’re with someone who is struggling with their distorted perspective and unable to recognize it. It’s like the friend who can’t recognize their own part in their disastrous dating history and thinks the best solution to their latest relationship problem is to look for an exorcist. You know you can see their situation accurately, while they are clueless. You can see their KICK ME sign. I’m betting that lots of examples come to mind of interactions you’ve had with someone who’s trapped in the inside view. If those examples flow so easily, it stands to reason that you’re doing it too.”
  
  
• Part of why it’s easier to see other people more objectively than you can see yourself is that you are motivated to protect your beliefs when it comes to reasoning about your own situation. Your beliefs form the fabric of your identity. Discovering that you’re wrong about something, questioning your beliefs, or admitting that some bad outcome was because of a bad decision you made and not just bad luck—these all have the potential to tear that fabric.
  
  We are all motivated to keep that fabric intact. When it comes to your own reasoning, your beliefs end up in the driver’s seat steering you toward a narrative that protects your identity and self-narrative. (I’m not the jerk! They are!)” (p. 128)
  
  
• “The value of getting other people’s perspectives is not just that they know facts that you don’t know that might be helpful to you. It is not just that they might be able to correct inaccuracies in the facts you think you know. It is that even if they had the exact same facts as you, they might view those facts differently. They might come to a very different conclusion given the exact same information.” (p. 128)

Why can’t I just ask people for feedback?

• “Just asking for advice or feedback isn’t enough to ensure that you get the outside view, because people are mostly reluctant to disagree for fear of being unkind, for fear of embarrassing you by challenging your beliefs, or for fear of offering a perspective that might cast you in an unflattering light. Worse, we all like to hear the inside view repeated back to us and we seek out people we suspect view the world the same way we do.” (p. 139)
  
  
• “most people answer that the things they are thinking to themselves are different from the things they would say out loud to their friend who always has a bad dating story to share. You are trying not to hurt your friend’s feelings. You are trying to be kind. But in doing so, you’re denying them valuable input that could improve the quality of their future dating decisions. In being kind to your friend in the now, you are being unkind to the versions of your friend in the future who will have to make new dating decisions. When you look at it that way, you realize that withholding your perspective is the greater harm to your friend.” (p. 139)
  
  
• “Another way to get to the outside view is to seek out other people’s perspectives and feedback. It’s important, however, that they feel comfortable expressing disagreement or a perspective that might cast you in an unflattering light. Otherwise, they’re only amplifying the inside view, strengthening your belief in your accuracy because it feels certified by others. You should be eager to hear people disagree with you and motivate them to do so.” (p.144)
  
  
• “Be thankful when people disagree with you in good faith because they are being kind when they do.” (p. 139)
  
  
• “That’s why we naturally end up in echo chambers. The inside view feels especially good when it’s sold as the outside view, in the guise of someone supposedly offering an objective perspective that merely confirms what you believe. But that only serves to amplify the inside view, strengthening your view of the world because it feels certified by others.” (p. 140)

Smart people are less likely to seek feedback.

• “Smart people often think more highly of their beliefs and opinions. They are less likely to think the stuff they know needs correcting. They have more confidence in what their intuition or gut tells them. After all, they’re really smart. Why wouldn’t they have more confidence in those things?” (p. 135)
  
  
• “When you’re smart, you’re naturally less skeptical about the things you believe to be true. Smart people are also better at constructing convincing arguments that support their views and reinforce the things they believe to be true. Smart people are better at spinning narratives that convince other people that they are right, not in the service of misleading those people but in the service of keeping the fabric of their own identity from tearing.” (p. 135)
  
  
• “The combination of motivated reasoning, the propensity to mislead yourself, and an overconfidence in intuition makes smart people less likely to seek feedback. When they do seek feedback, their ability to spin a persuasive narrative makes other people less likely to challenge them. That means that the smarter you are, the more vigilant you have to be about getting to the outside view.” (p. 135)

Example:

• “If you’re like most people, you were probably thinking that it’s not just bad luck that your friend has dated a string of jerks. Most people realize that if someone has a pattern in the people they date (or the jobs they take or how they get along with their friends or are always running into traffic that makes them late to work, etc.), that pattern is probably not just bad luck or a weird coincidence or an actual curse. You can see what your friend seems unable to see, that there is likely something about your friend’s approach to dating that is causing this string of jerks to show up.
  
  If your friend could just realize this, they might be able to do something about it. As an outside observer, you can see this clearly when you are in the “friend” position. But your vision becomes muddied when you are on the inside and it’s your problem. What you can see so clearly in others is hard to see in yourself. That’s why almost everybody feels like they are better at solving other people’s problems than their own. Your perspective isn’t so good when you are at the center of it.” (p. 124)

Other good quotes:

“it’s hard for anyone to get outside of their own head to understand how someone else would view their situation. How could it be otherwise? You’ve only had the experiences that you have had. You’ve only been exposed to the information that you have been exposed to. You’ve only lived the life that you have lived. You’re not somebody else. You’re you. You are trapped in the inside view and that makes it hard to see your own beliefs, opinions, and experiences objectively.” (p. 126)

“A lot of the strategies in this book have been geared toward avoiding the echo of your own beliefs, maximizing the chances you uncover corrective information and unique perspectives. The more you can interact with the world in a way that invites people around you to give you the outside view, the more accurate your model of the world will become. Seek out the outside view with an open mind. You’ll be more likely to find out about the KICK ME sign on your back, the spinach in your teeth, and all the things you’re having trouble seeing from your perspective. That will help you clear out the junk, which will improve your decisions.” (p. 140)

WORKBOOK: (p. 130)

1. Describe a past situation in which a friend or family member or someone in a work situation was caught in the inside view.
   
   
2. Did you let them know?
   
   
3. Why or why not?
   
   
4. Describe a past situation in which you feel like you got caught in the inside view.
   
   
5. In what ways did you being caught in the inside view negatively affect your decision-making?
   
   
6. Take some time over the next few days to listen for people being trapped in the inside view. Note some examples and your overall impression based on spending some time listening for the prevalence and influence of the inside view.