The Dubious Efficacy of Doctor, Consultants and Psychotherapist And Experts.

Regression to Mean.

His Right shoulder was sometimes better, sometimes going from bad to worse. There were days where he felt like the sky was the limit, indeed he could move mountains and earth and those when he could slightly move an inch.

When that was the case, fortunately it happened only rarely- his wife will drive him to the chiropractor. The next day he would feel dazzle like a little toddler full of vitality, running around and as consequence, he would recommend the Therapist to everyone.

Another man, younger with respectable piano handicap of 7 notes, rush in a similar fashion about his piano instructor. Whenever he played poorly, he booked two hours with Pro and as result in the next concert he performs much better.

A third man a stock trader in Wall Street invented a sort of "ritual" which he performed in the restroom at any time his stock plunge badly. As crazy and absurd as it sounds, he always felt compelled; and guess what? Things improve afterward.

What link all these men is the failure in their reasoning which renders their argument invalid; This is call the regression to mean delusion.

Imagine your city is experiencing a record period of hot weather.in all eventuality or probability, the temperature will go down in the next coming days, back toward the monthly average temperature. The same goes with extreme cold weather, hurricane, Typhon. Yes the weather fluctuate around the mean (which here means the average temperature).The same is true with chronic pain, piano handicaps, stock market, luck in love, subjective happiness and test scores. In short what I am saying is the crippling shoulder pain would most likely have improved without a chiropractor. The handicap of not playing well 7 notes in piano would return without additional lessons. The performance of the stock trader would have gone to the market average- and this without the some mystical ritual perform in the restroom. Just as a due diligent and hardworking man - with a sound mind knows that he who reposes should act and he who acts should take repose. Seneca put it very eloquently this way:" Discuss the problem with Nature; she will tell you that she has created both day and night." After all, eternity is made of opposites.

Note that keep in the back of your mind that peak or extreme performance are distributed among the less. For example the most successful in stock picks from the past five years are hardly going to the most successful in the coming five years.Arme with this, you can understand and even appreciate the fact that why some athletes would rather not make the front page of newspapers and magazines, why? Well because they subconsciously know that next time in the competition, they are more likely not going to perform at their peak or the top result.- which by the way has nothing to do with his/her due diligent hard training to the edge, or the media attention but is to do with natural variations in performance.

Or take the marketing division manager who realises, there is a slum in the marketing department and wants to improve the morale of the 5% least motivated top notch marketers. He send them on a course or a program. Result? The next time he looks at motivation level of the same people will not make the bottom few- there will others. Key question: was the course or Program worth it? Hard to say since the group's motivation levels, would probably have return to their personal norms and guess what? Even without the training.

Another example: In California, the lowest performing colleges were entered into an innovative support programme. The following year the attended colleges moved up to the rankings. An improvement that authorities attributed to the programme rather than to natural regression to the mean.

Now ignoring regression to mean can have disastrous consequences, such as teachers, entrepreneurs, business owners and investors, even parents concluding that the sticks is better than the carrot. Consider the following example to illustrate my point by making more clear, simple and deep. Following a test, the best students are glorified, complimented and praised. And the lowest are castigated, reprimanded severely and criticized. In the next exam, others students will probably – pure coincidentally – achieve the highest and lowest scores. The teachers will concludes that reproach helps and praise hinders. Which is pure ridiculous and guess what this failure in reasoning which renders an argument invalid- keeps on giving across boards and fields.

Conclusion

Whenever you hear stories such as "I was sick, went to the doctor, and got better a few days after "or the company had a bad year, so we got a consultant in and now the results are back to normal, look out our old friend regression- to mean error.

2- The most important take away and keep close to your heart is the following rule of thumb: Whatsoever have been in the past or is now, will repeat itself in the future. But the names and surfaces of things will be so altered, that he who has not discerning eyes will not recognise them, or know how to guide himself accordingly or to form a sound judgement on what he sees

Consider the following thought experiment. You sit on the board of your Online Marketing Company with 3000 000 buyers on your mailing list. Half of the customers are in US, Canada, UK and the other half disseminate between Ireland, Siwsszerland, Luxembourg, and Lichtenstein, Monaco.at the behest of the Founder, a Data analyst consultant conducted a study on Sales and is now presenting his findings. Projected on the wall in front are the names of 5 countries where the rate of conversion is lowest compare to sales. The conclusion draw out of the presentation- "The countries with lowest conversion rate are in Europe. After a moment of deep breath and disbelief the CEO/FOUNDER

Is first to announce "Ladies and gentlemen the next steps are clear. From now on we will hire more top notch marketers –get them especially focus on the European market. Do we all agree guys?"

Hmmm not completely. You ask the Data analyst consultant to check 5 countries where the sales conversion is the highest. After some swift sorting, the list appears. Surprise, surprise: The countries with the highest conversion rate are in Europe." The location is no the deciding factor. You can observe that the brain is releasing some dopamine which make him have a smiley face as his gaze around the table at his colleagues." What counts is the size or the number of buyers in any given country. "Indeed in Europe the size or the number of buyers tend to be small, meaning a single action has a larger influence on the conversion rate. Therefore the European countries with small size of demography rates vary greatly- much more than the larger market of the US, CANADA and UK.Ladies and gentlemen I have just introduce you to the law of Small numbers. "It has just caught you out"

The law of small numbers is not something we understand intuitively. People like managers, board members, consultants- even scientists fall for it.

Now instead of conversion rate, consider the average weight of customers in a country. Instead of 300 000 buyers present in the given eight countries, we will take just two: the mega country – the US with a large number of 100 000 customers and a min country – namely Ireland with a small number of 2 clients.

The average weight of the customers in the mega country US correspond to the average weight of the population, say 185 pounds.Regarless of who purchase or not, it will not change much. But in a small country like Ireland with 2 clients, if one of them dropout, it will affect tremendously the average weight.

So let us return back to the conversion rate problem. We now understand why the smaller the number of customers, the more its conversion rate will rate –from extremely high to extremely low.no matter how the data analyst consultant arranges his spreadsheet, if you list all the conversion rates in order of size, small countries with small number of clients will at the bottom, the large countries with large number in the middle - and the top slots? Small countries with small number of purchasers again. So the CEO's conclusion was trifle and irrelevant, but at least he doesn't need to hire more top notch marketers t specially focus on small countries with small numbers of customers.

Another more fruitful example is if a mutual fund manager has had three above-average years in a row, many people will conclude that the fund manager is better than average, even though this conclusion does not follow from such a small amount of data. Hence tend to generalize from small amounts of data.

So watch out when you hear remarkable about small entities businesses, households, cities, data centers.What is being peddled as an astounding finding is in fact a humdrum of consequence distribution.Daniel kahneman Nobel Prize winner reveal in his latest book that even experienced scientists fall short to the law of small numbers. How true and reassuring

Never Judge a Result By Its Outcome.

The Notion of Alternative Histories

Consider the following story borrowed and adapted from a good friend of mind, probably the best risk expert alive today:Nassim Taleb; Imagine an eccentric (and bored) tycoon offering you $ 50 million to play Russian roulette, i.e., to put a revolver containing one bullet in the six available chambers to your head and pull the trigger. Each realization would count as one history, for a total of six possible histories of equal eventualities. Five out of these six histories would lead to enrichment; one would lead to a statistic, that is, an obituary with an embarrassing (but certainly original) cause of death. The problem is that only one of the histories is observed in reality; indeed the winner of $ 50 million would elicit the admiration and praise of some fatuous journalist – likewise if you take randomly 1 million of traders in the room and then universally it can be authors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, investors. Now assume fair odds: 50% chance. Year1: 1 Million; Year 2: 500 000 successful ones; Year 3: 250 000; (Please keep in mind that it is a pure thought experiment in a random world or assume we live in where reality happens that way), - you name it and you put them in the room) Year 4:125 000…….till Year 11: where you have 1000 successful ones, who will be crowned with the name of geniuses, just by pure luck- because they were there and we are going to find the reasons. Indeed he works late in the office, he sleep 8 hours a day, he practices Meditation and Yoga, he eats healthy (Sushi), he studied in Harvard University – yes look at him it cannot be random, how can he be 11 years in the row without having a deep insight – you find reasons to explain the success. This is what the super insightful evolutionary psychologist professor Robert Trivers calls the Post Hoc Fallacy or after the facts,we always fit back explanation to random data .We humans are very good at narrating back or if you want we have inability to prospectively predict and in the meantime we are very good at retrospectively predict with the firm conviction of looking ahead; just as going through life by looking through the review mirror. All what I am saying is that if you have a large population of people making statement about the future, you will be more likely to find prophets. Now I am assuming in the random world – now if it is in a world that not random (stable and that doesn't change) it doesn't change too much .Why? Because we humans favour the visible, the tangible, the well narrated and we scorn the abstract. So we make decisions based on the results and we forget what could have happen (alternative history).

For more illustration- consider this if you read Forbes Magazine or the Economist Magazine about the 100 top highly successful CEOs/entrepreneurs of the year – the first thing you realise is : they focus on over causation- I mean the perceive exaggeration of the links between perceived causes and effects, by the way this mistake is reinforce by retrospective determinism (Hindsight bias) and the cemetery of silence evidence (Subjects of the two next episodes).When in reality most of their results are delivered in a random manner(I am no saying that skills are not necessary, skills are necessary but a lot of people have those skills and few succeed wildly- note the subtle difference here), the public observes the external signs of wealth without even having a glimpse at the source (we call such source the generator.) or without having in the presence mind what about the bankrupts CEOs/entrepreneurs who have the same skills and end up in cemetery( Obviously by taking risk taking propensity, hardworking as general traits share among successful entrepreneurs) .

In a nutshell To understand successes, the study of traits in failure need to be present. For instance some traits that seem to explain millionaires, like appetite for risk, only appear because one does not study bankruptcies. If one includes bankrupt people in the sample, then risk-taking would not appear to be a valid factor explaining success.

Any form of analysis of art that does not take into account the silent initial population becomes close pure verbiage.

The line of argument in the remaining segment of the paper is to further weaken the causative explanations by showing the prevalence of extrinsic attributes, as opposed to intrinsic ones, those not embedded in the piece to be analysed. The role of these extrinsic attributes (say social contagion, cumulative advantage) implies that the piece was successful for reasons that lie outside its own qualities, and that, accordingly, explanations by the critics are proportionally weaker than face value.

Let us go back to the possibility that the Russian roulette winner ld be used as a role model by his family, friends, and neighbours.

While the remaining five histories are not observable, the wise and thoughtful person could asily make a guess as to their attributes. It requires some thoughtfulness and personal courage. In addition, in time, if the roulette-betting fool keeps playing the game, the bad histories will tend to catch up with him. Thus, if a twenty-five-year-old played Russian roulette, say, once a year, there would be a very slim possibility of his surviving until his fiftieth birthday— but, if there are enough players, say thousands of twenty-five-year-old players, we can expect to see a handful of (extremely rich) survivors (and a very large cemetery).

The reader or the listener can see my unusual notion of alternative accounting: $ 50 million earned through Russian roulette does not have the same value as $ 50 million earned through the diligent and artful practice of dentistry. They are the same, can buy the same goods, except that one's dependence on randomness is greater than the other.

Reality is different from roulette. First in the simplistic example above, while the result is unknown you know the odds, most of life is dealing with uncertainty. Bullets are infrequent, "like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands, of chambers instead of six." After a while you forget about the bullet. You can't see the chamber and we generally think of risk in terms of what is visible.

No amount of evidence can allow the inference that something is true whereas one counter example can refute a conclusion. This idea is also related to the "denigration of history," where we think things that happen to others would not happen to us. The kernel point of my thought is that we tend to mistake absence of evidence for evidence of absence- which is okay if we are in domain that stable and that doesn't change (for example: If you are employee,baker,dentist,Therapist etc.…) namely mediocristan. But the world today has become more complex and therefore unstable and prone to large consequence Example: Author, book publishing, Venture Capital, Biotechnology etc.…

In conclusion here are three big ideas which allow you to avoid the pitfall trap of being victim of judging a Result by its Outcome.

-First and foremost, since we live in world that more and more complex today, play the counterfactuals to dig out the alternative history

-Second always simulate not to see what will happen, but what may happen- after all It is often said that "is wise he who can see things coming." Perhaps the wise one is the one who knows that he cannot see things far away.

- Third focus on the task, not just the fruit of the task. Guess what you will feel refresh

"Never Ask a Barber If You Need head Cut" Warren Buffett

Incentive super- response tendency

.In the 19th To reduce and eradicate the infestation of rat in Hanoi Vietnam, the French colonial rulers passed a law: For every dead rat handed in to the authorities, the catcher would receive a reward. Obviously a lot of rats were destroyed but in the meantime many were bred specifically for this purpose.

Yes in the 21th century, modern incentives are not better: Company boards promises to CEOs bonuses for achieved targets. Guess what happens? Company managers invest more energy in trying to lower the targets than growing the company. Put in another way the company is sitting on ticking time bomb (unless the CEO is founder, hence has something to lose) example

These are example of incentive super- response tendency. This was coin for the first time by Charlie Munger the legendary business partner of Warren Buffett.

Incentive super- response tendency. is the fact people response to the incentives by doing what is in their best interests. What is more striking here is the behaviour of people change immediately when any promise of incentives comes into play and secondly people respond to the incentives themselves and not to the real intention behind them.

Real good incentive systems comprise both the intent and the reward. Just as cab driver both something to lose and to gain if he/she is good and a bad driver.

Bad incentive systems overlook and sometimes even make worst the ultimate aim.

For example censoring book, makes its contents more famous and most importantly rewarding

Here are 4 big ideas to be taken away.

If you want to influence the behaviour of people or organisations? You could always preach about values and visions, your ability to tell stories or you could appeal reason. But incentive work better.by its needs not to be necessary monetary (financially), anything is useable such as good grades to Nobel prizes or special treatment afterlife

• So for example if you are dealing with consultants, architects, accountants – meaning experts can be paid in their respective field per hour. I would recommend you to avoid paying the hourly rate instead negotiate a fixed price in advance. Just as you bargain with a cab driver about your next destination, he will be more likely to accomplish very well than when he switches his on sometimes they even screw you by driving long distance just to make you pay more.
• Beware of the semi erudite who play the erudite such as some investment advisors, consutants, experts,entrepreneurs,investment bankers who usually are not interested in your well-being but to their own interest at heart. Warren Buffet sum up this way" "Never ask a Barber if you need hair cut

The message is clear if a person or an entity or organisation is making you a proposition, ask yourself what is the incentive behind it.

Halo Effect

Cisco, the Silicon Valley firm, was the beloved of the world new economy. Business journalists sang and poured out its success just as a bestseller book that web in storm and is everywhere to seen. They discern as attributes responsible for this mega success: its wonderful customer acquisition, an exclusive and empowering corporate culture, its skilful talent acquisition and above all a charismatic CEO at the helm of the company. March 2000, Cisco is the most valuable company in the world.

When Cisco's stock plunged 80% in 2001, journalists adjust their praise. All of sudden and most surprising the competitive advantages became competitive disadvantages in short the main factors of Cisco's success became its shortcoming. Poor customer service, clumsy acquisition, disastrous corporate culture, awful CEO.Please keep in the back of your mind that none of the previous positive traits have change, except: The environment which was heavily marked by the waking and impacting of the dot.com crash. Hence, it wasn't Cisco product but the environment within which the firm was operating. This in a nutshell an example of the halo effect in action

The halo effect happens when a single aspect dazzles us and affects how we see the full picture. In another words the halo effect is another form of the confirmation bias ().In this example, journalists were making their inference or conclusion base on the stock price without having make a deeper investigation of the firm.

Another example of the halo effect – we often ascribe success, the goodness and superiority of a product, a person where little is due, why? Because we are not aware – that we usually go with the first order thinking, which here is social contagion and the reputation. We subconsciously attach to the person or the given product and therefore miss the second order thinking.

The halo effect was discovered by the psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike .His conclusion was that a single factor (for e.g., social status, beauty, age, intelligence) produces a positive or negative impression that outshine everything else and the overall effect in a disproportionate way. We automatically assume that attractive people have it easier in their professional life or good looking people are bright, honest and more reliable.

Advertising industry, marketing use tremendously the halo effect. Just have look at how many time you see celebrities, public figures even Billionaire, Multimillionaire of TV ads,Magazines,Bill boards and so on. An example what makes a Hollywood Celebrity actor George Clooney a coffee machine expert is still an open debate. The trick here is that the halo effect work subconsciously. All what you need to make it work is a strong compelling attractive face ,status, dream life style and deal is sealed.

How do protect yourself from the halo effect? First big idea: When it comes to an important decision, avoid first order thinking – meaning don't draw out your conclusion based on your first impression, unless you will end up generalizing the wrong particular or if you are a nerd you will particularise the wrong general.

Second big idea counterfactual all the features presented on the product and then you will see if above one negative features ,you avoid going for the product because the consequence or bottom line of these feature compound themesleves.Keep in mind that to quote NassimTaleb: "The dark side of the moon is difficult to be seen"

Why experience can damage our judgement

Mark Twain

Our brain is perfect computer connector. Consider the following practical example: At a dinner table, you are served a delicious meal, you never ate before. Shortly afterward – something surprising happen to you – as consequence you feel sick. According to you, you draw out the conclusion that this type of meal is unhealthy and even poisonous. This by the way is way how we come to good and false knowledge.

Let us take a deeper experiment- which was ran for the first time by the famous Russian Scientist Ivan Pavlov, about our brain ability to quickly make connections.

Previously, Pavlov goal was measure salivation in dogs. But by serendipity or you like good accident he ended up using the bell to call the dog to eat. Meanwhile, he soon realised that- the ringing bell was enough to get the dog to salivate.

The animals' brains linked two functionally unrelated things – namely the ringing of the bell and the production of saliva.

Palov's experiment works equally well with us humans. Just take a look around and watch what makes the advertisement and marketing industry.

Adverting creates a link between the product and the emotions. For this reason you will never see high design fashion cloth with an ugly face and fat body top model. Top model have slim body, look beautiful and very stylish. But the reality is that in the real world fat people wear the same cloth with the illusion of looking good.

These false connections are the work of association bias – which also influence the quality of our decision.

Let us take a last one .In the days before email and telemarketing, travelling salesman went from door to door peddling their wares. One day, a particular, George Forster, stood at a front door. The house turnout to be vacant, and unknown to him. A tiny leak had been filling it with gas for weeks .The bell was also damage, so he pressed it, it created a spark and the house exploded. Poor George end up in hospital, but fortunately he was soon back on his feet.

Unfortunately, his fear of ringing doorbells had become so hard that he couldn't go back to his regular job.He knew how unlikely a repeat of the incident was,but for he tried ,he just could not manage to reverse the false emotional connection.

The kernel point of my thoughts here and as big take away is sum up by mark Twain " We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sit down on a hot stove-lid.She will never sit down on a hot stove – lid again – and this is well;but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore". What Mark Twain is saying is that regular mind generalises the particular and the nerd particularises the general, some do both – the wise with his fine mind does neither ,meanwhile goes one step at a time.

Picture in your mind a group of youngster exists a nightclub and immediately start to quarrelled, argue, shouting to each other to the point where its escalates to wildly gestures. The situation is near to escalate into fist fight. Police officers patrolling in the area – monitor from distance and in the meantime can only intervene when there is first causality. By the way among police officers- we have young officers and senior officers. Most of the time when officers without background experience intervene, the situation turnout to be worst after than it was before. Young police officers often fall trap to the action bias and dive in immediately. A study showed that later intervention and a great thanks to senior police officers usually lead to few causalities.

Let me give a second example to deeper our understanding. Let say a patient is rushed in the hospital and the patient's illness cannot be diagnosed with accuracy, doctors are confronted with a dilemma between intervening (ie: prescribing some medication) or waiting and observing. Guess what doctors are prone to taking action. Hence action bias. Such decisions have nothing to do with profit but rather human strong tendency to take action than sit and patiently wait to face uncertainty and even gain from it.

This action bias in action. What is action bias, it is our strong tendency or propensity to act or decide without clarity analysis or sufficient significant information. And this usually happens when the situation is fuzzy, stressful, muddy or contradictory.

Action Bias prevails across board even in the world of finance. Here is what the legendary business partner of warren Buffet, Charlie Munger sums up their approach of investing: "We got …… discipline in avoiding just doing any dam thing just because you can't stand inactivity,"

What is the main cause of the action bias/ well as I mention in the previous episode entitle: Why you should not ask anybody wearing a tie Advice or Forecast And Prediction. For those of you who haven't listen, please I encourage you and recommend to listen as ground and robust foundation layer before you continue listening this one.

Now back to answer the question what accounts for this tendency of action bias? Well in our old hunter and gatherer environment – action trumped reflection. Acting swiftly just as a thunder lightening was a perquisite condition for our survival. Any second of mental deliberation could be fatal.So when our ancestors saw in shadow or the silhouette of a wild beast that looked like a sabre – tooth tiger. What they did immediately to run away in a blink of an eye to save their life.

Guess what – we are the descendant of these quick responders therefore we have inherit action bias from them.

However, the world we live in today doesn't resemble the past anymore .The world today is completely different and therefore reflection is beyond necessary required, even though our instinct may suggest otherwise.

In conclusion If in a given situation you are unclear, hear in your mind alarm bell ringing and hold back until you access our options

2- Remember what Blaise Pascal said "All humanity's problems from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone"

Why You Should Not Ask Anybody Wearing a Tie Advice ,Forecast or Prediction

Overconfidence Effect

How much confidence should we have in our own knowledge? Psychologists Howard Raiffa and Marc Alpert conducted interviews with hundreds of people. They asked participants to estimate the total number of egg production in the US, or the number of foreign cars imported into the US or the number of physician and surgeons listed in the yellow pages of the phone directory. The subjects could choose any range they liked, under the condition not being wrong more than 2% of the time (meaning out of 100 of your choices, no more than 2 can wrong).The result was striking and surprising, namely the participants were more confident on their given answer

In the final experimentation, instead of just no more than 2% wrong, they were 40 %.The researchers call this phenomenon Overconfidence meaning an inclination in which a person's subjective confidence in his or her judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments, especially when confidence is relatively high.

Overconfidence pervades across board out there. We human systematically overestimate our knowledge and our ability to predict on a large scale. The overconfidence effect does not deal with the fact whether single estimates are correct or not- but as Nassim taleb put it in a more vivid and practical way: measure the difference between what people actually know and what they think they know.

What is really surprising and puzzling is that – experts suffer more of overconfidence than laypeople do.

Let me illustrate it with the following example; about yourself. Please answer the following

First question: What is your social security number? Please write down (You even look at it if you have forgotten it).Now

Second question: What is estimate numbers of physicians in your town? Please write down the answer

Here is something amazing, without you even noticing it the answer you gave in the second question is close in the same range the response you gave at the first question- this is by the way what we call anchoring. Here the anchor point here was the answer of the first question.

Conclusion if I give advice or prediction, I am going to harm

Second example to deeper our understanding; this is even an expert. If you take a physician and give him 10 piece of information about a patient ask for a diagnose ,his answer with 10 piece of info will better than if you gave him with 50 piece of info about the patient in the meantime we cannot ignore sterile infos,or noise)

Now two things are happening which the physician (expert usually doesn't know; namely

• This example shows and prove we don't know with information /knowledge
• Which the most crucial point is that the physician has a lot less confidence with 10 than with 50 of them, which explain why I said you should not trust a man wearing a tie. Why? Because you have too much confidence (Overconfidence) about his opinion – not necessary because is wrong, just because you put too much confidence on his opinion.

Conclusion; Lack of increase in precision couple with increase of confidence is deadly

The kernel point of my recommendation is to switch from predictive methods to non-predictive methods, to stop trying to understand the world to focus on robustness by making sure to avoid some fragility

Why Advertising and Marketing Crucial in The US Presidential Election And Most Importantly To Any Of Your Undertaking ?

Sleeper effect

During the period of the second WW 2, every country involved in the battle generate propaganda movies. The ultimate purpose was to creep the mind of the population and most importantly the soldiers, with enthusiasm, euphoria for their country- with goal to recruit people to become soldier.

A number of studies were carry out in the US to figure out how or what the impact of propaganda movies have on regular US soldiers.

The result turn out to be surprisingly disappointing. So these movies did not increase to the slightest the enthusiasm of the soldiers.

Was it because they were poorly made? No, the soldiers were aware that the movies were propaganda – which discredited the message in the movies before they were playing. This is even when the content or if you want the message were well structure in the movie- it was still deem to fail before from the start.

Fast forward, nine weeks after, something surprisingly and unexpected happened. The psychologists measured the attitudes of soldiers for the second time.

The result was surprising, striking and staggering, namely the soldiers who watched the movie propaganda more than once, manifested and expressed more support attitude to the war – than those who have no viewed it.Hence propaganda did work after all.

Researchers were astonished, especially when most of them knew that persuasive message decreased over time. Just as if you read a good discovery about weight loss or wealth accumulation.

You feel pump up, full of enthusiasm. After a couple of weeks, you realise the message and the joy have fade out.

Amazingly, just the opposite is true for propaganda, hence the same for advertisement and marketing. If the message strikes the core nature of the person-but also in order to make him feel that he belong to a community. By imitating, we get closer to others—that is, other imitators. It fights solitude. After all we humans are social animal. For example- Clearly people may discuss a book because 1) they heard about it, 2) their friends like it, 3) they are genuinely impressed with it. The first two are extrinsic reasons and seem to partake of general social contagion effects. The third is intrinsic value (hence the message touches the core soul of the person). This influence only grow over time. Why well psychologist Carl Hovland who led the study for the war department, named this phenomenon the sleeper effect. The most vividly explanation is that, in our memories, the source of the message (messenger) fades faster than the message.in other words your brain forget the source or the origin of the information (here for example the department of marketing).meanwhile the message itself just as acquiring a tesla car is necessary-environment friendly and noble) fades only slowly and most importantly even endures.

Therefore, any knowledge or information that stems from an untrustworthy source gain credibility over time. The discrediting force melt away than the message does.

Countless time I asked myself why advertisement and marketing work at all. Any person with sound judgement can recognise the ads and ignore them. But even you as having a balance mind won't always succeed at this. It's quite possible, after a few weeks, you won't realise or even remember if you picked up certain information from a well-researched article or from a mind boggle Lind advertisement.

How do you protect yourself against the sleeper effect?

First and foremost don't accept any unsolicited advice, even if it seems well meant. From this stand point you on the guard against manipulation

Second, avoid ad-contaminated sources like the plague

Third remember the source of every message you encounter. Whose views are these? Why do they think that way? Who benefits. I admit it is a lot of work but it will slow down your decision making process. But it will also refine it.

Fourth: Observe what the experts or consultants do than what they tell you, why because if you ask them they give a story that doesn't match the empirical reality of what they do.- just as Frederick Nietzsche put it this way "Never trust an idea that you haven't seen working"

Optionality is switching to find your own path rather than been in a straight jacket

Why It Is Much Safer To Mistake a Stone For a Bear than A Bear For a Stone?

Feature- positive effect.

Take the following experiment by the way this is just a thought experiment – you manufacture a dubious product such as salad dressing with a high level of cholesterol .What do you do? On the label you promote twenty five nutrients and vitamins and consciously omit cholesterol level. Consumers won't notice its absence. And the positive present features will make sure consumers feel not their health at threat – meaning safe and well informed.

Let me give you a more profound one. Please take a sheet of paper and write the following series X:of numbers: 247,794,214,439,141,205,664. Question: What do these numbers have in common? Don't read until you have the answer. Answer the number 4 is feature in each one of them.

Now take a look at these series Y:of numbers: 493 , 158 , 724 , 905 ,727 , 302 , 584 , 311.What links numbers or what do these numbers have in common? Stop listening until you provide the answer. You can see that series B is more difficult than series A.Answer none of these numbers content or use the number 6.

Hence the direct conclusion is that absence is much harder much harder to detect than presence. We tend to treat knowledge like an acquired good or a property- yes we have a strong propensity to focus on what we know (except our enemy or witty competitors focus on what we don't know)

Which goes back to what I repeatedly mentioned- namely we

• Well at a classical concert, an orchestra performed Beethoven's ninth symphony. A Hurricane of enthusiasm crippled the concert hall. During the play of the fifth movement, tears of joy pour around and you could witness .How lucky we are that this symphony has been composed. I thought. But is that really true? Would we be unhappy without this allegro? Not really
• Well had the symphony never been composed- no one would miss it or even notice its absence. The conductor of the orchestra would not receive any dull stress calls recommending

What I am saying is we are vastly more likely to see pattern where there is none than to miss on the pattern because it was ok in past (2000 years ago), if you see something that looks like lion and run away and every time you see a lion you run away – even if you have a false alert. But those who were analytical and miss on the second error of seeing the lion and not run because they weren't sure it was a lion -became a great source of protein- meaning end up in the stomach of the wild beast. So our survival depended on seeing pattern where there is none. Because you cannot miss on the second error of not seeing a pattern. Just as it much Better to Mistake a Stone for a Bear than A Bear for a Stone Well this explain why we are prone to over causation (our ability to find cause and effect).

But here is where the real problem lies: The world today doesn't resemble the past, why because of the rise of complexity couple with a drastic decrease of predictability due to globalization and internet.

• All what I am trying to emphasize is that – we are prone to generalize the particular or some of us particularize the general, some do both and the wise neither- in one sentence we tend to make inference on small amount of data. Just as if you make enough money above average in 5 to 6 years in the row, they call you a successful person and even laugh at your jokes. But in the real world, reality is not that way. So there is a mismatch between the period of compensation and the time to real see the statically property of the underline
• Here are two big practical ideas to take away from this episode

1 all what I am saying is we should be careful on things we can make inference and on things on which we can't. This is the reason why I made a clear distinction between Mediocistan and extremistan. We have a strong propensity to overestimate causation (our ability to find cause and effect) and under estimate the presence of randomness. Yes causation is more difficult than most consultants, experts think.Ludwig wigenstein put it this way "Our language is not potent enough to express what we do"

• just as life is process, decision making under uncertainty,statistics,Science is not a body of knowledge; it is a rigorous process. Isn't defined by "what we know" (fragile) but "How we want to know" (robust).
• Science is avoiding being fooled by data. We use statistics to avoid being fooled by data and above all avoid stories- why because it will drown you into believing you are on track
• If you are in extremist an as I define in (The boat) or any of your undertaking a huge upside or an enormous downside – be cautious by being be as sceptical as possible about your knowledge of the world, & as certain as possible about wise action. This is where we here at option are specialise ourselves by providing practical rule of thumbs,heuristics,tricks to deal effortlessly and easily by avoiding losses and making huge profits.