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I have young kids, and as they get older they will face some very high stakes decisions that could result in all the known ways kids mess up their lives (drunk driving, unwanted pregnancy, drugs, etc). What's your recommendation for how to give teenagers a framework for how to make the right decisions when the pressure is on in some of these situations that can have this high impact negative outcomes?

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Given that a young person will need to think probabilistically and that they need to be able to make good decisions under stress, I see several other major life skills such as negotiation skills, and emotional skills such as directing attention and focus, understanding and cooperation with others along with the ability to learn independently as parts of a larger skillset to thrive. There are lots of materials for each of those skills individually such as those from the Decision Education Foundation and the Alliance for Decision Education but I haven't seen a great storyteller put the lessons into compelling stories for kids or young adults. Any advice or suggestions on compiling a series of educational "Life Journey" stories or on finding resources for them would be wonderful. Thanks for all your hard work!

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founding

I know you retired from Poker over a decade ago, but I wondered if you had any tips for someone trying to become skilled at it?

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Mar 6, 2023·edited Mar 6, 2023

I was always fascinated by heteroscedasticity, how large data sets can be skewed by outliers thereby impacting/distorting any data results. I know this is more of a statistical construct but wondered how heteroscedasticity might impact decision making in the real world?

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I would be interested in hearing your take on predictions, particularly in the media. Most are trivial (who is going to win the World Series), but some are consequential (what is the Fed going to do?). It strikes me that there are no consequences for making wrong predictions, however they can be a useful input for decision making. How do you look at them - do you have trusted sources that you might trust enough to use as an input? Ignore them all? When I was predicting TV ratings for a living, we used to say we were trying to make the "least wrong" estimate. Thanks!

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Hi Annie! Could you write a post how to deal with big consequential medical decisions? How would you deal with doctors and picking doctors/procedures for big consequential medical decisions for you or your loved ones?

This is something Chris and a bunch of us were hoping you can help us with since we all have parents that are reaching old age and need help.

Last year I tried to help my father make big consequential medical decisions.

I tried using your tips and some of them worked, but I found working with doctors frustrating.

For example:

I asked doctors for probabilities and payoffs for certain medications or procedures, but they were vague and wouldn't give me good info. Often it felt we were rushed.

I asked them about side effects for certain procedures and drugs. I asked them what's the probability of each side effect and how bad could each side effect affect my father's quality of life? They said they couldn't give me precise numbers and each patient is unique. I asked them to give me rough probabilities, "are we talking about 80-90%? or 1-2%?" This seemed to help them open up.

I asked them for general base rates. Ideally I could get base rates for their hospital and other hospitals as well.

I tried to combine the outside view and inside view to come up with more accurate forecasts. For example when I asked doctors to forecast my father's life expectancy, they said each person is unique and they couldn't give me a forecast. I asked them to give me a range of what happened to others patients in the past. I used a slightly lower number for my father's forecast since my father seemed to maybe a little below average.

Instead of having the doctor run a 1 way door irreversible decision, I tried to have them run low cost experiments or 2 way door decisions.

I ran a Pre-mortem, and had tripwires in place for potential problems. This was helpful to do as a group since there was family members involved.

I wanted to triangulate opinions with three different doctors, but one of the doctors wanted me to pick one and I'm not sure if insurance would still pay for multiple doctor's opinions.

Would love to see you make an in-depth post about how to make medical decisions Annie!

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founding

Boy, you have to wonder about juries. Making *such* high stakes decisions, and yet in a way that would seem to highlight every single bias / break every single protocol for making good decisions (except for maybe an initial anonymous vote?). I sort of shudder to think of it, now that I think of it! Any thoughts on this, or research that you would point to?

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Hi Annie, do you know what happened to Stuart Butterfields old shareholders that got the money back or did they participate in Slack? Otherwise not so good deal for them.

Peter

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I think there is likely a misalignment between what parents want at my kids' private school and what initiatives the staff wants. What techniques would you suggest to gain alignment between these various groups?

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I made a career change 25 plus years ago to be a consultant from an executive. When you left poker, did you have the same value strategy? The “bet on yourself” mentality we hear in sports…

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Annie, have you come across an effective way to get executives in a changing industry to adopt and take seriously risk weighted cash flow projections (which obviously require some guesswork) over the forecasts they’re using now which they think are “real”?

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Thank you so much. Your comment is my idea of hitting a jackpot.

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I’m considering retiring from my current position in a year and a half from now. I’m also looking at developing multiple possible income streams, all of these have potential. That aside, with regards to my current job, I’m finding it difficult to sort out what is fact and what isn’t. Not so much with regards to retirement income and future opportunities, but with how I feel about it all (you’ll be happier, you’ll miss it, you’ll have more time, this is the thing you are an expert at, why quit now when you have so much to offer, etc) - how do you sort that out?

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I really like the 'learning loop' aspect. Do you have some advice for separating luck from skill? I had a coaching call with a client and what ended up working well was that I led with a story where I had the same development need as the client. Worked perfectly, but this wasn't pre-meditated, it was spontaneous, I tried it and it worked. I'm trying to clarify skill vs luck on this one.

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