1. Closed loop: How to combat perfectionism (finish first, then perfect, completion is more important than perfection)

2. Switch: control the two modes of the brain (the two modes of thinking, fast and slow in the brain)

3. Internal control: run the four-person relay race of the brain well (master the slow thinking of the brain well)

4. Restart: The spiritual device of restarting (how to restart our thinking mode from the spiritual level)

5. Growth: Three steps of growth hacking (the secret of the growth flywheel)

6. Kernel: Find the smallest replicable kernel (the smallest executable replication unit - find what you really like to do and are willing to do repeatedly)

7. Compound interest: create a long-term partial monopoly (be a long-termist - create a long-term partial monopoly)

8. Vision: Design a life navigation system (design your own life navigation system)

9. Emergence (bringing the wisdom of the group to oneself)

Just like many books, they only talk about what the goal is, but don't know how to do it. (Choose a normal track, integrate resources, and insist on achieving the ultimate goal.) Everyone knows these goals, and knows how to integrate them and how to persist. I think it is impossible to write them down. If everyone knew how to do it, there would be too many successful people.

What should be done specifically on these three levels?

Returning to our topic, the three knobs correspond to a "three-layer model", namely the resource layer, the configuration layer, and the professional layer. You don’t need to be great at each layer, the key is whether you can build these three layers into a complete system.

If you are a person with abundant resources, don’t be too superstitious about your relationships. What you have to think about is how to design your own power system and create something valuable.

A powerful person has the three-level thinking of "boss, coach, and player". What makes Buffett particularly good at investing is that he has been a player, a coach, and a boss.

When he was a teenager, he ran a pinball machine business in a barber shop, covering many popular concepts such as chain stores, new retail, and gambling, which are very fashionable today. When he used equity to invest in a company, he was actually acting as a coach, improving operations, fighting for management rights, and fighting labor unions in the process, showing himself to be quite cold-blooded and tough.

The real world is multi-dimensional and problems are three-dimensional. In order to see things not as a single, one-sided view, but as a holistic view, you must have three knobs.

What exactly does a person rely on to achieve success? Effort, ability, luck, connections? To answer this question, it’s useless to choose just one answer, and it’s useless to choose “all of the above.” This is like asking you which of the four wheels of a car is more important. Saying one of them is definitely wrong, and saying four is not the right answer. Only when these four wheels work together through a system can the car move. This chapter talks about how to build such a dynamic system.

After learning the nine-stage mental method, you have become an excellent player. Now, you will enter the level challenge and defeat the enemy in each level. Each level of the challenge contains hidden traps and many unexpected problems. I will take you to face these problems one by one and master the life algorithm to solve and defeat them.

When dealing with ambiguous matters, don't let your intuition and sixth sense run wild. It requires scientific and rational analysis and calculation. "Don't be a "dagger" when you encounter a problem. "Here, let's do the math. "Don't hesitate and don't be confused. If you turn abstract problems and data into mathematical and physical probabilities, you will find a direction with a high probability of winning!

Everything is number, which can be understood from two perspectives: one is that "everything is number", and the other is "everything comes from bits". The former refers to Pythagoras's "everything is number". He believed that mathematics can explain everything in the world. He was obsessed with numbers to the point of worship; at the same time, he believed that all truths can be expressed through proportions, squares and right triangles. Reflect and confirm, such as claiming that the square number "100" means "just". In addition to being superstitious, he also initiated the scientific exploration of mathematics, logic, and philosophy in ancient Greece. The latter is what physicist John Wheeler said "everything comes from bits": human life and even consciousness are information written on DNA, and the basic unit of information is bits.

Quantitative thinking is the basis of scientific thinking. Why was there no science in the strict sense in ancient China? Take astronomy as an example. Shen Kuo of the Northern Song Dynasty built a huge observatory to measure the planets for five years and collected a large amount of data. However, he did not use these data to calculate mathematical laws and planetary trajectories, but only used them to explain the stars. , to help the emperor divine fortune.

Although there were "Zhou Bi Suan Jing" and "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic" in the Western Han Dynasty, Zu Chongzhi's estimation of pi in the Southern Dynasty was more than 1,000 years ahead of the world, but it was limited to practical calculations and ignored axiomatic construction and theoretical derivation.

Data has become the oil of the present and future. Take a look at the top ten listed companies in the world. Most of them are companies based on "numbers". ABC=Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence) Big Data (Big Data) Cloud Computing (Cloud Computing) is the technology that attracts the most attention at present.

Let’s talk about business. What is a business model? It means that you can calculate accounts that others cannot. The essence of business is to settle accounts, and those businesses that cannot settle accounts will collapse sooner or later, such as shared bicycles. If you can figure it out, others can't. This is your core advantage. If you find any great company, you can use this theory to analyze it. The pricing power of an enterprise is also part of the settlement of accounts.

The huge opportunities in the Chinese market come from the overtaking digital transformation. We have not experienced a decent software era. In the past few years, the economy has developed rapidly, but the development model has also been extensive. The current ABC wave has actually made up for all the "missing lessons in the software era" and "lack of digital thinking", so the benefits have doubled.

In the industrial age, humans have realized the automation of machinery; in the information age, humans have realized the automation of information processing; and Al, it is possible to realize the automation of the brain and decision-making.

From Pythagoras to artificial intelligence, the underlying force that rules the world is numbers.

I tried to sort out the algorithms that are important to a person. There are no complicated calculations involved. Think about it, after graduating from school, how many times have you used mathematical calculations beyond the elementary school level? The most important thing is computational thinking and scientific thinking. We should follow the teachings of Leibniz. When we encounter problems, we should not be "arrogant" or waste time by air-to-air exchanges. Instead, we should say: "Here, let's do the math."

When people realize that the world is full of uncertainties, some people choose to let it be unclear, and some people choose to use thinking to measure the unknown.

To use thinking to measure the unknown requires quantitative thinking. The so-called quantitative thinking, simply put, is a way of thinking that uses numbers to solve problems.

The concept of quantification is to reduce uncertainty, there is no need to completely eliminate uncertainty.

The key to quantitative thinking is to find the indicators that should be quantified, which is actually a breakthrough in solving problems. Mastering the key to quantitative thinking will, to a certain extent, unlock the ability to solve problems and resolve seemingly unsolvable problems in life.

"On the opposite side of randomness: one is to surrender to uncertainty... The other is to embrace uncertainty. We must recognize ourselves in the face of luck, and cannot be complacent and admit that this is good luck. And in the face of bad luck, we must analyze ourselves We need to understand the inevitability behind randomness, discover development patterns and high-probability events, and use randomness to make more reasonable decisions to increase the probability of "winning" in life.

Leonardo da Vinci once said a very strange quip: "The rapid movement of an inanimate bone controls the fate of the person who makes it move - a throw of the dice." This sentence is extremely informative and validates this genius. of IQ. He brilliantly points out the ruthless control of randomness on human destiny.

People are afraid of randomness, but they also pursue randomness. For example, the small surprise of love, the big stimulation of challenge, etc.

In June 2019, Korean Go master Cui Zhehan announced his entry into the Texas Hold'em poker world. Why? The randomness of Go is so weak that only a handful of people can climb to the top, and this game only rewards champions. Some chess players are just a little short of nothing in their lives. But what about Texas Hold'em? There are new champions almost every year. So we have randomness to thank. The unpredictable nature of the world is distressing, but it also gives more people hope.

Can a thrown dice be counted?

If Laplace's Demon really exists, that is, everything in the universe can be calculated, then the biggest trouble this brings to mankind is that if we continue the cycle and work backwards, we will find that because humans are also made of matter, if there is An omnipotent god observes a person like a dice. As long as his data is sufficient, a person's fate can be calculated. In this case, is there still room for human free will?

What exactly causes randomness?

Life is full of randomness. To truly understand this, we need to understand mathematics, evolution, philosophy, business, physics, and more. Nassim Taleb said in his book "Random Wandering Fools": "Your success may not be because you are better than others, but may be the result of luck." He also said that "Entrepreneurs who own private jets Not as rich as a dentist”. In short, if you don't understand randomness, the probability of being teased by fate is very high.

Will we fall into nihilism due to randomness and believe that human destiny is predetermined? Indeed, because of randomness, the reality we know is not a direct reflection of people or the environment, but a blurred image randomized by unforeseen or changing external forces.

This is not to say that ability is irrelevant—ability is one of the factors that increase the probability of success—but the connection between action and outcome may not be as direct as we would like to believe. Therefore, it is not easy to understand the past and it is equally difficult to predict the future. In both cases, we would benefit greatly from looking beyond superficial explanations.

In the long run, good decisions will definitely bring investment returns. However, in the short term, when good decisions fail to bring investment returns, we must be patient. Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital wrote in the preface to the Chinese version of the book "The Most Important Thing in Investing": Acceptance is one of my important themes: accepting the inevitability of cycles and changes, accepting the randomness of things, and thus accepting the future. Unpredictability and uncontrollability. Acceptance brings calm, which is a great asset when other investors lose their cool. Only in this way can we be on an equal footing with our destiny.

As emotional beings, humans can experience the emotional fluctuations and mysticism brought about by randomness, but we must understand that there is no need to give too many black-box explanations to randomness.

In addition, in order to explore the unknown world, we sometimes prefer some clumsy determinism and are not afraid to explore cause and effect. Although reductionism sometimes seems stupid, it is better than pretending to be magical and confusing. This is the right way to dance with randomness.

As long as we are in this world, we cannot escape randomness. The results of many things are indeed determined by luck, not your strength and hard work. Randomness, like an invisible hand, governs the world.

Randomness is an important logic for us to understand the world. All we can do is embrace it, accept it, and learn to dance with it.

In the face of randomness, if you can see deeper than others through data and knowledge, you can bypass various uncertain factors and obtain profits.

Use probabilistic thinking to improve your chances of winning, avoid intuition and personal opinion, and use simple probabilities to improve your success.

It is speculated that the chance of a sunfish developing from a fertilized egg into an adult fish is only one in a million. So what to do? The secret weapon is "using quantity to realize the ergodicity of probability". A medium-sized sunfish can lay 300 million eggs at a time, the largest number of eggs among vertebrates. This strange-looking fish has stubbornly reproduced in this way. From life to everything in the universe, if there is a Creator, the tool he controls is probability.

Probability, in my opinion, is the most valuable mathematical knowledge for a person, but we have not studied this course seriously. why? First, if you understand probability calculations, you may not have probabilistic thinking; second, if you understand probabilistic thinking, you may not be able to take probabilistic actions. People don't want to calculate, especially probabilities. More often than not, people like to use heuristic thinking, replacing more precise probability judgments with stories we have woven deep in our memories.

In reality, most people are either black and white, either/or, or yin and yang are chaotic and mixed. Reality has grayscale, and probability is used to accurately describe and apply this grayscale. Tsai Chongxin said: "Any opportunity, basically when you are 30% sure, you can win big, because the probability is too small and you may lose money; when you are 50% sure, even if you win, it is basically a small win; if there is When you are 80% sure, it is basically a red ocean; if you wait until you are 100% sure... there may be no such business in the world. "

Even Buffett, who is extremely averse to uncertainty, will make mistakes with his value investing, but the probability of making money is higher in the long run. Once you understand probability, you will not overly pursue perfection in your actions. We often need to make decisions with incomplete information.

Investment and life are all about dealing with uncertainty. We should be prepared to make mistakes and take appropriate risks. This is a kind of probability thinking. People tend to overestimate their differences and often imagine that "this time is really different." However, many things are really difficult to escape from probability. For example, if you want to publish a book, don’t think about whether you can do it or how long it will take to complete it. First, ask your publishing friends what the success rate of this thing was before (Carney Mann told a similar story).

Winners in life are probability winners. Either they got super lucky, or they understood the basic laws behind the coincidence. Most people succumb to fate, a few people fight against fate (as part of their destiny), and a very small number try to discover the tricks of fate. In short, probabilistic thinking has become a basic ability necessary for people to walk in today's society.

Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann said: "The history of the universe is not determined solely by the basic laws. It depends on the basic laws and a long list of coincidences or probabilities beyond them. The basic theory does not contain those probabilities. , they are something extra, so it is not a theory of everything. In fact, a lot of the information surrounding us in the universe comes from these coincidences, not just the basic laws. Now it is often said that by examining low energy to high energy and beyond. High energy, or from small scale to smaller scale and then to smaller scale phenomena, gradually approaching the basic laws is like peeling an onion. We continue to build higher energy accelerators to search for elementary particles, so that we can gradually move closer. Going deeper into the structure of particles, along the way, we can gradually approach the fundamental laws."

Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza said: "Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself." If we follow probability, we may not necessarily have good results. Because fate plays tricks on probability, but this does not affect the calmness and happiness we gain from it. In addition, in order to prevent ourselves from being teased by chance, we must strive to upgrade from gambler mode to casino mode and let the law of large numbers serve us.

We need to act on probability. If you want to change the world, you must first change your own probability structure. Most of the time in life, quantitative changes will not produce qualitative changes, and you will be firmly locked in a probabilistic disadvantage (or advantage) by the law of large numbers. Just like Einstein's definition of "stupid": doing a stupid thing repeatedly, but expecting different results. The way you act (your probability structure) is more important than intelligence and experience.

When Duan Yongping talked about the question of "how to ensure that the right person is selected," he said: "There is no absolute way to guarantee it, but if you first look at suitability (value matching) when selecting people, it will be better than just looking at qualifications (the ability to do things) The probability of selecting the right person is much greater. “Look, probability is everywhere.

Where do probabilities come from? To answer this question, we have to go back to mathematics, physics and philosophy. These three explore the origin of the world. Unfortunately, our education does not include general education. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for adults to truly understand probability.

From a material perspective, the world is also governed by probability. The nature of the quantum world is probabilistic. The strict causality of Newtonian mechanics does not exist in the quantum world. Feynman said that although this was a bit frustrating, physics did not collapse.

Destiny refers to things that are destined to happen. How to face the life problem of fate?

We must learn to think probabilistically, actively think optimistically about actions, and develop a corresponding mechanism.

Probabilistic thinking is used to measure opportunities. Learning probabilistic thinking can improve the accuracy of seizing opportunities. An analytical framework based on probability calculations is far superior to human intuition.

In daily life, we neither need precise numbers nor understand complex probability calculation formulas. As long as we master probabilistic thinking, it is enough.

If you master probabilistic thinking, you can improve your judgment in dealing with uncertainties, adjust your cognitive system, and form a powerful life algorithm.

From a systemic level, turn yourself into a dice with a higher probability of winning.

"In the short term, our life is full of chance; in the long term, it will appear inevitable. Don't pay too much attention to the mistakes you make once or twice in life, stick to the normal approach and keep doing it. Let the past go. There are still infinite possibilities for the past and the future. Regretting the past will only lead to failure in the present and loss of the future.

If you understand a certain "chicken soup theory" from a mathematical level, then this "chicken soup theory" is not just "chicken soup". In this chapter, I will use the law of large numbers to explain why a person cannot live a happier life even if he can travel through time and space.

The law of large numbers seems very simple, but in fact not many people understand it. For example, this chapter specifically mentions the concept of "dilution", which I believe will reveal a mystery in many people's minds. Of course, not many people have thought about this mystery.

Negative regret = learned helplessness. This kind of regret is like the illusion deliberately created by the casino for gamblers. It seems that you are one step away from the big prize, but in fact it is far away. Regret destroys a person's brain on a physiological level, just like drug addiction.

For the sake of rigor, we call "positive regret" review. The key to review is to distinguish between luck and mistakes. In addition, especially do not commit the "small sample bias", that is, draw conclusions based on one or two results.

"Dilution" is really useful. Don’t get upset when something happens, and find ways to incrementally solve old problems. There are many things that seemed too big at the time, but looking back, they are no longer a problem. There is a strategy in Go called "Take off first", which means that if a certain part is difficult to move, put it down first and move elsewhere. However, many people are stuck in a certain place throughout their lives.

Since he says he has no regrets, why does Bezos say "minimize regrets"? He doesn’t mean minimizing regret now, but minimizing regret in the future. Humans are animals based on imagination. In order not to regret in the future, small regrets now seem to have become a strategy, a secret that only one knows.

Regret emphasizes attachment. Regardless of whether the future gets better or worse, rises or falls, regret will destroy you. For example, you regret not buying a house. When the price was 2,000 yuan/m, you didn’t buy it; when the price was 5,000 yuan/m, you couldn’t even buy it, and now it’s 50,000 yuan/m; for example, if you didn’t sell stocks, when the price was 20 yuan per share, You didn't sell it; if it fell to 10 yuan per share, how could you sell it? As a result, it has now dropped to 5 yuan per share. However, market prices have no memory and will not care about your costs. You should make decisions based on the moment. People who love to regret will always say "I almost..." when meeting others. As a result, they will become more cost-conscious, digging their own pit deeper and deeper, and they will no longer be able to escape. Concepts related to this type of regret include sunk cost, desperate situation, anchoring effect, etc.

Regret is nasty and hard to get rid of. Everyone will regret it. This is actually a talent of human beings. Simply put, what should we do when faced with negative regret?

Life is like riding a bicycle, don't pursue stability, pursue balance. If you want balance, you have to move forward.

French thinker Montaigne said: "If I were allowed to live my life again, I would be willing to repeat my life. Because I never regret the past and am not afraid of the future. Moreover, how do you know that this is not a life that you have already started over? What? You’ve come, what’s there to regret?”

Statistics and probability theory are closely related, and the latter is often used as the theoretical basis. Simply put, the difference between the two is that probability theory derives the probability of a sample from the population, while statistics is just the opposite - deriving large overall information from a small sample.

The law of large numbers describes the long-term stability of random events that occur repeatedly.

The importance of the law of large numbers is that it allows us to realize that when some random events occur repeatedly, on the whole, they will still show long-term stability, that is, chance contains necessity. In other words, when the sample size is large enough, the law of large numbers comes into play.

When we review our destiny within a lifetime, our destiny cannot depend on one or two choices, because it depends on our own system. From this point of view, the sentence "Character determines destiny" should be revised to "Character determines behavior, and behavior determines destiny." The way you behave is the system that determines your destiny.

Changing the system does not require you to change everything and every choice you have made in your life. It only requires you to move the pointer of your life system in the right direction. Don't underestimate this slight deviation, because it will lead us to a completely different life trajectory.

Combined with the law of large numbers, in the short term, our life is full of chance; in the long term, it will show some inevitability. The best prize in life is not to win the lottery, but to adjust your life system to turn a small-probability chance advantage into a high-probability result.

The seventh level of irrationality proposes "7 strategies to defeat irrationality (1) Admit that I don't know; 2) Think about the long term; 3) Correct mistakes; 4) Learn more; 5) Seek truth and have a rational and scientific spirit; 6) Learn diversified thinking. ;7 Habitualize correct thinking") Don't be fooled by superficial choices, rationally quantify and probabilize. Irrational people are prone to being impulsive and superficially influenced, causing irreparable losses.

Rationality itself is a particularly irrational concept. Because this concept is too complex, too vague, and erratic. For example, it is difficult for us to find the boundary between rationality and irrationality. Rationality and irrationality are often mixed together to fight hand in hand. Human society relies heavily on the irrationality of groups. reason.

Rationality is more like street wisdom, so it is almost impossible to explain irrationality in 10 minutes. The streets are full of such books, of all kinds, and many times the whole book cannot be explained clearly or completely. The list of irrationalities is estimated to be 100, and sometimes people get dizzy when they look at them. Each of these concepts is wonderful and worthy of being collected by "knowledge stamp collectors", but they are useless in reality. Many people who have read a lot of books and appear to be very intelligent and have a lot of experience are actually irrational at heart. I have summarized four "animal spirits", not to simplify irrationality, but to provide a storage box. The storage box itself is lively and interesting.

We call out the irrational rational. What we are fighting against is irrationality that is bad for humanity or bad for ourselves. Even the irrationality we want to fight may vary depending on the protagonist, motivation, and situation. The progress of human society depends on irrational rational people. Rational people adapt themselves to the world, while irrational people persistently try to adapt the world to themselves, so progress depends on irrational people.

So what exactly is rationality? Remember the words of Keimdis: "The first norm of rationality is the law of nature." Rationality and irrationality can also be used as attributives or adverbials. Arguing with your wife, arguing with your father, and arguing with fools about the truth are all irrational. rationality. For another example, if a person deliberately indulges in drunkenness, he may be rational and irrational. It may seem irrational, but he actually knows it well.

Rationality is a state of scientific spirit and truth-seeking. The basic ideas of Socrates and Plato are based on rationally guided and temperate life. Soros said: "Although rational behavior is only an ideal situation, unexpected results can appear at any time, and there is no perfect understanding. However, pursuing more perfect knowledge is not only beneficial to the results, but also consistent with people's desire for knowledge." Rationality is difficult to define. So we go the other way, and it seems more reliable to study irrationality, which is a bit like Popper's "falsification". Therefore, in many cases, rationality must be achieved through irrational trial and error.

Humanity's pursuit of rationality is also full of irrationality. Despite the growing number of mathematicians and physicists involved in economics research, the mainstream of economics still assumes that agents can rationally consider infinite futures, optimizing so-called utility functions, and assume that others will too Do this. In 2003, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas declared that the major problems of the Great Depression had been solved. As a result, not long after, the economic crisis occurred in 2008. The then president of the European Central Bank declared: “The models we have not only failed to predict the crisis, they also fail to explain what happened.”

Although this book is called "The Algorithm of Life," I am not what you would call a "rational die-hard." I know there is so much we don’t know. Technological revolutions such as AI and big data have given people a sense of confidence. Jin Guantao said: "This is a kind of scientific utopia, reflecting a kind of 'rational conceit.'" In the 20th century, the most important achievement of society, humanities, and social research was the discovery of the relationship between "tacit knowledge" and the market. The knowledge that can be shared by humans is knowledge that can be expressed in symbols, but it cannot contain "tacit knowledge" that everyone has. Hayek called this fetishization of expressible knowledge the "conceit of reason." Today, with the application of big data and artificial intelligence, this rational conceit has reappeared in the field of artificial intelligence.

Rationality means not being absolutely certain. Russell believes that not being absolutely certain is the most critical point in rationality. Henri Bergson declared in his 1897 book Creation Evolution that all the most enduring and productive philosophical systems are those that originate from intuition. Karl Popper said: "My view may be expressed in this way, that every scientific discovery contains an 'irrational element' or Bergson's 'creative intuition'."

There are no rational people in a crowd. Psychologist Gustave Le Pen's view is: "There are absolutely no rational people in a group." He believes that groups can eliminate individuals' independent consciousness and ability to think independently. In fact, their thoughts and feelings have been assimilated into the group long before they lose their sense of independence. Soros's core ideas have two propositions: first, as long as the participants have the ability to think, the participants' views of the world will always be partial and distorted, which is "fallacy"; second, these distorted views can Influence the environment in which participants find themselves, as wrong perceptions can lead to wrong behaviours. In the field of economics, uncertainty is precisely the most critical characteristic of human affairs.

If you want to get rich, the most important thing is to be rational. We should probably add industry attributes to rationality. A rational doctor may be an irrational person in investment, and a stock expert may also be a person obsessed with health myths. Regarding the rationality of investment, Munger gave two good suggestions: "Rationality is not something you can do to make more money. It is a binding principle. Rationality is indeed a good idea. You have to avoid doing meaningless things that have become routine in private. It requires cultivating a system of thought to increase your success rate over time. Being more rational is not something you can choose to do or not do. , but it is a moral obligation that you need to fulfill as much as possible. Berkshire Hathaway performed well not because we were smart from the beginning. In fact, we were ignorant. Every great achievement of Thavey Company begins with stupidity and failure.”

The so-called lifelong growth is essentially rational growth. In short, rationality requires you to take to the streets and fight fiercely in the "rational fight club" in order to truly grow step by step, and you will always be knocked down one day.

Rationality in philosophy refers to the ability of human beings to use reason. Relative to the concept of perceptuality, it usually means that people derive reasonable conclusions through reasoning after careful thinking.

Due to objective factors in evolutionary history, human thinking is inherently deficient and has limitations, and irrationality cannot be eliminated.

A more rational model is that a person uses his own rationality to build a city wall, and then does some irrational things within the city wall to a limited extent. Instead, when persuading others, learn from the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin: “Appeal to interests, not to reason.”

Bounded rational thinking and intuitive judgment. In life, intuition sometimes feels like an afterthought. But you have to shout about the magical effect. Excessive rational thinking will make your intuitive leap fall into the cliff. And proper intuition can help us leap over mountains and rivers.

Let me talk about two core points first: It is meaningless to deliberately train intuition, because intuition is an unintentional result; rely on intuition when creating, and rely on algorithms when making decisions.

This chapter is actually about decision-making. In a very limited time, I analyzed four decision-making methods: intuition, algorithm, simple heuristic, and Alpha Go. The advocacy of intuition that you see most in bestsellers, I think, means very little to the individual. Kahneman's algorithm and Jirenze's simple heuristic are both different styles of applications based on decision trees. The Alpha Go method is on the edge of interdisciplinarity. The protagonist is AI and there are very few application scenarios, but it does foreshadow the future.

Intuition is important, but intuition is actually a luxury, especially for ordinary people. Robert Gallagher, a student of Shannon, a scientist and engineer, recalled: "He [Shannon] had an uncanny ability to see right through things. He would say, 'Something like this should be true,' and it often turned out that he was. Right. If you don't have extraordinary intuition, you can't open up a new field out of thin air. "Shannon explained: "I think I prefer to embody the problem first, and then go to it. Talk about equations." Isn't this just intuition? It's like seeing the answer first and then explaining why it's correct.

In addition to being really smart, Shannon also has solid basic skills, is obsessed with work, and hopes to really make things like an engineer. These are the essence of his intuition. Therefore, we can understand his genius version of intuition as directly grasping the core of the problem and leaving the details for later consideration.

Go player Masaki Takemiya, whose chess style is known as "Cosmic Style", is very imaginative when playing chess, but his basic skills are very solid, otherwise he will not be able to become a super-class player no matter how good his intuition is. No one can develop basic skills. Even in the field of art, Picasso's basic skills were very good before he painted paintings that others could not understand. We can praise those things that can only be understood but cannot be expressed in words, but it is not appropriate to worship them, let alone deify them.

This is the first point I mentioned - it is meaningless to deliberately train intuition, because intuition is an "unconscious" result.

Let’s talk about the second point - rely on intuition when creating, and rely on algorithms when making decisions. Inventor Nikola Tesla said: "When we were children, we did things purely by intuition, that is, the spark of vivid and scattered imagination. As we grow older, rationality emerges, and we do things more and more systematically. and work by design. But those early impulses, although their effects are not immediate, play an important role in our lives and may shape our destiny to a large extent.”

Tesla told the secret of invention: first, intuition and impulse, and second, systematic thinking. Only the combination of the two can turn genius' ideas into realistic inventions.

In the real world, after all, there are only a few creative jobs. More often, we face the problems of "implementation" and "decision-making", probabilizing uncertainties and forming algorithms. Most of the time, experts are unreliable, intuition is unreliable, and you and I are unreliable. As Kahneman discovered, the results of applying statistical methods are often much more accurate than the predictions of experts.

Jirenze's theory integrates decision trees and intuition. Indeed, when making decisions in reality, it is difficult for you to list a decision tree to calculate probabilities. People tend to use personal style "simple heuristic" decision-making. For example, Steve Jobs wanted the best in everything. I know a mother who taught a child who was admitted to Harvard. Her principle is to find the best teacher to teach her child no matter what subject. Intuition based on "common sense" is to be encouraged. This kind of intuition, to be precise, can even be regarded as a kind of "counter-intuitive" in a certain sense. For example, Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital, said trusting your instincts will keep you from falling into conventional thinking or trying to please others. Is this intuition or common sense? Indeed, it is common sense that if you want to outperform the market, mathematically speaking, you must be different from that market, yet many people would rather fail by following the rules.

Jack Ma, who is not good at mathematics, often seems to manage the company based on intuition. Virgin’s Richard Branson can’t even figure out gross profit vs. net profit. But precisely because of this, both men were particularly good at seeing the bigger picture, simply by hiring someone else to handle the computational work.

Vague precision is better than precise vagueness. This intuition is essentially a big-picture view.

However, in reality, we tend to exaggerate the power of intuition. The media said that the founders of American hedge funds are retiring one after another. There are an increasing number of cases of established elite investors liquidating funds that have achieved outstanding results before. With the rise of funds using artificial intelligence technology, it is difficult for them to continue to make profits through investment styles that rely on "intuition" and "insight." The U.S. fund industry is moving towards an era in which the "old elites" are absent.

The principle emphasized by Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, is to make decisions in a credibility-weighted manner and in a systematic manner. Bridgewater's strategy is to express decision-making criteria in the form of algorithms and embed these algorithms into computers, thereby improving the quality of collective decision-making. Such decision-making systems (especially when credibility weighting is practiced) are extremely powerful.

Bayesian networks bring about the "intuition revolution". Scientists can obtain clear probability values ​​by substituting all assumptions, existing knowledge and observation data into Bayes' formula. A seemingly simple formula has become a new scientifically efficient tool.

In the 1980s, Judea Pearl, the father of Bayes, demonstrated that using Bayesian networks should reveal the causes behind complex phenomena. Its operating principle is as follows: "If we don't know the cause of a phenomenon, first build a model based on what we think is the most likely cause, and then connect each possible cause as a node in the network, and based on existing knowledge , our prediction or expert opinion assigns a probability value to each connection. Next, we only need to substitute the observation data into this model and recalculate the probability value for each new data through the Bayesian formula between network nodes. Repeat this calculation for each connection until a network is formed and the connection between any two causes has an accurate probability value. You are done, even if the experimental data has gaps or is full of noise and interference information, and you are constantly pursuing various phenomena. The Bayesian network of causes can also build models of various complex phenomena. The value of Bayesian formula is that when observation data are insufficient, it can combine expert opinions and original data to make up for the deficiencies in measurement. . The greater our cognitive deficits, the greater the value of Bayesian formulas.”

Will algorithms bring intuition to AI? In fact, AI defeated humans in Go by imitating human intuition. Go is the pinnacle of perfect games, and its difficulty lies in the fact that you have to rely on intuition a lot of the time. When AI plays Go, for experts, compared with chess that has been conquered, there are two problems: the search space is huge and there is no suitable evaluation function.

The secret of AlphaGo is to use deep neural networks to imitate human intuitive behavior. As a result, it not only completely defeated humans, but from a technical point of view, it already felt like playing Go. What's even more terrible is that most of the spirituality and feelings that humans once boasted about have been proven wrong. Fortunately, from the current point of view, it seems that AI is still far away from imitating other human senses. But, who knows? At that time, most people also believed that AI defeating the world Go champion was something out of reach.

Yet even Judea Pearl, the father of Bayes, now feels that this machine intuition will hold us back from going further, and he wants machines to think about why like humans do. why? Because deep learning is still a black box, simply saying “everything is statistics” does not truly understand cause and effect. By building and strengthening connections using artificial neural networks, deep learning increasingly mathematically approximates the way human neurons and synapses learn. Training data (for example, images or audio) is fed into the neural network, which gradually adjusts until it responds in the right way. As long as you have access to many training images and enough computing power, you can train a deep learning program to accurately identify objects in photos. But deep learning algorithms are not good at generalizing or applying what they learn from one context to another. They can capture related phenomena, such as a rooster crows and the sun rises, but cannot account for the causal relationship between them.

I call intuition a breathtaking leap, but you must have climbed (or be able to) climb two mountains before you can make the leap between them. Many things seem to be explained by intuition, but these intuitions are like a thrilling leap after preparing the relevant conditions. Einstein loved playing the violin, and Feynman loved painting and playing the drums. In a sense, crossing the arts and sciences seems to be more conducive to cultivating intuition. This is the meaning and value of liberal education. We should also, as Bergson said: “Think like doers and act like thinkers.

When people make many decisions, they do not use their brains and use what we often call intuitive thinking. The uniqueness of intuitive thinking is that it enables people to grab a lot of information at a glance, and this is an ability that everyone has. He explains why we fall in love with someone at first sight, and in fact, that moment of feeling may be more accurate than the decision you take a long time to make.

Of course, intuitive thinking often fails. People are often affected by factors such as "overconfidence, limited attention, and cognitive biases," which inevitably lead to errors in judgment.

Given the obvious advantages and disadvantages of direct thinking, we cannot rely entirely on intuitive thinking when making decisions. Because of this, we need to combine intuitive thinking with rational thinking to form powerful algorithms. As for the specific combination method, there are the following three ways:

When every decision cannot be made in black and white, grayscale cognition is required. Analyze and calculate probabilities and expected values, then make black and white decisions. The premise of black and white decision-making is grayscale cognition.

Understanding is divergent and open-ended, so it is grayscale; decision-making is convergent and closed-ended, so it is black and white. The two are like the two blades of scissors. If they are cut to a certain point in time and space, they will affect or even determine our future.

Why do so many smart people fail to accomplish great things? Although they have strong cognitive abilities, they lack the ability to make decisions in black and white. Serrol said: "The biggest trouble in the world is that fools are very certain and wise people are full of doubts." The grayscale of cognition and the black and white of decision-making are a seemingly contradictory combination. How to combine the two? First, figure it out; second, have a method.

"Our 'history' of decision-making is not very good," says Chip Heath. Neither trusting intuition nor rigorous analysis ensures we make good decisions, but a good process does. Research shows that the decision-making process is more important, 6 times more important than analysis.

The concept of grayscale has two meanings: one is that it is not black and white; the other is that grayscale has a numerical value and does not mean that it is completely gray. The value of probabilities is that we can translate our opinions into more precise numbers. Some people will doubt: "It is inherently uncertain, but if you have to calculate the probability, isn't that just a blind guess?" Even a blind number is better than a lot of "I think" and "possibly" . Moreover, combining the system and process, for example, using the Bayesian algorithm and a bunch of random probabilities, will eventually produce amazing prediction effects. In essence, probability helps us discover the causal relationship between unknown events in a complex and uncertain world, that is, we constantly ask the essential "why".

Cognition is when you process the information you gather, think like an analyst, and evaluate options.

Grayscale cognition means that in the stage of evaluating options, don’t rush to make black-and-white judgments, and maintain a certain grayscale. It is best for this grayscale to have a numerical value.

Grayscale cognition requires people to comprehensively evaluate the possibility of various options. They cannot stick to their own opinions and oppose other people's cognitions. They do not seriously think about the possibilities, costs and benefits of each option like an analyst.

We need to list every possibility of things as much as possible and analyze them so that we can rationally evaluate the pros and cons of each option.

Once we start thinking about problems in this way, the way we look at the problem changes, because they pull us from a black and white debate of right and wrong back to the determination of the facts themselves.

In other words, in the cognitive stage, there is no need to be black and white, and do not turn the discussion into an offensive and defensive battle to stand your ground. Instead of wasting time and resources on black-and-white arguments, consider the grayscale values ​​of each option.

We need to think calmly about how likely this view is to be true. If the probability value is between 0 and 100%, then it is a grayscale cognition.

The bottom layer of grayscale cognition is probabilistic thinking. No matter how firm your belief is, you must add a probability value in front of it.

Grayscale cognition is to openly consider options in each dimension and give them corresponding weights. Black and white decision-making is to make clear and decisive choices based on calculation results.

Decision-making is when you, like a commander, make the final choice in the face of various options.

Credibility weighting is not an undifferentiated democracy, nor is it a dictatorship, but rather takes everyone's credibility into consideration. The specific method is that they first use the point aggregator tool they invented to collect different opinions on an issue. There may be dozens of opinions, and then others can rate other people's ideas.

Decision tree is a tool that combines grayscale cognition and black-and-white decision-making. Its core logic is to break down a complex thing into relatively simple things. For example, the decisive factor of something can be broken down into three simple and independent events. We estimate the probability and expected value for each "simple event" to provide a quantitative basis for decision-making. In fact, even if the estimation is not accurate enough, this process can be regarded as truly using the brain to discover the causal connections at the essential level of things, so as to make judgments and decisions on uncertain events.

Charlie Munger said: "If there are 20 factors that interact with each other, then you have to learn to deal with this intricate relationship, because that is the way the world is. But if you can be like Darwin, stay curious and insist on doing it step by step , then you won’t think it’s a daunting task, and you’ll be surprised to find that you’re fully capable of it.”

Too often, however, the value of knowledge is exaggerated. Just like those large companies with bureaucracy, it seems like a bunch of highly educated people are holding endless meetings, but in fact they are pursuing "precise ambiguity." Jim Breyer said: "People generally hate uncertainty. Our society spends tens of billions of dollars to reduce uncertainty, and in order to reduce the last 10% of uncertainty, we often have to pay a ridiculous price."

To remain gray is to remain ignorant. Mark Twain said: “It is not ignorance that gets us into trouble, but fallacious assertions that appear to be correct.” Grayscale cognition is a way to survive in uncertain situations. In Russell's words, it is to "prevent people from being overwhelmed by indecision." Stuart Falstein's point is that acknowledging uncertainty is the first step toward our goal of getting closer to objective truth. The correct attitude should be: "I don't know about this matter. Come, let's do the math together." One of my observations is that if you don't have enough cognitive depth about a thing, it will be difficult to make a good decision. decision.

When you have to make a decision, it's better to make a random decision than not to make a decision at all, especially on the battlefield. Of course, when we say "no," we are also making a decision. The reason why people are afraid to make decisions is because they are unwilling to take the risk of uncertainty. But we must realize that any decision must have pros and cons, gains and losses, and you must make a clean cut. Cowards, moral evaders, and mysophobic patients cannot make "black and white decisions."

Decision making is a bet on the future. You don't have to be right every time. What you have to do is to establish a betting system with a positive overall expected value, and this system can continue to evolve and improve. From a business model perspective, you're better off opening a casino.

Black and white decision-making means that when we form the final decision, we must have a clear black and white choice and cannot be ambiguous. In order to make better decisions on things, we can use a "credibility weighting" method.

Another subtext of "black and white decision-making" is don't regret it. Review is very important, lamenting that you were "almost right" will destroy your decision-making system. Nietzsche said that regret is "repeating the folly of the first time." The key to review is to distinguish between results and luck. For example, your probability of winning something is 60%. If you lose, it’s not surprising because you fall into the 40% probability range of losing. This is luck. Review needs to return to "grayscale cognition" and evaluate the decision-making process, including updating probability values.

From my observation, decision-making is a skill that needs to be exercised. From an educational point of view, parents who raise their children too meticulously actually deprive their children of the opportunity to exercise their decision-making abilities. Regarding cognition, some people say that it is not as good as God to calculate, so should we still calculate? Of course, otherwise you will succumb to your fate. Great decision-makers seem to be taking things lightly. However, we must not be fooled into thinking that decision-making is a simple matter. As Friedrich Maitland said: "Simplicity is the result of long-term hard work, not the starting point." This is true of true dragon-slaying skills.

Avoid being too arbitrary and adopt "double-self thinking". Things are not either good or bad, just like gray-scale cognition. What this chapter talks about is somewhat similar to the chapter on hesitation.

All along, we are making a huge mistake. We are trying to eliminate the other self. For example, you are rising in your career and increasingly need to speak in public, but you often suffer from stage fright. You try your best to take various speech classes, hoping to be as calm and charming as Steve Jobs. However, after practicing for a long time, you still can't overcome the habit of trembling as soon as you go on stage. Until one day, a master speaker says to you: "Your goal is not to 'don't tremble when you speak', but 'to speak while trembling'. That's right, you don't have to eliminate your stage fright. . That you has been deeply written into your genes. What you have to do is "coexistence of two selves": let your self who has learned to speak temporarily take over the situation, and let your stage-frightened self tremble quietly under the podium.

What exactly is "I"? This is one of the greatest mysteries in the universe. Open the human brain, and we simply cannot find a place for "I". The brain doesn't even have a CPU.

Some scientists believe that the human brain is like a noisy conference hall, with a bunch of people speaking in confusion. Sometimes the party with the right voice wins, and sometimes the party with the loudest voice wins. No matter which side wins, the brain has a magical function - to justify itself. It is very good at fabricating a complete plot from a mess of things, creating a "self-awareness" that you are sure of.

After understanding the limitations of the brain, you will understand why I mention "double-self thinking". You can't eliminate the emotional, impulsive, lazy first me. What you have to do is to let the second me and the first me form a joint CEO mechanism.

There is no superman in this world. The gap in hardware equipment between people is far smaller than the hardware gap between the mobile phones we use. It’s not that powerful people don’t have stupid ideas, it’s just that they have a more powerful “double self mechanism”. Mediocre people like to say: "Look, I had thought of this, but..." For mediocre people, "double self" is only suitable for hindsight.

"Double-self thinking" actually sets up a self-dialogue mechanism to force the self into the process of active thinking. You can't eliminate the part of yourself that annoys you. Try to form a "black and white duo" with them, maybe they can become a super band.

Franklin and Munger's approach is the "double self of space." Active review is the "double self of time". Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital uses the “cognitive depth double self”. Bayesian update uses the double self of "space, time and cognitive depth".

In the decision-making stage, we must be decisive enough to speak in black and white. But in actual operation, the difference between decisiveness and blind confidence is not so clear-cut. How to be decisive rather than arbitrary, we must practice the "three double selves".

Act resolutely and don't be sloppy, so that the road ahead will be smooth and the speed can keep up with the changes of the times. You must have the following 7 characteristics of "cuckold thinking"

People think they are not a fool enough and think they are too kind. Here, my definition of "bad guy" is: not affected by emotions and desires, and do the right thing. This definition is somewhat complex. What are the seven emotions and six desires? What is right? What is the relationship and boundaries between rationality and ethics? How does Hun Qiuer face the "trolley problem"? I can only say that the idiots here do not include (and are not limited to) thick black studies, Machiavelli, social jungle Darwinism, success by any means necessary...

Have you discovered a fact? A real person will help you far more than a kind person. Russell said: "Those who forget good and evil and only pursue facts are more likely to achieve good deeds than those who distort facts due to desire and only see what they want to see." Talk about yourself. Hun Qiu'er seems to be more rational. Russell also said: "A person's emotional ups and downs are inversely proportional to his perception of facts. The less you know about the facts, the easier it is to be emotional." Russell is by no means advocating cold-bloodedness. We know that he, Wittgenstein and others founded the philosophy of logical analysis. At the beginning of the 20th century, Russell turned to logical positivism and proposed logical atomism, which required starting from the original facts equivalent to the original propositions in logic and using this fact as the basic element to construct the entire world. Russell believed that this primitive fact was subjective sensory experience, and that these elements had no connection with each other. Russell believed that what people feel is a fact or a collection of facts, which can be neither considered physical nor psychological, but neutral. He called this view "neutral monism."

I hate the term "being a good person" the most, maybe because I am born with low emotional intelligence. As social animals, we benefit from and are subject to social interactions, especially those that are superficial. Larry Page once said that he had two career options, to be a professor or to be a CEO. This way he doesn't have to think about worldly wisdom and can concentrate on being a jerk. I call it a "structural jerk." From this point of view, I have almost chosen a structurally stupid path in my career. One of the basic principles of being a jerk is to give up trying to please others. Yan Geling once said: "I found that after a person gives up the burden of leaving a good impression on others, he will feel so at ease. A person no longer has to please others, he can stop being burdened like I am now." The so-called ingratiating personality , in fact, they use small favors to avoid real responsibilities.

The second basic principle of being a jerk is to give up trying to please yourself. Munger believes: "In general, jealousy, hatred and self-pity are disastrous states of mind. Excessive self-pity can make people almost paranoid. Paranoia is one of the most difficult things to reverse. Don't fall into self-pity. "Self-pity always has negative consequences and is a wrong way of thinking." In Munger's opinion, if a person can avoid it, he has a far advantage over other people, or almost all people. , because self-pity is a standard response. One can train out of it. If you can neither please others nor yourself, then who should you please?

The book "Principles" gives the answer: Whenever faced with the choice of achieving their own goals or pleasing others (or not disappointing others), they will choose to achieve their goals. Of course, the goal must be great, and Dalio's theory should be restricted to the business world.

In the system of this book, Hunqiuer thinking plays a very important role. Review the cognitive closed loop: in the perception phase, you need to be sensitive; in the cognitive phase, you need to be rational; in the decision-making phase, you need to be decisive; in the action phase, you need to be brutal.

Here comes the dilemma, sensitivity and brutality conflict, rationality and decisiveness are also a bit tangled. Therefore, as ordinary people, you and I often seem to have figured it out, but cannot take action; we seem to have taken action, but then hesitate. What about a jerk like Musk? This is not a problem at all. He is the same as Buffett and Bezos. In a sense, their personalities are split: when it comes to perception, jerks are explosive; when it comes to cognition, jerks are 100% rational; when making decisions, jerks are 100% rational. They don't get entangled; when it comes to action, they are very jerks. When switching between channels, the jerks will never be as sloppy as us, they will jump freely on their own split personalities.

How to become a great asshole? The answer is reason and emotion.

Meditation seems to be a secret weapon of Hun Qiu Er. Dalio has meditated almost every day since 1969 and says it has had a huge impact on him. “It gives you a sense of calm, a sense of center, and a sense of serenity so that you can approach things in a better way, be thoughtful and free from emotions.” Meditation is “so powerful. Powerful," Dalio said. "It gives me a balance and helps me a lot."

A person's life is actually a life of becoming more and more stupid, and this is irreversible. The key is that when you passively become a jerk, don't be institutionalized and become a jerk who just eats and drinks without caring about right and wrong or respecting dignity. The bastard may be the continuation of the naughty boy. In the eyes of a jerk, others are also jerks. In this way, expectations are lowered and a lot of worries are avoided. However, the real bastard will not be "thick and black". For example, Gates and Jobs were both jerks when they were young, but as adults they spared no effort to give back to society. This is definitely not about picking up the butcher's knife first, then putting down the butcher's knife and becoming a Buddha immediately. They make reality less cruel and make the world more interesting.

There is no point in trying to please others without principle.

Update your ingratiation strategy to please those very near and far away. The people closest to you are the people around you, those relatives and friends for whom you are willing to go out of your way to help. The most distant people are the ones who are relevant to the meaning you seek.

"Assholes" clearly define who they want to please and are very determined. Life is limited, so this may be the right thing to do.

Control the luck of luck and execute luck to maximize the probability.

Life is unpredictable. I was living my life in a haze, but somehow I ended up helping people answer their life's problems online. One day, someone actually asked me to answer a national-level problem such as "the conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law." A friend asked: "My mother and wife have a conflict when educating their children. How should we deal with it?" There is a very clear answer to this type of question, that is, do not let the elderly take care of the children. That friend wanted me to provide some solutions from a technical perspective. In fact, when faced with this problem, he should adopt a coaching mindset and adjust the combination of players on the field instead of worrying about how the players should kick the ball or pass the ball.

We often say that choice is more important than hard work. The "selection" here is the "configuration layer", which is equivalent to the coach, responsible for arranging the troops. The "effort" here refers to the "execution layer", which is equivalent to the players and is responsible for performing tasks with all their strength.

Success and money are a good worldly yardstick, but I'm just using this to draw your attention to the underlying calculations. Principles are usually nihilistic, but calculation-based thinking is very real. You can tear down principles and even tear down the analogy between principles and formulas. Rather than superficial reasoning, I hope you will think carefully about the question at the beginning of this chapter. Only in this way can you think from "first principles".

Let’s talk about the story behind the question at the beginning of this chapter. One of my hobbies is solving puzzles, and I am known in a small circle for solving weird problems quickly. That question was asked by a friend in Canada, and I answered it almost instantly. What makes me even more happy is that I just need such a topic to describe the "three-layer probability model".

Tell two contradictory stories. According to a biography, optimistic people were most likely to die in concentration camps. why? He would be optimistic that he would be able to walk out of the concentration camp at Christmas, but he didn't. After being hit repeatedly, he just couldn't get out, so he collapsed. I also saw a true story, also about a concentration camp. The secret of a Jew's survival was that he fantasized every day that after he got out, he would give speeches and share his story everywhere. Are these two contradictory? Not contradictory. We need to be pessimistic at the configuration level. For example, we must be clearly aware that the basic probability of leaving the concentration camp is very low. We must be optimistic at the executive level, otherwise it will be difficult to survive in a difficult environment.

We have to respect the base rate. Some people often say: "My destiny is up to me." This sentence is in line with the spirit of the players. If you are a coach, respect common sense. You cannot say that as long as you work hard, you can reverse the hostile relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.

Many people think that Jobs is a technological genius, but he is not. Whether at Apple or Pixar, Jobs only did three things: first, form a team; second, focus on products; third, grab resources.

I said in the three-layer model, result = resource layer × configuration layer × execution layer. There will also be interactions between the three. Whether you are the CEO of a company or an individual in your life, you should try to think about solutions to problems from these three levels.

The base ratios mentioned in this chapter occur at the configuration level. The result of work or investment is the combined effect of the configuration layer and the execution layer. Speaking of which, although this is a very simple calculation, it is two-tiered. We can imagine opportunities falling from the sky, passing through two layers of sieves, and falling into our bowls. Base probabilities are hidden, easily overlooked sieves.

Luck is hard to change, but luck can be changed. Changing your luck is to find a place where the base rate is higher. Only if the opportunity falls in an area with a high base ratio, it may be a good opportunity.

5 steps to solve your marriage, 1 more blind dates, otherwise why are blind dates still so popular. Although the probability of success is low, the possibility of success will be higher if the sample is expanded. 2. Open your heart appropriately and reasonably, and communicate your heart and lungs appropriately. 3 "How to stop searching and confirm the target"? Perhaps it can only be understood but cannot be expressed in words. 4. "Oral boredom" means you won't feel bored after being together for a long time, rather than a temporary surprise. 5 Complementary and joint operations. At the last moment, we should take the initiative to analyze and take action instead of sighing and admitting we are unlucky.

Does love really exist? According to Richard Dawkins' theory in the book "The Selfish Gene", everything is the result of "genes doing whatever it takes to achieve the purpose of survival." All the good and evil in the human world are actually meaningless. Completely an accidental result.

So, is love a type of “meme”? Dawkins also created the concept of "cultural gene". He used this virtual replicator to explain culture, as well as the replication and spread of culture.

It might be said that love is the intersection of genes and memes. Therefore, love means the intertwining of rationality and sensibility, the intertwining of animal attributes and social attributes. There is no substitute for love in the fight against nothingness and absurdity.

Happy love cannot be designed. Because love is a right, love should neither be reduced to a bargaining chip for fame or fortune, nor should it be overly deified. You will find that those who say love is very sacred are more likely to be sold at a higher price. The monetization of marriage is actually sad.

Maxwell's Demon is not just used to say "love needs management". Maxwell's Demon of Love continues to develop a dynamic model based on the static structure of the "cross lock". I wonder where there is a more exquisite emotional model than this?

Of course, flying birds do not understand the formula of flight, so all the good cabbages are lost to pigs, and all the good men are deceived by stupid people. The randomness and diversity of love, although it seems unreasonable, are actually beneficial to human beings, and it can also be said to be beneficial to genes.

Nonetheless, if you understand some marriage algorithms, you can increase your probability of winning when competing with "Pigs" and "Silly Baitian". The application of the love algorithm is consistent with the wealth algorithm in many aspects: what we have to do is not to pursue the best, but to avoid the worst.

Franklin said: "Keep your eyes open before marriage, but close your eyes after marriage." For men, this sentence cannot be fully believed, nor can it be completely disbelieved. For women, it’s a mystery, and I don’t quite understand it. In short, when it comes to love luck, don't be too willful, as that would be childish; and don't be too scheming, as that would be pitiful.

Marriage is a wonderful thing that reflects the randomness of the world. Even the most rational people may have to rely on luck to find their partner.

How to find your other half?

Advice to young people, times are different, economic growth is not as explosive as before, everything is to move forward step by step, don't be allin. Take one step at a time, others are allin with a high probability, and there are also situations where there is a way out. Today's young people's success is too low in today's environment, and they need to work hard and be down-to-earth.

We may have overlooked the fact that our generation is experiencing rapid economic growth that is very rare in human history and has lasted for 40 years. We ignore amazing superluck and magnify the omnipotence of successful people. In the past few years, it has indeed been the daring who take all, their desires and adventures have no upper limit, and they succeed every time. Furthermore, the culture of winners and losers focuses on deviant survivors, and the entire population idolizes business heroes. When the idol falls, find a new idol. With 40 years of good luck, our generation has rarely encountered a decent economic crisis or experienced a complete economic cycle. To sum up, our parents never understood what it means to make money, and our generation has no idea what it means to lose money. Therefore, there is no word of risk in our genes at all, and we only have a partial understanding of wealth. We are not like the Jews who have experienced many generations of baptism and inheritance.

The coin tossing game at the beginning seems absurd, but if you think about the increasing number of liquidation cases in the past two years, they are almost the same as tossing a coin. This is why I like to use calculable probability games as a metaphor for life's problems, which is both vivid and precise.

To control risks, we must not only understand the Kelly formula, but also abandon the mentality of getting rich suddenly. Even more severe than the IQ tax is the wealth tax. Professional “leeks” pay the “wealth dream tax.”

Getting ahead will still be our main value orientation in the future, but we must realize that it is getting harder and harder to get rich. Facing this objectively will help us accumulate wealth in a more realistic way.

Stay away from bad people, don't think about picking up cheap things, and don't pursue getting rich overnight. You are not obligated to be Jack Ma.

"Riot thinking" should be ranked first among all wealth thinking. Every powerful investor has his own rules for making money, but those rules are ranked second or third. Because only if you don’t blow up your position can you have the capital to continue playing.

The biggest secret of investing is to survive. It is not that the winner is king, but "the leftover is king."

We can believe in whatever we believe in and rely on whatever we can spiritually, but we still have to adhere to scientific thinking, the scientific outlook on development, and Marxism in the real world and secular life.

We must respect common sense, believe in science, master scientific thinking, and stay away from mysticism and pretentiousness.

The algorithm of life talks about calculable probability of luck, but it is actually a life-oriented science.

Don't believe in secret recipes or secrets. If they were really effective, they would no longer be "secret".

We can have beliefs and personal experiences of mysticism, but in the physical world, I stand firmly on the side of Newton and Einstein's formulas.

In the United States, there are 20 times as many astrologers as there are astronomers.

A by-product of scientific progress is that it allows people to use science to counter science, but we must not fall into the trap.

I have always emphasized that improving personal knowledge is about cutting diamonds, not collecting stamps of knowledge. The so-called cutting of diamonds is falsification.

One of the main threads of "Algorithm of Life" is scientific thinking: the personal lean entrepreneurship strategy in the first half is a method of scientific experiment; the probabilistic thinking in the second half is scientific thinking in the quantum era.

The winners in the business world in this era are increasingly “scientific entrepreneurs.”

The dividing line between science and superstition is that science is willing to admit, "I was wrong."

Science has two characteristics:

Some knowledge is human's understanding of the world, which is always limited and temporary. Most of the time, we have to coexist with unknown uncertainties. In this case, scientific thinking is actually a fundamental way for us to understand the world.

Bold trial and error is based on the falsifiability of scientific thinking and constantly verifying errors. Rapid iteration is the realization of the "staged correctness" in scientific thinking. Only by rapidly iterating oneself can we keep up with the pace of changes in the world.

There are still many unsolved mysteries in the world, and there are many directions for development that are unknown. We must adhere to science and understand humanities. Just as there is no separation between arts and sciences, non-exam-oriented utilitarian education is conducive to the advancement of social science, technology and humanistic spirit.

I firmly believe that I will experience an exponential leap in technology in my lifetime. At that time, people will ask themselves as never before: "Who am I? Where am I going?"

If there is science but no humanities, it is "knowledge but no culture"; if there is humanities but no science, it is "culture but no common sense".

Furthermore, the happiness of society, family, and individuals all depend on the nourishment of humanities.

We especially lack generalists with specialized depth. General education with humanistic qualities as its core is a cross section of “T” shaped talents. Competitive talents in the future must possess professional-based cross-border capabilities.

Humanistic literacy is the shortcoming of our education. Our liberal arts education is not humanistic literacy education. Humanistic literacy education is the core of general education. In pragmatic education, giving up general knowledge is actually giving up the future. We need to have a spirit of "being full and full" and do things that are "full and full".

In the view of "animists", everything has a will. Poets were inspired by this, and this inspiration in turn inspired scientists.

"There is no such thing as love, it is simply the urge to reproduce." This is to classify the incalculable human behaviors as calculations based on biology. However, it was not a biologist who said this, but Qian Zhongshu, a liberal arts student. Here’s the interesting thing, no matter how much science advances, the brain will always be the ultimate interpreter of humanity.

But in the eyes of "computational extremists", so-called beliefs, thinking, and motivations can all be calculated. They thought that one day Al would be able to imitate Bach and Mozart with ease. But I believe that one day, humans will invent another art to prove their spirituality, unless one day AI cracks the mystery of "self-awareness".

Einstein loved Mozart. Einstein did not rely on words when he thought about a problem, which means he first used his imagination and then expressed it in words. Does his imagination rely on melody? I think so.

"Cultivating Einsteins who can play the violin" can be used as an implicit goal of some kind of education, if we plan to develop a Nobel Prize program like Japan.

Science and the science subjects in the education system solve computable problems, which we generally call "algorithms."

The humanities and the liberal arts in the education system solve problems that are not calculable, and we tentatively call them "mental methods."

In the real world, the truly powerful people are masters of "hybrid algorithms" that take into account both algorithms and mental methods.

We have to push the boundaries and consider both algorithms and minds. Specifically, it is not only necessary to develop the ability to solve "computable problems" but also to find one's own repeatable "algorithm". You must also develop your own ability to solve "uncalculus problems" and develop your own "mental methods". When you become a master of hybrid algorithms, you will have understanding, which is the dual wisdom of the unknown world.

Time is fair, and every minute and every second is absolutely fair. The difference is the utilization and use of this time. "We must "focus" on time and spend 80% of our time on 20% of important things." The end point is that fairness is like time, everyone will decay, everyone has to go through, but the process must be experienced by ourselves. Pay attention to the little things. Focusing on the little things can make a big difference.

Everything is silent as a riddle, and time is the answer.

Life is burning, consciousness is the fire, and time is the fuel.

Time flows quietly, and fate is irreversible. Both of these seem to be involuntary for free will. Time is irreversible and may be one of the most amazing orders in the universe. The irreversible flow of time highlights the value and significance of all other possible countercurrents.

People like to talk about foresight, but in my opinion, this is essentially "insight algorithm" support. For example, Al is very good at Go. He thinks far ahead and relies on calculation. Without the depth of calculation, there is no height of cognition, let alone the breadth of time.

In turn, we can borrow this power. For example, when Bezos asks the team to submit a project proposal, he must first prepare a press release if it succeeds. This is equivalent to imagining the "effect" first, and then forcing the team to think about the "cause" to travel through uncertain time and space.

The sequence of time sometimes gives us the illusion of cause and effect. But the former may not necessarily be the cause, and the latter may not necessarily be the effect. Forcing the illusion of certain causal relationships can mislead us.

The secrets of successful people in the secular world are almost two: probability arbitrage and time arbitrage. To paraphrase a famous saying, people always buy at a high value based on the value in 5 years and sell at a low value based on the value in 10 years.

As Alexander said in "Space, Time and the Gods": "In philosophy, the solution of all major problems depends on the answer to the question of what space and time are, and especially how the two are related to each other."

If I could only use one minute to explain the algorithm of life, I would use 30 seconds to explain the probability weight and 30 seconds to explain the time weight. Spatial probability distributions will add up over time, and few people can understand this.

The arrow of time distinguishes the past from the future and gives direction to time. According to Hawking, there are at least three different arrows of time: one is the thermodynamic arrow of time, that is, the "degree of disorder" or "angular increase" in this direction of time; the other is the psychological arrow of time, which is how we feel the passage of time. direction, in which we can remember the past rather than the future; third, the cosmological arrow of time, in which the universe is expanding rather than contracting.

In the algorithm of life, a very critical variable is time.

You need to have a business that runs on its own with time. To a certain extent, what is more important than decision-making is waiting, and the compound interest brought by the automatic driving of waiting for time.

The magic of life’s algorithm is almost always realized through time. The so-called time algorithm is to focus on the present, string together the past, or put it aside, and re-configure rational calculations for the unknown future, and then rely on the automatic driving mechanism of time to advance every second and start over and over again.

The human behavior process mainly consists of the acquisition, perception, processing and output of environmental information, that is, the process of perception, cognition, decision-making and action.

Curiosity perception, grayscale cognition, black and white decision-making, madman action

Most people who always want to maintain their correctness are fragile, and people who can become stronger and stronger from their mistakes are anti-fragile.

The secret of the life algorithm is to discover the core of "self-advantage", then amplify it, strengthen it, and form a scale.

Cognitive improvement is more like cutting a diamond. It is difficult and painful. Cruel reality is often the best evolutionary mentor. It helps you eliminate those things that are false, specious and do not belong to you. Through cutting, you can see who you really are.

The algorithm of life is like scientific discovery and Lean Startup. It’s about making mistakes quickly and smartly to test your algorithm.

The transmission control protocol between ants is the algorithm of this intelligent system, and the relationship and continuity between you at different times is your algorithm.

There is not much difference between people, just like there is not much difference between ants. If your life is cut into countless slices along the time axis, just like a snapshot, can it be said that your destiny is actually composed of you in countless time slices?

Every moment, every decision you make, every action you take, you are like an ant. Countless yous at countless different moments are superimposed to build an intelligent society. The relationships and continuities between you at different moments are your algorithm.

The algorithm of life needs to form a closed loop in the process of control and feedback, realize the integration between thinking, action and will, and finally make it an inner part of a person.

No matter what kind of car it is, let it run first. What's more, in mud, a Ferrari may not be able to outrun a tractor.

To form a closed loop and get feedback, you have to drive on the road yourself.

The algorithm of life needs to form a closed loop in the process of control and feedback, realize the integration between thinking, action and will, and finally make it an inner part of a person.

Resource layer---Opportunity---〉Configuration layer----Decision-making----〉Execution layer

A person's lifetime of good luck is built from three layers of probability and depends on three knobs. The final result of fate is determined by the overall completion of the three levels of probability, rather than the quality of a certain level.

In the secular sense, a successful company or individual has connected the resource layer, configuration layer, and execution layer.

The algorithm of life allows us to enter an abstract space above the secular world and form an overall view of life and ourselves.

Life is not a process confirmed by possession, but a process falsified by loss. Stoics believe that for successful people, discarding useless things is a must-have ability

Life is not a process confirmed by possession, but a process falsified by loss. The Stoics believed that discarding useless things was a must-have for successful people.

To paraphrase Taleb, what you don’t know is more meaningful than what you do know.

The algorithm of life advocates that the laws of the world that we think we understand are just a very small game of house in the endless unknown universe, full of false rules and naive assumptions.

The future is unpredictable, and there is no dragon-slaying technique in life in this world. We can only predict the flu based on probabilities and update Bayesian data at any time based on new data.

Both sentences are correct, but for someone who has never heard of the Internet, the two sentences give him a completely different impression.

The author created the concept of probability rights, which means that probability is a person's right. People's understanding and application of this right determines their wealth in the real world. At the key decision-making point of the gap between the rich and the poor, the poor sell their probability rights at a discount, while the rich use the algorithm of life to buy probability rights at a low price.

Life helps you get closer to the truth step by step by saying "no" (to what you think is the "truth").

Life helps you get closer to the truth step by step by saying "no" (to what you think is the "truth"). The formula created by the Bayesian pastor who believes in God seems to tell us: "Your free will exists precisely in every exploration and struggle you make in this uncertain world, and in the probability right that you will not give up."

There are actually two types of problems that most people need to solve in their lives:

One is a problem with boundaries, and the other is a problem without boundaries.

Bounded questions are similar to experimental environments. The questions are difficult and the solution process is complicated, but they always have a standard answer. Our traditional exam-oriented education has actually been training the ability to answer such questions.

There is no boundary problem. It belongs to "imperfect information" containing a lot of hidden information and is an asymmetric information game. Entering the real world is all about solving problems that have no boundaries.

Facing the uncertainty of life, the author gives four advices:

1. In fact, life is a game without boundaries. Don't try to hide in the illusion of certainty, and don't expect that you will be rewarded if you are smart enough and work hard enough.

When you understand higher-dimensional algorithms step by step, you will gradually discover the secret behind the uncertainty. These calculations are not complicated at all, just use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

But you must develop the habit of probabilistic thinking, the scientific spirit of falsification, and embrace a future full of uncertainty with enough optimism.

By calming down and using the algorithms we have learned, and gradually clarifying the situation in the grayscale cognitive stage, you will be able to make more and more correct decisions in black and white. Only in this way can you establish a connection between hard work and luck. The harder you work, the luckier you will be.

2. You need to realize that the real-world problems to be solved can be divided into two parts: computable and non-computable parts. For the calculable part you want to look for ways to bet that minimize risk and maximize profit. For the uncalculated parts, precise calculations cannot eliminate uncertainty. In the face of this part of the problem, fuzzy precision is more important than precise fuzzy.

In many cases, thinking too much can lead to bad things. The danger with math is that it can trick you into thinking you can do a lot when in fact you can't. Some people even pretend to think by pretending to calculate so as to avoid real thinking.

Therefore, try your best to do your best on the computable part and become a master of calculation. For the uncalculated parts, we need to practice a lot and train our intuition not to overthink at this stage.

3. We need to learn how to distinguish what is calculable and what is not. This requires us to distinguish between two concepts - risk and luck. These two words are often used in different situations and here I use them to measure uncertainty.

The so-called risk is known uncertainty. You can use probability to calculate this part.

The so-called luck refers to unknown uncertainty. You don’t know what you don’t know (such as black swan events). In the face of this part of the problem, we must realize that we cannot make the best choice through calculation.

Therefore, when it comes to uncertainty, it is recommended that you adopt a master's attitude: when you win, you can tell others "I'm so lucky"; but when you lose, don't blame bad luck or bad luck. Instead, we should reflect on it from a technical perspective. Life in the real world depends on luck in the short term and strength in the long term.

4. Be a master of gaming and a master of controlling emotions. In the gaming arena, you have to overcome fear. Calmness is the essence of rational decision-making.

Facing mistakes objectively is more important than any skill. Don't shirk responsibility, don't deceive yourself, and treat failure correctly.

Another thing is, you have to control other people's emotions. The most important thing is not what cards you have in your hand, but what cards your opponent thinks you have.

The secret to gaining wealth is that making big bets at critical moments can make you earn more when your capital is less than others.

Wealth can bring happiness, but they are not a simple cause-and-effect relationship. Happiness has its own logic. I found that their secret is to have more small climaxes.

What matters more to happiness is the frequency of happy experiences, not the intensity of them.

We take it for granted that one or two big things in life have the greatest impact on us, but happiness seems to be the sum of hundreds of small things. A person who experiences a dozen small joys every day is likely to be happier than a person who only encounters one big happy event every day.

Wealth depends on few big climaxes, and happiness depends on many small climaxes. Whether they are big climaxes or small climaxes, they are rewards and feedback that life gives us, and they are our confirmation of the meaning of life.

Wealth is not the ultimate goal, but just an additional product that comes after an individual realizes his or her mission of value.

Being prepared at all times means trying to do the right thing even if you don’t know when a major accident will occur. Even if that moment never comes, you will always experience the small climaxes of happiness that come one after another.

When you don’t care when the climax of wealth will come, when you forget about winning or losing, and when faced with uncertainty, you can make rational decisions, act bravely, and be calm about various possible outcomes, then you are truly living. winner.

Closed loop, switching, internal control, restart, growth, core, compound interest, vision, emergence

One-sided, narrow-minded, vague, lucky, fate, regret, irrationality, impulsive, hesitant, arbitrary, humane, bad luck, loneliness, liquidation, superstition, ignorance, decay, greed

In Plan A: We have been pursuing "high probability events" that can be replicated on a large scale

In Plan B: We must try our best to avoid those fatal "extremely unlikely events"

Discovering the Atom of Cognition: The Cognitive Flywheel

Cutting your brain’s diamond: using error-testing algorithms

Wearing slices of your life: forming a personal complex system

Driving the car of your life: Controlling algorithms through feedback

Integrating strength, luck and resources: establishing a three-tier probability framework

Traveling through uncertain realities: coping with the unknown with counter-knowledge

Achieve happiness by being undefeated: from probability weight to Bayesian

Curiosity perception, grayscale cognition, black and white decision-making, madman action

Magic and genius are not necessary for successful entrepreneurship, but a scientific entrepreneurial process that can be learned and replicated is the most important

Find the core. The difficulty in achieving success is not to do one big thing, but to find a bunch of small things that are repeatable.

The kernel has two characteristics:

Life is like a snowball, the important thing is to find wet snow and long slopes

If you want to gain longer-term benefits, you must give up this sense of immediate gratification and make better initial decisions by understanding the world more accurately and responding to future uncertainties more flexibly.

Learning is a key driver of continued growth and development

Core concept: hard work

Blueprint for the future: What we strive to achieve

To run a business, you need to envision optimistically, plan pessimistically, and execute happily

The vision needs to be lofty and beautiful; when formulating plans, one must be very rational and be prepared for failure; when executing, one must actively embrace uncertainty.

Discover what won't change in the next decade

Minimize Regret List

"Begin with the end in mind" strategy

Assets: Those that, with the passage of time, make your moat deeper and bring you new value.

Cost: It is only the current consumption, or the longer it takes, the more disadvantageous it will be to you.

Resource layer: Obtain resources, create luck for yourself, and maintain openness

Configuration layer: allocate resources, reason, foresight, calculation, determine where you are going to go

Professional level: Be a professional executor and give full play to your unique strengths, as long as you are stable at a certain level.

Poor people’s thinking: tend to get certain things and give up the right of probability

Thinking of the rich: Every time you make a choice, you are willing to bet based on the probability of success and your own principal, calculate the expected value, and cherish your own probability rights. Cherishing your probability rights is not about gambling, but about jumping out of your own intuition and thinking about yourself with probability thinking. every choice

Rich people’s thinking = probability power and time power

Gamblers seek excitement and fantasy from chance

Casinos make big money from the inevitability of probability advantage

Gamblers are contributing data, and casinos are using algorithms

Understand randomness, embrace uncertainty in life, and remain calm in the face of surprises

For computable randomness events, you might be able to arbitrage from the randomness

For something like Pascal's Wager, you might as well give it a try

If you have the right attitude, interesting things will find you

Be brave enough to admit "I don't know". The brain can often only process a small part of the information. Don't lie to yourself.

Starting from the long term, the starting point and vision are very important. Think long-term and focus on long-term goals.

Correct your mistakes when you know they are wrong, don’t chase losses, don’t justify yourself, learn to stop losses and let the past be the past.

Learn more, practice knowledge, think independently, and observe the essence of things in depth

Master the scientific spirit of truth-seeking and rationality

Learn diversified thinking models and achieve falsification from multiple dimensions

Internalize the correct way of thinking into a behavioral habit

Use "double-self thinking" to make decisions, let the two of you fight in your mind, and avoid arbitrary decisions

You must remain rational during the review and cannot simply judge the quality of the decision based on the results.

Use Bayes’ theorem to continuously iterate your decision-making system

Never stand up for your own correctness

Never care about other people's opinions

Never be subject to other people’s emotional fluctuations

Never shy away from brutal honesty

Never sympathize with one's own plight

Never stop crazy exploration

Always seek great meaning

One of the most special weaknesses of human nature is to care about how others see you.

For those who move towards their goals wholeheartedly, the whole world will make way for them

Don’t be out: Living is better than anything else; to make money, you must first live long

Don’t sit on the sidelines: Don’t waste a crisis; get involved, but don’t simply buy the dip.

Risk is nothing

When taking risks, don’t bet your entire family

Be prepared to retreat in a timely manner

Risk: known uncertainty, you can use probability to calculate this part

Luck: Unknown uncertainty, you don’t know what you don’t know

Level 1: Rely on intuition. You can only make conditioned reflexive judgments based on one point

The second level: choice after active thinking. You can choose from several options

The third level: Through decision trees, a person forms probabilistic and structured cognition

Level 4: Develop repeatable algorithms

Level 5: Ability to continuously update decision-making algorithms through Bayes’ theorem

Placing big bets at critical moments can allow you to earn more when your capital is less than others.

For happiness, what is more important is the frequency of happy experiences rather than the intensity of happy experiences.

The greatest luck in a person's life is to discover his calling in the middle of his life, when he is still young and strong