ThinkAgain

• http://wiki.keithl.com/ThinkAgain

Think Again

The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

• Adam Grant . 2021 . West Slope Lib 153.42 GRANT .

.p015 - Chapter 01. A Preacher, a Prosecutor, a Politician, and a Scientist walk into Your Mind

• p016 - Mike Lazaridis 1999 interactive pager Blackberry 2009: 50% of smartphone market ... 2014: less than 1%

.p033 - Chapter 02. The Armchair Quarterback and the Impostor: Finding the Sweet Spot of Confidence

.p055 - Chapter 03. The Joy of Being Wrong: The Thrill of Not Believing Everything You Think

• p055 - Henry Murray Harvard psychology professor

• p056 - "stressful interpersonal disputation" - unethical, agonizing abuse of student subjects
• p060 - character traits "Drill, Quartz, Locust, Hinge, Lawful"

  • one subject (p75) was Unabomber Ted Kaczynski whose lawyers blamed his actions on Murray's experiment. The quote from "Lawful" is the opening line of Kaczynski's 1995 "Industrial Society and Its Future"

• p061 - Daniel Kahneman RIP 2024 "That was wonderful, I was wrong"

• p061 - givers have higher failure rates AND higher success rates than takers and matchers
• p062 - useful detachments: present from past, opinions from identity

• p065 - The Good Judgment Project

• p072 - Science Daily 2018, 'Self-defeating humor promotes psychological well-being, study reveals"

• p072 - Jeff Bezos: "People who are right a lot listen a lot and change their mind a lot"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry

• p075 Kaczynski displays ... barely a hint that he might be wrong.

.p077 - Chapter 04. The Good Fight Club: The Psychology of Constructive Conflict

• p081 - Wright Brothers enjoyed quarreling and learned from it. Rethought the critical assumption that aircraft must be inherently stable to fly. Like their bicycles, aircraft require intelligent control.
• p081 - Agreeable people tend to be nice. Friendly. Polite. Canadian.

• p082 - Critical people conflated with Dementors

• p083 - Pixar Brad Bird hired misfits/black-sheep/pirats for the The Incredibles predicted cost $500M, actual cost $92M, grossed $631M

• p085 - Bird criticised Disney timidity, fired

• p088 - Nichole Grindel

• p088 - HIPPO, Highest Paid Person's Opinion

• p089 - Wilbur Wright highly disagreeable

.p097 - Chapter 05. Dances with Foes: How to Win Debates and Influence People

• p105 - Neil Rackham: Expert negotiator, fewer arguments, a weak argument dilutes a strong one

• p106 - Skilled negotiators find common ground, offer fewer reasons, ask more questions, avoid attack/defend

• p106 - Harish Natarajan

• p107 - Project Debater

• p111 - A single line of argument feels like conversation, multiple arguments triggers defensiveness
• p114 - Beethoven and Mozart average hit rate, but created more work, thus more hits.
• p115 - Not a war, a dance, sidestep away from hostility
• p116 - "What evidence would change your mind?" If nothing, no point in continuing.
• p116 - moderate confidence more persuasive than weak or strong confidence

.p121 - Chapter 06. Bad Blood on the Diamond: Diminishing Prejudice by Destabilizing Stereotypes

• p122 - black Daryl to KKK man: "How can you hate me if you don't even know me? Convinced many KKK to abandon hatred.

• p124 - Puma Adidas both in Herzogenaurach, Germany.

• p124 - If you care more about winning than injury, you might be a sociopath
• p125 - most people prefer to penalize disagreement rather than reward agreement

• p128 - overview effect

• p141 - Former Imperial Wizard now friend of Daryl, asked him to be daughter's godfather.

.p143 - Chapter 07. Vaccine Whisperers and Mild-Mannered Interrogators: How the Right Kind of Listening Motivates People to Change

• p158 - Inverse charisma is the ability to make others feel more interesting, compelling, and confident through intense, non-judgmental listening and genuine curiosity,
• p160 - We should be proud of maximizing respect to change minds

.p163 - Chapter 08. Charged Conversations: Depolarizing Our Divided Discussions

• p163 - Difficult Conversations Lab at Columbia University

• p163 - Peter T. Coleman

• p164 - binary bias presenting two extremes amplifies bias

• p166 - vet leadership, not positions
• p167 - apply rethinking to different parts of our lives, keep thinking

• p167 - 2016 Wiley Non Sequitur cartoon "Answers". Very few choose a Complex But Right book, hundreds choose Simple But Wrong and off a cliff

• p167 - 2018, 59% US saw climate change as major threat, 16% no threat at all
• p167 - higher percentages in other countries, US beliefs haven't budged
• p168 - US more resilient to climate change, and reluctant to sacrifice our current ways of achieving prosperity
• p169 - Distinguish skeptics from deniers. Skeptics learn, deniers reject a priori.
• p170 - The 10% deniers get the most press, 50% more than expert scientists
• p171 - acknowledging uncertainties does not reduce trust, instead more persuasive, people pay more attention
• p173 - people ignore or deny existence of problems if they dislike "the" solution
• p173 - Science papers feature paragraphs about study limitations, mistakenly don't share them with nonscientists
• p174 - wrote that diversity training very complicated, interpreted as valuable by some and useless by others
• p175 - consistent rather than accurate - a trap

• p175 - Jordan Peterson says no such thing as EQ

• p175 - job performance: IQ twice as important as EQ (3% to 8%)
• p176 - If you fix my car or do my taxes, don't focus on my emotions.
• p176 - as if ... an emotional intelligence cult.
• p177 - students do not actually learn better though auditory, visual, or kinesthetic modes.

• p177 - if you say _ is always good or _ is never bad, you may be an idea cult member.

• p179 - passion for principles are a sign of integrity; we can reject a belief, but respect the person believing it.
• p179 - unproductive conversations have limited emotional range ( perhaps me :-{ )
• p179 - "productive conversations" ... not really defined, though probably implies learning and attitude development
  • p181 footnote - (German) kummerspeck, grief bacon, emotional overeating when we are sad
• p181 - woman with (illegally) unleashed dog, African American man recorded her on his phone, she called 911
• p182 - Her later denial "I think I was just scared"
• p182 - Racism is action, not intention

.p185 - Chapter 09. Rewriting the Textbook: Teaching Students to Question Knowledge

• p185 - Erin McCarthy cultivated student curiosity, 2020 Wisconsin (middle school) Teacher of the Year

• p187 - 1940s March on Washington Movement

  • called off after Roosevelt's 1941 Executive Order 8802 prohibiting employment discrimination

• p188 - false scientific beliefs should be corrected in elementary school, more difficult later
• p190 - family dinnertime myth-busting discussions
• p190 - rethinking neglected by traditional education
• p191 - slick recorded lectures entertaining, but active learning becomes more knowledge and skill

• p191 - favorite teacher: student ping pong in class, but didn't convey coefficient of friction

• p192 - Active learning group problem solving, worksheets, and tutorials

• p192 - students experientially involved, half a letter grade better results, 36% fewer failures
• p192 - sage-on-the-stage preaches, but doesn't teach independent thought
• p193 - STEM 80% lecturing, half of high school teachers lecture most or all of the time

• p194 - Robert Nozick taught a new Harvard class every year

  • died of stomach cancer in 2002, age 63
• p195 - prefectionsists do better in school, but not any better at work
• p195 - Valedictorians are unlikely future visionaries
• p197 - students write letters to younger selves, focus on relationships, not grades;

• p197 - Dear Penn Freshmen

• p197 - student passion talks

• p198 - Ron Berger

• p199 - respond to confusion with curiosity and interest
• p200 - We're doing four different versions of drawing a house, some students did 8 or 10 drafts
• p203 - education is developing habits for revising and skills to keep learning

.p295 - Chapter 10. That's Not the Way We've Always Done It: Building Cultures of Learning at Work

• p206 - Luca Parmitano ESA 2013 July EVA, clogged filter and suffocating water in helmet

• p207 - small amounts of water in helmet tolerated rather than debugged and fixed
• p208 - Rethinking routine in learning culture; accountability and psychological safety help learning cultures thrive
• p209 - psychologically safe teams report more errors but make fewer errors

• p210 - Engineer asked for clearer pictures of STS-107 2003 Columbia wing, not provided by management

• p210 - Ellen Ochoa performance culture eroding psychological safety (to speak up)

• p211 - NASA EVA manager Chris Hansen how do you know what failed?

• p214 - Ariana Grande singer, not Word font

• p214 - Melinda Gates evaluation by staff, "she is like Mary F***ing Poppins"
• p215 - Lower percentile professionals not hired if they are candid about that
• p217 - process accountability, different options considered ??

• p217 - Amy Edmondson, foster psychological safety AND accountability, create a learning zone

• p218 - deep rethinking, improvement rather than luck, experiment rather than failure
• p219 - Bezos: "we disagree, but will you gamble with me on it?" Learning cultures welcome experiments

• p221 - Intermittent sensor failures scrubbed launches, eventually traced to faulty connection between sensors and computers "caused by the cryogenic environment" but how ?

.p225 - Chapter 11. Escaping Tunnel Vision: Reconsidering Our Best-Laid Career and Life Plans

• p225 note page 290 - My First Day in Hell Jack Handey, New Yorker, October 23, 2006

• p229 - When plans fail, we double down, escalation of commitment

• p229 - gritty mountaineers more likely to die on expeditions, determined to do whatever it takes
• p232 - Majoring in English because you love to read ... but dislike writing

• p233 - I think it's better to lose the past two years than waste the next twenty

• p234 - promoted early but working around the clock, reached learning plateau and left for grad school
• p238 - meaning is healthier than happiness, look for purpose rather than joy
• p239 - you will still be you on vacation, same sad you in Italy
• p239 - Hemingway: You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another
• p240 - pursue jobs where you expect to learn and contribute the most

• p241 - John Stuart Mill Paradox of hedonism "... Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way."

• p241 - two key principles of open systems: equifinality (many paths) and multifinality (many outcomes)

• p242 - Candace Walker, custodian at U Michigan chemotherapy center, House of Hope, Links?

.p245 - Epilogue

• p246 - Macauley Culkin - Ryan Gosling nested T-shirt photos

.p251 - Actions for Impact

• p252 - 02: As you form opinions, keep a list of factors that would change your mind
• p252 - 06: Embrace the joy of being wrong
• p253 - 08: Build a challenge network, not just a support network
• p253 - 10: Practice the art of persuasive listening, increase question-to-statemetn ratio
• p254 - 11: Question how rather than why, paths to extreme views
• p254 - 14: Acknowledge common ground
• p255 - 17: Have a conversation about the conversation
• p255 - 18: Complexify contentious topics
• p255 - 19: Don't shy away from caveats and contingencies
• p255 - 20: Expand your emotional range: add curiousity, admitting confusion or ambivalence
• p256 - 23: Stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up ... they can do many things
• p256 - 24: Abandon best practices
• p256 - 25: Establish psychological safety
• p257 - 27: Throw out the 10 year plan
• p257 - 29: Schedule a life checkup, assessment once or twice a year
• p257 - 30: Make time to think again

.p259 - Acknowledgements

• p260 - Oxford Comma, Serial comma

  • ie, the second comma in "France, Italy, and Spain"

• p262 - Wife Elena's persuasion technique: Puppy dog eyes! Works every time!