Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World

Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World Hardcover

by Noreena Hertz  (Author)

Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World is Noreen Hertz’s practical, cutting-edge guide to help you cut through the data deluge and make smarter and better choices, based on her highly popular TED talk. In this eye-opening handbook, the internationally noted speaker, economics expert, and bestselling author of IOU: The Debt Threat and Silent Takeover reveals the extent to which the biggest decisions in our lives are often made on the basis of flawed information, weak assumptions, corrupted data, insufficient scrutiny of others, and a lack of self-knowledge. To avert such disasters, Hertz persuasively argues, we need to become empowered decision-makers, capable of making high-stakes choices and holding accountable those who advise us. In Eyes Wide Open, she weaves together scientific research with real-world examples from Hollywood to Harry Potter, NASA to World War Two spies, to construct a path to more astute and empowered decision-making in ten clear steps. With a razor-sharp intellect and an instinct for popular storytelling, she offers counter-intuitive, actionable guidance for making better choices—whether you are a business-person, a professional, a patient, or a parent.

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Why We Make Bad Decisions: We listen to the information we want to hear and ignore the rest

Why We Make Bad Decisions

By NOREENA HERTZ

OCT. 19, 2013

LONDON — SIX years ago I was struck down with a mystery illness. My weight dropped by 30 pounds in three months. I experienced searing stomach pain, felt utterly exhausted and no matter how much I ate, I couldn’t gain an ounce. I went from slim to thin to emaciated. The pain got worse, a white heat in my belly that made me double up unexpectedly in public and in private. Delivering on my academic and professional commitments became increasingly challenging. It was terrifying. I did not know whether I had an illness that would kill me or stay with me for the rest of my life or whether what was wrong with me was something that could be cured if I could just find out what on earth it was. Trying to find the answer, I saw doctors in London, New York, Minnesota and Chicago. I was offered a vast range of potential diagnoses. Cancer was quickly and thankfully ruled out. But many other possibilities remained on the table, from autoimmune diseases to rare viruses to spinal conditions to debilitating neural illnesses. Treatments suggested ranged from a five-hour, high-risk surgery to remove a portion of my stomach, to lumbar spine injections to numb nerve paths, to a prescription of antidepressants. Faced with all these confusing and conflicting opinions, I had to work out which expert to trust, whom to believe and whose advice to follow. As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions — prime ministers, presidents and chief executives — and so I’m all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere. But up until then I hadn’t thought much about the process of decision making. So in between M.R.I.’s, CT scans and spinal taps, I dove into the academic literature on decision making. Not just in my field but also in neuroscience, psychology, sociology, information science, political science and history. Read more of this post

How Jeff Bezos Makes Decisions

How Jeff Bezos Makes Decisions

by Dan McGinn  |   1:00 PM October 18, 2013

Over the last 19 years, Amazon.com has revolutionized the way we shop—and for much of that time, journalist Brad Stone has been watching closely. This week Stone, a senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek, published The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. I talked with Stone about the evolution of Bezos as a decision-maker. Some excerpts from our conversation:

In the course of your reporting, what did you observe about Bezos’s decision-making style?

Two factors come to mind. The first is an observation made by Rick Dalzell, his right hand guy. He says that Jeff does two things better than anyone else. One is that he tries to find the best truth at the time. That may sound obvious, but Rick says that while a lot of people know what the truth is, they don’t engage their thinking about how the truth may change. Second, Rick says that Jeff refuses to accept the conventional wisdom about the way things are typically done. He thinks about reinventing everything—even small things. Two weeks ago, for instance, Amazon introduced the new Kindle Fire tablets. Ordinarily when tech companies do this, they hold a big press conference. Instead, Jeff brought about two dozen reporters in to see him in small groups. He did all the product demos himself. Everyone left feeling like they had a special session with this dynamic CEO, and Amazon received great press coverage. It’s a small example of how he tries to reinvent how things are done. Read more of this post

Since its debut in August, the “Chinese Characters Dictation Competition” has exploded in popularity. The show has touched a nerve in China, where purists complain that smartphones are eroding language skills

Chinese TV’s Latest Hit Features a Character-Driven Plot

Show Aimed at Reviving the Country’s Written Language Explodes

ISABELLA STEGER

Updated Oct. 19, 2013 12:32 a.m. ET

A hit Chinese game show is revealing a startling fact: Chinese youth are losing their writing skills. Photo: CCTV

The word “toad” would be a snap in an English-language spelling bee, but not in a nationally televised contest in China. In Chinese, toad has three characters that are made up of 46 individual strokes. Yu Shuang, a 14-year-old contestant, came close in an early round. As her teammates squealed and drew out the word in the air, Miss Yu quickly wrote the characters on a screen that projected her effort on a big display above her head. When she finished, one of three judges hit the buzzer signaling a correct answer, bringing cheers. But the other two didn’t agree, pointing out that the young girl had missed a single dot in the third character. “You were obviously very nervous just now,” said the judge, as Miss Yu’s teammates groaned in disappointment backstage. Miss Yu wasn’t alone. The show tested a group of adults in the audience, and just 30% of them could write toad correctly, state media lamented after the broadcast. “It’s a word that everyone knows,” said the Xinhua News Agency. Read more of this post

Nobel winner Robert Shiller talks about the forces that made him a questioning, data-driven economist

Robert Shiller: A Skeptic and a Nobel Winner

By JEFF SOMMER

OCT. 19, 2013

Robert J. Shiller, a professor at Yale, learned on Monday that he had wonthe Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, along with Lars Peter Hansen and Eugene F. Fama of the University of Chicago. The Nobel committee described Professor Shiller as a founder of the field of behavioral finance, an innovator in incorporating psychology into economics and a pioneering analyst of speculative bubbles in the stock and real estate markets. He is also one of a group of eminent economists who write the Economic View column for Sunday Business, and has contributed 60 of those columns since August 2007. As the editor of that column, I have talked to him often about his work, and on Wednesday, he called me from the airport en route to a lecture at the Dutch central bank in Amsterdam. Here is an edited, condensed version of that conversation.  Read more of this post