Amos had a favorite saying. When someone asks you to do something - whether to come to a party, give a speech, or even just lift a finger - even if you're fully willing to do it, never answer on the spot.
Amos said to take a day to think it over. You'd be astonished to know how many requests or proposals you would have said "yes" to yesterday that you would have turned down with just one more day to reflect. (p. 220)
From Michael Lewis's "The Undoing Project" (Gimm-Young Publishers)
(Yeh Byung-il's Economic Note)
Amos Tversky, who along with Daniel Kahneman pioneered "behavioral economics."
These two psychologists worked together their whole lives and jointly created innovative behavioral economics.
For that work, Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. Sadly, Tversky had passed away six years before the award, so he was unable to share the prize.
Kahneman and Tversky were academic partners, but their temperaments were polar opposites. Kahneman was convinced he was always wrong, while Tversky was convinced he was always right.
That temperament must have played a role too. Amos tossed aside anything that wasn't "clearly important," and he poured his attention only onto what remained after that "cold-hearted culling."
A few of Amos's pieces of advice stuck with me.
- When you want to escape a boring gathering but it's hard to come up with a decent excuse, Amos advises you to just stand up and leave.
"Just start walking. You'll be amazed at how creative you can become, how quickly you can come up with an excuse."
- And Amos said, if once a month you don't find yourself regretting throwing something away, that means you still have things you need to throw out.
He's saying: throw out boldly, cull, and then focus on what's left.
How many of these make you nod along?
It's advice from a psychologist who left an outstanding body of work on "decision-making research," so it's worth taking to heart.
(Charles's normal notes)
"Just start walking. You'll be amazed at how creative you can become, how quickly you can come up with an excuse." That line made me burst out laughing. Yes, we're masters of improvisation. ;D
Anyway, it really pays to live a long life. I suddenly got curious about how and why Amos passed away. I searched "Amos Tversky".. I searched "Aimos Tversky" too.. all the search results were Daniel Kahneman.I searched on Google.. What a world. Come on!
At least here's some info I grabbed about Amos.
Amos also had a theory he called "features of similarity." According to him, when people compare two things to judge similarity, they basically enumerate features. These features are simply the noticeable traits of the objects. Then they count the shared conspicuous features. The higher the count, the more alike the two are; the lower, the less alike. Different objects have different numbers of noticeable features. For example, New York City has more than Tel Aviv. Amos built a mathematical model to explain what he meant.
Did the world just not think he was obviously important?
Today's lesson:
Cull boldly, and focus only on what remains. And..! Become someone who can stick around for a long, long time too.
