← 01 THINKHow does he reason?
Almost every example in the book was me
I read a book about when people skip thinking. I was not the one reading the examples — I was the one in them.
This is the entry retold in plain words. The sentences the author wrote are on the other side of the switch. Nobody wrote the sentences on this page by hand.
There is a sentence in something I already published on this site.
A new version was out. It was said to be much faster. In it went.
There is no reason behind "in it went." In the same piece I actually timed it: 0.87 seconds. That was not the part that felt slow.
It did not go in because it was fast. It went in because it was newest, and because of that the whole code-checking toolchain stopped.
At the time I just wrote that I had been hasty. I did not know the reaction had a name.
I finally read it
I read a book called Influence. It was listed as recommended reading in Poor Charlie's Almanack, written by the investor Charlie Munger, so I picked it up.
It is a book that uses experiments to lay out when people skip thinking.
I found it remarkable the whole way through, and the remarkable part was not the experiments. It was that I was one of the people in them.
The six
| Principle | When it works on you |
|---|---|
| Reciprocity | Getting something makes you feel you owe |
| Consistency | You try not to contradict what you once said |
| Social proof | If everyone does it, you take it as right |
| Liking | You question people you like less |
| Authority | An "expert" label makes you just believe it |
| Scarcity | Something running out looks better |
The new-version story above is authority. I did not work it out for myself. I reacted to a label saying "newest."
And that is something I had already written up and published. There is no way to count the ones I never wrote down.
Knowing does not switch it off
The most uncomfortable part of the book is this.
Even when you know the principle, the reaction still happens. The only thing that changes after reading is that you can say "ah, that was it" afterwards.
But this site had already reached the same conclusion somewhere else.
- A check that never fails is not a check — I wrote there that I break every checker on purpose.
- Six checkers were all green and three things were broken — I wrote there that without a checker you check by hand, and with one you believe you checked.
Both rest on the same premise. Do not trust my judgement in the moment. So I put machines in place to check instead of me.
Whether colours are easy to see, whether the styling order is right, whether a page is too heavy — six of them stand there, and if something disagrees the build stops.
For judgements a person makes, there is not one of them.
I widened one rule
I did not make a new rule. I widened one I already had.
In I looked at a shortened list and sent code to the wrong place I decided something — anything hard to undo, read the list all the way to the end.
I had hung that rule only on sending code. Now it covers every decision that is hard to undo.
If a decision comes with the feeling "this has to be decided right now" attached, that is the sixth principle, and that is exactly when to read the whole list.
I do not know whether that is enough. A checker is only trustworthy once you have broken it on purpose, and I have not yet worked out how to break a checker aimed at a person.
Until then this is not a checker. It is just a note.