Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid (2015)

I say this every time pricenomics gets upvoted - they only do content marketing. I don't understand how people don't get it.

MGAAS. "Malcolm Gladwell as a Service"

With that in mind how would you expect my understanding of the article to change? Serious question because all of this is news to me.

Can someone please flag these shills. The article is about how evidence-based behavioral therapies like cbt can reduce crime, and should be applied as an alternative to prison for kids. For those that don't know anything about cbt, in this context it's basically about reducing cognitive distortions that convince people to commit crimes.

I was going to challenge you on saying that CBT is the same thing as mindfulness.

Then I thought about it, and I think this is pretty insightful. CBT says there's a split second after the stimulus where you get to choose how you will think about the stimulus.

That's an awful lot like mindfulness, at least from a big picture standpoint.

The three points you gave are not indicative of typical results though and by there nature are exceptional. I think you just rebuked yourself.

Isn't it also important to be able to recognize outliers? If your house burned down a week after you bought it, that doesn't mean you shouldn't rebuild it because it's just going to burn down again.

I don't think your examples work. If the probability of one team winning over another is 90%, that fluke fumble is an exception/outlier and should be treated as such. Same goes for the train example imo.

The ACL injury thing is more difficult because you are implying an underlying pre condition of a weak ACL, so i guess your example works there.

I don't think these examples are necessarily bad conclusions. A team could have won a dozen games before this one, so in that case you'd bet on the team with a better record regardless of a fluke.

And depending on where you live, it may not be possible to reach an interview if you're delayed. I mean, transport networks have accidents, strikes, signal failures, delays and god knows what else, and the alternative route may be signficantly slower. In that case, it doesn't matter how good your timing is. You could have left an hour in case of problems and still end up late. At some point, you have to assume these things will work out 90% of the time and be willing to accept the loss the other 10%.

And the final example is pretty vague about what the step actually was. If the wrong step led to a five feet drop off a rock, then yes, the wrong step may well have been why they broke their ACL...

Yes, don't blame the world for all your mistakes and problems. But at the same time, accept that you're not responsible for every single thing that happens to you as well. No one can always be prepared for every possible situation, and that's just fine.

> Both teams played by the same rules and then time ran out and the other team won and it doesn't matter how they won. Future predictions should be based on the win.

> You were late to the job interview because you're a person that screws times up. That's much more useful information than anything you could have contributed at the interview.

I simply don't agree with either conclusion.

If you want to assess the likelihood of a team winning future games based on them winning a particular past game, it absolutely matters how they won that particular past game. If they won through superior skill, strategy and athleticism, one would reach different conclusions than if they won because the opposing team all had food poisoning the night before and only got a few hours sleep, or the opposing team captain broke her leg in the first minute.

I agree that people are not good at assessing the degree to which particular events are due to intrinsic factors vs. random or external factors, and that people are biased to believe events that they believe are undesirable are caused more by random factors and events they believe are desirable are caused more by intrinsic factors. But that doesn't mean that it's impossible to make such determinations with some degree of accuracy and impartiality.

If "the A train had a malfunction" has a reasonable likelihood of occurring (e.g. it breaks down once a month), then perhaps it's reasonable to conclude that someone who is late to an important event because the A train broke down didn't plan their time in an optimal way. But if "the A train had a malfunction" means "the A train broke down while I was riding it to an important interview, and there was no way for me to disembark, and I was trapped for eight hours", that doesn't mean the person who got trapped is bad at planning their time. It means that person was unlucky, and a chaotic, unpredictable event had a negative impact on them.

Turning up eight hours early to every single important event to avoid the tiny chance of a random eight-hour delay spoiling things is, over the course of a lifetime, a worse strategy than turning up one hour early to important events and accepting the slim chance that you might occasionally miss an important event.

> This insistence (I am, myself, guilty) to look for exceptionalism in results rather than accept the obvious data that are being shown to us is something we need to become aware of - and avoid.

But equally, the natural human tendency to believe "everything happens for a reason", and to downplay the (huge) role of randomness on the outcome of all human affairs, is also something to be aware of and avoid.

Actually, what you're proposing is a cognitive blind spot that is indicative of depression. I forget what the name of it is, but taking every minor setback or chance occurrence to be indicative of a fundamental, unchangeable character flaw is a symptom of depression.

>I was prepared and on-track for that job interview - if only the A train hadn't had a malfunction that morning and made me late

then

> You were late to the job interview because you're a person that screws times up. That's much more useful information than anything you could have contributed at the interview.

This is a total non sequitur

    > Both teams played by the same rules
    > and then time ran out and the other 
    > team won and it doesn't matter how they won.

It's more than that even. Both teams played by the same rules and one of them played better through the game. It is not the end of the game (or the result of the late train)that decided the results.

If the losing team had scored more points, if their defense had been a little better, if you had planned for traffic/delays... these are the deciding factors. The conclusion is the conclusion - but we tend to discount all the factors that made the conclusion happen.

What you're talking about is the "low-factor explanation" bias, which we could also call the "all things equal" bias. When we tell stories about our lives, we're really talking about causal explanations, for the simple reason that "shit happens" isn't an interesting story for most people. The theory of causality I believe most people believe is Judea Pearl's interventionist theory, which is, we say A causes B if intervening on A changes (or prevents) B.

So in your football example one imagines, if the Steelers HADN'T fumbled that what have you, then they would've won. And, on the one hand, sure, that's probably true. But if nearly anything else had gone differently in the game, any other outcome could've happened. That's too abstruse; what am I really supposed to do with that? Life would quickly descend back to "shit happens" if you pulled that thread too hard; we'd never be able to say anything about anything, because everything would be too wrapped up in esoterica.

So while this is a pretty serious blind spot, it's something that we do because it helps us make sense of the world, and the honest-to-god failure cases don't routinely stare people in the face (as you can see by the responses you've gotten). The more important problem with this view is the "complex systems" sciences, where "all things equal" could charitably be called a shit show. But since we're so accustomed to this style of thinking working out okay, it's somehow not obvious to (e.g.) economists, or even philosophers, that there's a problem here. Thus, for example, you get "all things equal" theories of political economy, and we all suffer for them without having a good sense for why.

Step 2 is perhaps the most import realization I've had in the past couple of years :)

> 1. Recognize when their automatic responses might get them into trouble,

> 2. Slow down in those situations and behave less automatically,

> 3. Objectively assess situations and think about what response is called-for.

Some martial arts training teaches that. The more defensive martial arts, such as aikido, focus on that. Training in a defensive martial art might help impulsive kids. It teaches them that lashing out blindly is a quick way to lose, and that there are much more effective responses to an attack.

This is a lot like the SAFE technique for crisis management. I was taught it in the context of wilderness survival (particularly when you get lost), and apparently it comes from kayaking.

1. Stop 2. Assess the situation 3. Formulate a plan 4. Execute

Repeat steps 2-4 as you progress. (I guess you could make it SAFER, and make R for Repeat).

I've found it very useful for general crisis management, especially for physical crises. Just forcing yourself through the steps makes you think of better options, rather than running off and making the problem worse.

I don't think it's such a good pattern for long term problems though, the idea is that you're reacting to your immediate situation and dealing accordingly, so it's effective for events that need immediate attention, such as car crashes, first aid situations, or getting lost in the wilderness.

> Recognize when their automatic responses might get them into trouble

How? Ok, if I set my mind to it I'm probably ok for 5 minutes or so until pure instinct sets in again....how to keep self-monitoring one's mood indefinitely?

Educate them with what values?

Thanks; added.

I don't think you fully understand what growing up in a terrible neighborhood entails. They aren't so much "a constant nuisance to everybody around them" as they are acting like many who are around them.

When you grow up in the hood and your father is gone (dead, in jail, never in the picture) and your mother is on crack and all of your friends and siblings are in gangs and/or on drugs and/or selling drugs, changing your destiny is a difficult proposition.