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This topic has been translated from a Chinese forum by GPT and might contain errors.Original topic: 我和tidb的故事
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username: tidb狂热爱好者
Have you noticed that TiDB database supports data analysis functions, which greatly benefit enterprises? Domestic platforms like Zhihu, Alibaba, and Tencent are using TiDB database. They might not be using the open-source code of TiDB entirely. For example, TDSQL has borrowed from TiDB’s design. OB is advancing along the community path of TiDB. But honestly, Dongxu has truly walked an extraordinary path as a programmer.
Dongxu and I are both fans of Xiaobawang. Our game console was created by Duan Yongping, who made a fortune in stock trading. So, I also like straw mushrooms. I used to be very blind about straw mushrooms, and now I also go with my gut feeling. There are many examples around me of DBAs losing money on straw mushrooms until they bleed. I hope to use my series of unprofessional data analysis to guide everyone. That is to avoid a series of unreliable human decisions. Because many economic common senses go against human intuition. Let me give an example.
I hope everyone can live better, earn enough money, and have countless time to learn new knowledge without worrying about livelihood. Learn TiDB, be good at financial management, and don’t worry about life.
Why do we always make wrong decisions? What factors interfere and mislead us? This might be an important question closely related to each of us. The best answer to this question comes from Charlie Munger.
Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett’s friend, lawyer, advisor, and investment partner. The two have worked together for nearly 50 years, creating a legend in the investment world. Compared to Buffett, Munger chooses a relatively low-key life, dedicating a lot of time to reading and thinking. His existence is a huge wealth for all of us because he has enough experience, accumulated enough wisdom, and has the ability to turn this wisdom into words, allowing us to benefit as well.
Munger likes to think through reverse thinking, so he is very keen on collecting examples of wrong judgments in various industries. Munger summarized 25 human psychological tendencies in the article “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment”, detailing the mistakes caused by these tendencies and how to prevent such mistakes. On the other hand, he also mentioned which tendencies, if used reasonably, can greatly help humans.
The article is very long, and Octopus has selected key parts from it, summarizing them with his own expressions when necessary. This is the following text. (Interested friends are welcome to read the full text, which is included in Charlie Munger’s collection “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”.)
This article can be used as a very practical checklist. When we are about to make a decision, when we are thinking about a problem, or when we are reviewing a project, referring to this article can help check and remind ourselves to avoid making mistakes due to these tendencies.
1. Reward and Punishment Super-Response Tendency
A good reward and punishment mechanism will greatly improve people’s efficiency, while a bad one can be destructive.
An important consequence of the super power of incentive mechanisms is the “bias caused by incentive mechanisms”. Some people become morally noble because of education, but under the drive of incentive mechanisms, they may intentionally or unintentionally engage in some immoral behaviors and even find excuses for their bad behaviors.
2. Liking/Loving Tendency
Liking/loving is a psychological adjustment tool that will prompt people to:
- Ignore the flaws of the object they love;
- Favor people, items, and actions that remind them of the object they love;
- Distort other facts for the sake of love.
3. Disliking/Hating Tendency
Corresponding to the liking/loving tendency, the disliking/hating tendency is also a psychological adjustment tool that will prompt people to:
- Ignore the merits of the object they dislike;
- Dislike people, items, and actions that remind them of the object they dislike;
- Distort other facts for the sake of hatred.
4. Doubt-Avoidance Tendency
The human brain is naturally inclined to make decisions quickly to eliminate doubt.
Therefore, judges and juries must adopt behaviors that resist this tendency. They cannot make judgments immediately but must consider carefully.
Before making decisions, people must get used to wearing an objective “mask”.
5. Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency
To save computing space, the human brain is reluctant to make changes. This is the tendency to avoid inconsistency.
Old habits, old identities, previous conclusions, and socially recognized roles all make us refuse to change.
If the quick decisions triggered by the doubt-avoidance tendency combine with the refusal to change triggered by the inconsistency-avoidance tendency, it will cause a lot of cognitive errors in modern people.
6. Curiosity Tendency
Animals are naturally curious, and human curiosity is much stronger.
In developed human civilizations, culture greatly enhances the efficiency of curiosity in promoting knowledge development.
The best modern educational institutions can enhance people’s curiosity, and curiosity can help people prevent or reduce the bad consequences caused by other psychological tendencies.
7. Kantian Fairness Tendency
Kant’s “categorical imperative” refers to a “golden rule” that requires people to follow certain behaviors. If everyone follows these behaviors, it will ensure that the social system is the best for everyone.
In modern society, every cultured person exhibits and expects to receive the fairness defined by Kant from others.
From actively queuing to liberating slaves, people are demonstrating this tendency to desire fairness.
8. Envy/Jealousy Tendency
Ancient people saw their companions having more food than themselves, and modern people see their colleagues earning more than themselves, which will trigger jealousy until conflicts arise.
Charlie Munger himself has heard Buffett say more than once: “What drives this world is not greed, but jealousy.”
9. Reciprocation Tendency
Like animals, humans also have an extreme tendency to repay kindness with kindness and to retaliate.
Whether on the battlefield or in peaceful times on the road and sports fields, the reciprocation tendency can trigger emotionally out-of-control violent incidents.
And the reciprocation tendency of repaying kindness with kindness, combined with the super-response tendency of rewards, can also produce magical reactions: for example, when a car salesman generously invites you to sit in a comfortable place and serves you a cup of coffee, you are very likely to become a sucker and pay 500 yuan more when buying a car because of this small courtesy.
10. Influence from Mere Association Tendency
We often fall into simple associations and are thus exploited: happy scenes in advertisements, beauties on product packaging, and even some products deliberately set high prices because we associate high prices with high quality.
If we gamble in a casino and win money afterward, or entrust money to unreliable people and end up making a profit, we often try again after tasting the sweetness, and the result is often terrible.
The correct countermeasures to avoid doing stupid things because of past successes are:
- Carefully examine each past success, identify the accidental factors in these successes, and avoid being misled by these factors, thereby exaggerating the probability of success in planned new actions;
- See what new actions will encounter dangers that did not appear in past successful experiences.
11. Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial
Reality is too painful to bear, so people distort various facts until they become bearable.
We all have this problem to some extent, and it often causes serious problems.
The most extreme consequences caused by this tendency are often related to love, death, and dependence on chemical substances (alcohol, drugs, etc.).
12. Excessive Self-Regard Tendency
People often mistakenly overestimate themselves; 90% of drivers believe their driving skills are above average.
After making a decision, people will think their decision is good, even better than they thought before making the decision.
The best way to avoid doing stupid things because of excessive self-regard is to force yourself to be more objective when evaluating yourself, your relatives and friends, your property, and the value of your past and future actions.
This is very difficult to do, and you cannot be completely objective, but it is much better than doing nothing and letting the natural psychological tendency develop unchecked.
13. Over-Optimism Tendency
People not only exhibit simple, pain-avoiding psychological denial but also show excessive optimism even when they are doing very well.
The correct way to solve foolish optimism is to habitually apply probability theory through learning.
14. Deprival Super-Response Tendency
The happiness a person gets from gaining 10 yuan is not equal to the pain caused by losing 10 yuan; the harm caused by loss is much greater than the happiness brought by gain.
In the process of exhibiting the deprival super-response tendency, people often make a fuss over small losses and get into trouble.
They often care about immediate losses and do not think that the loss may be insignificant.
A group often also exhibits the deprival super-response tendency, and when a critic is a former member, the hostility is even stronger.
15. Social Proof Tendency
If a person automatically thinks and acts according to the thinking and actions of the people around him, he can simplify some originally very complex behaviors.
If we could only choose one lesson from all the lessons involving the social proof tendency and use it for self-improvement, I would choose this lesson: Learn how not to follow others when they make mistakes, because there are few skills more worth mastering than this.
16. Contrast-Misreaction Tendency
Because the human nervous system is not a precise scientific instrument, it must rely on something simpler. The senses rely on contrast to capture information. More importantly, not only perception but also cognition relies on contrast, resulting in the human contrast-misreaction tendency.
Businesses often use the contrast-misreaction tendency for psychological manipulation: real estate agents deliberately show customers three houses with poor conditions and outrageous prices first, and then show them a house with average conditions and price, making it easy to close the deal.
Even if people are aware of such consumer manipulation tricks, they often can’t help but fall for them. Knowing psychological manipulation tricks is not a perfect defense.
17. Stress-Influence Tendency
Sudden stress, such as encountering a threat, will cause a surge of adrenaline in the body, driving faster and more extreme reactions.
Stress makes the social proof tendency stronger.
There is a phenomenon that many people know but has not been fully recognized: mild stress can slightly improve people’s performance, while heavy stress can cause complete dysfunction.
18. Availability-Misweighing Tendency
The human brain is limited and imperfect, and it is easily satisfied with easily available things. The brain cannot use things it cannot remember or recognize because it is influenced by one or several psychological tendencies. Therefore, the brain overestimates the importance of easily available things, exhibiting the availability-misweighing tendency.
The main countermeasures to avoid being influenced by the availability-misweighing tendency are:
- Follow procedures, including using checklists that are almost always helpful;
- Value contrary evidence, especially those factors that are not easily quantifiable, rather than almost only considering quantifiable factors;
- Find and hire knowledgeable, skeptical, and articulate people to play the role of the opposition to existing views.
19. Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency
All skills will degrade if not used.
Wise people will practice all their useful but rarely used skills, most of which come from other disciplines, throughout their lives and consider it a responsibility for self-improvement.
For a person who is good at thinking, it is also important to organize his skills into a checklist and frequently use this checklist.
20. Drug-Misinfluence Tendency
As is well known, this tendency has great destructive power and often brings tragic results to cognition and life. (See the related content in the section “Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial”.)
21. Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency
Aging naturally causes cognitive decline, and the time and speed of cognitive decline vary from person to person.
Basically, no very old person is still good at learning complex new skills.
Thinking and learning happily can somewhat delay the inevitable decline process.
22. Authority-Misinfluence Tendency
Humans live in a hierarchical power structure, so most people are born to follow leaders, and only a few can become leaders.
Because most human reactions are automatic, following leaders is no exception. Therefore, when leaders make mistakes or their ideas are not well communicated and misunderstood by the public, followers will inevitably suffer greatly.
23. Twaddle Tendency
As a social animal with a talent for language, humans are naturally capable of babbling and saying a lot of nonsense that causes many troubles for people who are focused on serious work.
Smart administrative institutions should take a very important approach, which is to keep those who babble and like to talk nonsense away from serious work.
24. Reason-Respecting Tendency
People, especially those living in developed cultures, are naturally fond of accurate cognition and the pleasure of obtaining accurate cognition.
If people devote their lives to hanging their direct and indirect experiences on a theoretical framework that explains “why”, their absorption and use of knowledge will become easier.
Unfortunately, the reason-respecting tendency is so strong that even if the reasons given are meaningless or inaccurate, it can make commands and requests easier to comply with.
25. Lollapalooza Tendency—The Tendency of Multiple Psychological Tendencies Acting Together to Cause Extreme Consequences
If the quick decisions triggered by the doubt-avoidance tendency combine with the refusal to change triggered by the inconsistency-avoidance tendency, it will cause a lot of cognitive errors in modern people.
The combination of the reciprocation tendency and the inconsistency-avoidance tendency makes people fulfill commitments made in transactions;
The combination of simple, pain-avoiding psychological denial and drug-misinfluence tendency often leads to tragedies;
The combination of the deprival super-response tendency and the inconsistency-avoidance tendency is often the root cause of tragedies caused by extreme ideologies.
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