What is the role of accidents in our life, how regression to the mean can explain the success of the pilots' landings, and why you should not despair if you were refused publication of the manuscript, the book by Leonard Mlodinov “(Not) a Perfect Accident. How chance rules our lives”, published by Livebook. Indicator. Ru publishes an excerpt from the chapter "Under the Magnifier of Randomness".
In 2002, the Nobel Committee awarded the Economics Prize to a scientist named Daniel Kahneman. Nowadays, economists do a lot of things: they explain why teachers receive such low salaries, why football teams are so expensive, and how physiological data can help determine the number of livestock in pig farms (a pig excretes two to five times more feces than a person, therefore there is often more waste from a pig farm in thousands of heads than from neighboring settlements).
Despite the tremendous research work done by economists, the 2002 Nobel Prize was notable for the fact that the recipient Kahneman is not an economist. He is a psychologist, and for decades he and the late Amos Tverskoy have debunked all sorts of misconceptions about the theory of randomness, which in turn gave rise to common misconceptions that will be discussed in this book.
The most serious obstacle to understanding the role of chance in life is the following: the basic principles of randomness follow from everyday logic, and many of the consequences of these principles contradict the so-called common sense. The research of Kahneman and Tverskoy began by chance. In the mid-1960s, Kahneman, then a junior professor of psychology at the Hebrew University, agreed to do a rather tedious job: lecturing Israeli Air Force instructors on general issues of behavior modification in a particular case of flight training. Kahneman argued that rewarding good behavior is beneficial, but punishing mistakes is not. One listener interrupted Kahneman and suggested a thought that brought Kahneman the insight that had guided his work for decades.
“I often praise pilots for excellent maneuvers, but next time they always do much worse,” the instructor said. - I yell at those who performed bad maneuvers, and then they generally do better. So don't tell me that reward is good and punishment is not. From my own experience I know that it is not. The rest agreed with him. To Kahneman, the instructor's words seemed meaningful. At the same time, Kahneman trusted the results of experiments on animals, which confirmed that more can be achieved by reward than by punishment. He began to reflect on this apparent paradox. And then it dawned on him: the cry preceded the improvement, however, despite the apparent obviousness, it did not condition it.
How is this possible? The answer to this question lies in the phenomenon of regression to the mean. The essence of this phenomenon is that, in any series of random events, an event that is out of the ordinary is likely to be followed by a more ordinary event. The mechanism is as follows. All young pilots have more or less the skill of flying a fighter plane. Improving this skill depends on many factors, including long training sessions. Thus, although pilots' skill gradually grows during training, they will not achieve much in one flight. And any particularly successful or unsuccessful flight will depend heavily on luck. Therefore, if the pilot landed the car perfectly, much better than how he usually does it, there is a high probabilitythat his next flight will be at a level much closer to his personal norm, that is, worse.
If the instructor praised his ward after the first flight, the results of the next flight will prove that the praise did not seem to be beneficial. However, if the pilot landed extremely badly - say, the car jumped out of the runway and, crashing into the cafeteria, took down a vat of corn soup - chances are high that next time the ill-fated pilot flies much closer to his personal norm, that is, better. If the instructor, out of habit, yells at a badly flying one - "you are a club-handed monkey," it will seem as if the suggestions had an effect. Thus, a seemingly obvious pattern emerges: the pilot has flown well, he is praised, and the next flight is no good; the pilot did not fly well, the instructor compares the student with a lower primate, and he corrects himself on the next flight. The instructors who came to Kahneman's lecture were sure:yelling at the pilot will only benefit him. In reality, such a teaching technique does not change anything.
Such an intuitive error prompted Kahneman to think. He wondered: how common are such misconceptions? As instructors, do we believe that harsh criticism improves the behavior of our children or the performance of our subordinates? Are we still somehow mistaken when faced with uncertainty? Kahneman knew that man necessarily seeks to simplify the task of judgment and that a sense of probability plays an important role in this process. Will you feel sick after you eat that gorgeous-looking ceviche tostadu you bought at a street stall? Consciously, you do not go over in your memory all such stalls in which you have ever bought food, do not count how many times you then had to swallow absorbents all night, and do not give a numerical estimate. You leave it to your intuition. However, research from the 1950s and early 1960s proved that in situations of chance, intuition fails. And so Kahneman wondered: how common is this misunderstanding of uncertainty? And how does this affect a person's ability to make decisions? Several years passed, and now Kahneman invited the junior teacher Amos Tversky to give a lecture to his students. Later at lunch, Kahneman shared some of his thoughts with Tverskoy.and so Kahneman invited the junior teacher Amos Tversky to give a lecture to his students. Later at lunch, Kahneman shared some of his thoughts with Tverskoy.and so Kahneman invited the junior teacher Amos Tversky to give a lecture to his students. Later at lunch, Kahneman shared some of his thoughts with Tverskoy.
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Over the next thirty years, Tversky and Kahneman found out: when it comes to random processes - even if they relate to such difficult areas of human activity as military affairs, sports, business, medicine - our beliefs and intuition often let us down.
Let's say four publishers have rejected the manuscript of your thriller about love, war and global warming. Intuition and bad gut feeling tell you that such recognized experts rejected the manuscript for one reason only - it is worthless. But isn't your intuition letting you down? Is there really no way to sell the novel? From our own experience, we all know that if you toss a coin several times and each time it falls heads up, this does not mean that the coin has two reverses. Maybe publishing success is so unpredictable that even if the novel is destined to become a bestseller, many publishers will still fail to see it, and you will keep getting kicked out of the gate again and again? In the 1950s, the publisher rejected one book with the following comments: "too boring", "a monotonous story about squabbles in a typical family,about petty grievances and youthful worries "," even if the book had appeared five years earlier, when the topic [World War II] was relevant, it is unlikely that something would have been successful. " This book, Anne Frank's Diary, has sold 30 million copies - one of the most high-profile bestsellers in history.
Sylvia Plath also received refusal letters: “Your works are not talented enough to attract our attention,” and George Orwell with his Animal Farm: “stories about animals will not be in demand in America,” and Isaac Bashevis Singer, therefore that "the action takes place in Poland and again these rich Jews." Even before Tony Hillerman became famous, a literary agent left him, advising him to "quit this Indian nonsense."
And these are not separate delusions at all. It often happens that incredibly successful writers get rejection after rejection at first. For example, there are not many books that are more popular around the world today than the novels of John Grisham, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), and J. K. Rowling. Nevertheless, their manuscripts, at a time when the authors themselves had not yet become famous, were rejected over and over again. Grisham's Time to Kill was rejected by twenty-six publishers, and his second manuscript, The Firm, only became interested in publishers after an unofficial copy of the novel, circulating in Hollywood, attracted the attention of filmmakers, who offered $ 600,000 for the film rights. The first book for children, On Mulberry Street, written by Dr. Seuss, was rejected by twenty-seven publishing houses. J. K. Rowling, with her first Harry Potter novel, received nine rejections. There is also a flip side to the coin that is well known to any person connected with entrepreneurship: many talented writers - these John Grishams, who gave up after the twentieth rejection, J. K. Rowling, who stopped fighting after five negative answers - never made it. After numerous rejections, one such writer, John F. Kennedy Toole, gave up hope of ever publishing his novel and committed suicide. His mother did not give up trying, and eleven years later, The Conspiracy of Dunce was published. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has sold nearly two million copies.many talented writers - those John Grishams who gave up after twentieth rejection, J. K. Rowling - who quit after five negative responses - never made it. After numerous rejections, one such writer, John F. Kennedy Toole, gave up hope of ever publishing his novel and committed suicide. His mother did not give up trying, and eleven years later, The Conspiracy of Dunce was published. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has sold nearly two million copies.many talented writers - those John Grishams who gave up after twentieth rejection, J. K. Rowling - who quit after five negative responses - never made it. After numerous rejections, one such writer, John F. Kennedy Toole, gave up hope of ever publishing his novel and committed suicide. His mother did not give up trying, and eleven years later, The Conspiracy of Dunce was published. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has sold nearly two million copies.and eleven years later, The Conspiracy of Dunce was published. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has sold nearly two million copies.and eleven years later, The Conspiracy of Dunce was published. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and has sold nearly two million copies.
There is a chasm between the creation of a great novel, jewelry, or chocolate chip cookie and the appearance of stacks of that novel - or boxes of jewelry or packs of cookies - across thousands of storefronts. This is why successful people, whatever they do, almost universally belong to the same breed of people - those who don't give up.
Much of what happens to us, be it success in work, successful investments, correct decisions in big and small, depends not only on our skills, readiness and hard work, but also on chance. So the reality we perceive is not at all a direct reflection of people or events, it is obscured by the random effects of the unforeseen or constantly changing external forces. This is not to say that ability does not mean anything - it is one of the factors that increase the chances of success - but the connection between actions and results is not at all as direct as we would like to think. That is why it is so difficult to understand the past and forecast the future; in both cases, we will only benefit from looking beyond superficial explanations.