Think about the last time you asked someone for something. Maybe you were nervous or worried about what the person would think of you. Chances are that you didn’t stop to think about the pressure you were exerting on that person. This week, we revisit a favorite episode about a phenomenon known as “egocentric bias,” and look at how this bias can lead us astray.
Accidents happen, people have healthcare needs – it’s not just the colored folks in the cities either. You can be the model homesteader or off-grider in rural Missouri and have an accident with a chain saw, get kicked by cow or trampled by a hog. Farm life is dangerous.
We want to believe that everybody who works can get affordable health care but that isn’t the case. The Medicaid expansion allows millions of people to buy into low cost, basic health insurance that would otherwise be unaffordable. The federal government picks up most of the tab, and while it’s a cost to state budgets it helps a lot of people, not just those who live in the big cities.
Maybe I have a dog in the fight. I’m not a resident of Missouri but it’s on the short list of states I’ve been interested in some day moving to in the future. Knowing that affordable health care options for those of modest incomes are available is important to me. I don’t like doctors but sometimes you need them.
We all probably know someone who is intelligent but does surprisingly stupid things. My family delights in pointing out times when I (a professor) make really dumb mistakes. What does it mean to be smart or intelligent? Our everyday use of the term is meant to describe someone who is knowledgeable and makes wise decisions, but this definition is at odds with how intelligence is traditionally measured. The most widely known measure of intelligence is the intelligence quotient, more commonly known as the IQ test, which includes visuospatial puzzles, math problems, pattern recognition, vocabulary questions and visual searches.
Many episodes of this podcast deal with cognitive biases that can hinder our decision-making abilities. In this episode of Choiceology with Katy Milkman, we look at a different kind of error: how completely irrelevant information can negatively influence our judgments, making them varied and unpredictable. This variability of human judgment—or noise—is the topic of a new book by Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, with Cass Sunstein and Olivier Sibony. You’ll hear an interview with Kahneman later in the episode where he explains his preoccupation with the substantial and expensive effects of noise. He proposes ways to reduce the problem of noise for industries, businesses, and individuals who need to make more objective judgements. But first, we’ll dive into the world of wine judging. G.M. “Pooch” Pucilowski will take you on a guided tour of the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition. You’ll hear about the criteria for judging different varietals—and the accompanying challenges that wine judges face as they swirl, sniff, and sip through dozens and sometimes hundreds of different wines. After years of coordinating and observing the judges, Pooch noticed a large amount of variability in the results. This may not be surprising, since taste is subjective. But after some tweaks to the process, he even began to notice that judges were inconsistent with themselves! Enter vintner and retired oceanographer Robert Hodgson. Pooch teamed up with Hodgson to devise a way to study and improve the consistency of wine judging and push for a more objective competition. The results were promising, but not without controversy. You can read Robert Hodgson’s research paper on wine judging here. G.M. “Pooch” Pucilowski is a speaker, writer, wine judge, and educator. He runs wine appreciation classes through his University of Wine. You’ll also hear about the potential role of chemical analysis and artificial intelligence in improving the results of wine judging from James Hutchinson, formerly of the Royal Society of Chemistry and currently CEO of KiwiNet. And finally, Katy explores the potential of leveraging noise to produce better decisions by employing the wisdom of crowds—and even “the crowd within.”
