especially since the ball only costs a nickel. Must be one of those cheap plastic bats with a holey plastic ball.

-Richard Feynman

evaluate our own bias. Never to busy to evaluate others, apparently

Every ones in a rush to get the 'right' answer. It's when you stop and think about it for a couple of minutes that you go 'hey wait....'

System 1 and System 2 thinking. The example he gave in a talk was the difference between 2 math problems.

He spoke at a meeting of "100 Women in Hedge Funds". I found it here - http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/11/know-yourself-and-your-decision-making-process/

The first, what is 2 +2. The answer 4 just appears - from memory, hearing it, whatever, but it's just there.

The second, 17 times 58. - You have to think about the answer, calculate it.

Said we need to slow down, calculate, split things up into different parts, make sure the errors from each part don't just build into the next piece, make sure the errors we make are discrete.

Interesting.

If it appeared to be a complex or challenging problem, it would be easy to build a little formula to solve it. As it appears to be a throwaway little question (involving a kid buying toys, more or less) anyone should just "know" the answer to, its very difficult to approach it properly.

I'd rather be surrounded by people who are open minded to criticism, yet are hyper-critical in turn, than by people who watch FOX, and Morning Joe, and the others.

2+2=4.

Fire is hot.

Water is wet.

The earth revolves around the sun.



But I suppose everything is relative.
Sometimes the above statements must not be true.
Right?




Next time you get in an argument with someone who insists, say,
2+2=13, let them win. It's the decent thing to do.

They may even be right, anyhow.

And we all know 2+2 actually does= 13, sometimes.

Saturn revolves around the Earth.





Tomorrow, i've decided 2+2 are going to equal 7.

But just for tomorrow.

It depends on how your brain works. My son came home with the following joke. I got it immediately, my wife on the other hand did not get it until we drew up the simple flow chart.

A wife calls her husband, a software engineer...

"Sweetie, on the way home can you stop be the store and pick up a loaf of bread? And if they have eggs get a dozen."
He arrives home with several bags full of bread, 12 loaves to be exact. Exasperated she asks, "Why did you but all this bread?"
He replied, "They had eggs."

talking on campus. Hey Joe where did you get that brand new bicycle? Oh John you wouldn't believe it. Yesterday this beautiful blond girl rode up on it, jumped off and took off all her clothes. She say's take whatever you want, so I took the bicycle.

-Laelth

There was a man who had no eyes.
He went outside and viewed the skies.
He saw a tree with apples on it.
He took no apples off it, and left no apples on it.


How is this possible?

If you have a fence 100 feet long, with a post every ten feet, how many posts are there? See here for a brief discussion.

A related question is the banana problem, from the story of a little girl who said "I know how to spell 'banana', but I don't know when to stop".

I don't remember how many times in the last forty years I have stood at a whiteboard and explained DeMorgan's Laws to a puzzled programmer who couldn't see why his or her complicated IF statement didn't work.

is a presumably smart person who has done some incredibly stupid things himself!

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/08/jonah_lehrer_plagiarism_in_wired_com_an_investigation_into_plagiarism_quotes_and_factual_inaccuracies_.html

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