Gerd Gigerenzer: “One of the insights in my research at the Max Planck Institute is that if you have a situation that is stable and well defined, then complex algorithms such as deep neural networks are certainly better than human performance. Examples are [the games] chess and Go, which are stable. But if you have a problem that is not stable—for instance, you want to predict a virus, like a coronavirus—then keep your hands off complex algorithms. [Dealing with] the uncertainty—that is more how the human mind works, to identify the one or two important cues and ignore the rest. In that type of ill-defined problem, complex algorithms don’t work well. I call this the “stable world principle,” and it helps you as a first clue about what AI can do. It also tells you that, in order to get the most out of AI, we have to make the world more predictable.”
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic: “The essence of learnability is intellectual curiosity. It has to do with having a hungry mind. It’s your desire and propensity to want to understand things, to go beyond superficial answers, and to dig deeper to understand the causes of things, deep down. It makes sense, as I highlight in the book, that in an age where all of the knowledge of the world—which seems very hard to quantify or even grasp—has been outsourced and can be crowdsourced, accessed, and retrieved on an on-demand, 24/7 basis, there is really no advantage in being knowledgeable. Rather, the advantages come from asking questions and being hungry enough for knowledge that you actually leverage access to this information.”
Donald Boudreaux: “The market’s biggest failure is not that it occasionally ‘fails’ in those ways tediously described in economics textbooks; instead, the market’s biggest failure is that it works so successfully, smoothly, and quietly that people take its output for granted. The market thus conveys the appearance or sensation that wealth and economic growth ‘just happen.’ But, of course, wealth doesn’t ‘just happen.’ It must be produced. Daily. With creativity. Careful attention to details, including to the desires and quirks of fellow human beings as well as, of course, to prices. Risk-taking. Hours of toil, often long ones.”
McKinsey: “Which internal businesses or projects merit company capital? Managers frequently employ enterprise value multiples as a key yardstick. However, when evaluating potential strategies more comprehensively, it’s essential not to rely on multiples alone or even primarily. The goal of strategy is maximizing long-term value, not optimizing multiples. Multiples are the result of good outcomes, but they are not the primary objective. Sometimes companies miss this essential point.”
