The Inside story of Pepsico

Jared Diamond : The Third Chimpanzee

Taleb on Diametrically Opposite Approaches to Risk

Mere Association Bias

“John's supplier took him to the best steakhouse in town and picked up the check. The next

time it was time to buy new supplies, John associated the supplier with pleasant feelings.

People can influence us by associating a product, service, person, investment, or

a situation with something we like. Many times we buy products, enter

relationships, and invest our money merely because we associate them with

positive things. No wonder advertisers or politicians connect what they want to

sell with things we like and avoid associating themselves with negative events.

Pair a sports car with something that produces a positive feeling - a beautiful and

sexy model- and we automatically associate the car with pleasure.”

 

-Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger

Do people do what they perceive is in their best interest?

Do people do what they perceive is in their best interest?

Yes, one basic trait that aU individuals share is self-interest. We are interested in

protecting our close family and ourselves. Why?

Since natural selection is about survival and reproduction, and individuals either

survive or die and reproduce or not, it makes sense that individuals are predisposed

to act in ways that enhance their own prospects for survival and reproduction. The

ancestral environment consisted of limited resources, including reproductive

resources, and fierce competition. Self-interest came naturally.

What if our ancestors were composed of altruists - individuals that helped

others at their own expense? Altruistic individuals are at a disadvantage. They are

always vulnerable to some mutants that take advantage of them. Altruistic

behavior cannot evolve by natural selection since natural selection favors

individuals that are best at promoting their own survival and reproductive

success. Only behavior that is selfish or for the mutual good is in an individual's

self-interest and therefore favored by natural selection. Some behavior may under

certain conditions look like altruism but can often be explained by self-benefit.

Social recognition, prestige, fear of social disapproval, shame, relief from distress,

avoidance of guilt, a better after-life or social expectations are some reasons

behind "altruistic" acts.

 

-          Seeking wisdom from Darwin to Munger

FW: If extraterrestrials are monitoring us, this is what they’re seeing…

Feed: The Big Picture
Posted on: Thursday, May 29, 2014 20:00
Author: Barry Ritholtz
Subject: If extraterrestrials are monitoring us, this is what they're seeing…

 

Source: Abstruse Goose

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FW: Vanity Height

Author: Barry Ritholtz
Subject: Vanity Height

 

Source: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat

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Misjudgement #7

“…And here, one of the cases the psychologists use is Kitty Genovese, where all these people

-- I don’t know, 50, 60, 70 of them -- just sort of sat and did nothing while she was slowly

murdered. Now one of the explanations is that everybody looked at everybody else and

nobody else was doing anything, and so there’s automatic social proof that the right thing

to do is nothing. That’s not a good enough explanation for Kitty Genovese, in my

judgment. That’s only part of it. There are microeconomic ideas and gain/loss ratios and

so forth that also come into play. I think time and time again, in reality, psychological

notions and economic notions interplay, and the man who doesn’t understand both is a

damned fool.

 

Big-shot businessmen get into these waves of social proof. Do you remember some years

ago when one oil company bought a fertilizer company, and every other major oil

company practically ran out and bought a fertilizer company? And there was no more

damned reason for all these oil companies to buy fertilizer companies, but they didn’t

know exactly what to do, and if Exxon was doing it, it was good enough for Mobil, and

vice versa. I think they’re all gone now, but it was a total disaster. “

via: Munger

Overweight boys by country[graphic]

Via: VOX

India's elections[graphic]

 

 

Reuters

University of Texas Commencement speaker

Notes from the Checklist Manifesto

Here, then, is our situation at the start of the twenty-first century: We have accumulated stupendous know-how. We have put it in the hands of some of the most highly trained, highly skilled, and hardworking people in our society. And, with it, they have indeed accomplished extraordinary things. Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields—from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us.

That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy—though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies.

It is a checklist.

Weekend Longform Links

MY CREATIVE SECRET: QUANTITY OVER QUALITY — AND COMMITMENTS http://www.ryanholiday.net/my-creative-secret-quantity-over-quality-and-commitments/ …
It's T. Boone Pickens' Birthday — Here Are 22 'Boone-isms' On How To Win In Life And Business http://www.businessinsider.com/t-boone-pickens-best-quotes-2014-5?op=1 …
Learning About Humanity on Public Transportation | VICE United States http://www.vice.com/read/learning-about-humanity-on-public-transportation …
10 Brilliant Business Lessons From Ben Horowitz http://bit.ly/1o6Bz1I 
Lunch with the FT: Tim Geithner http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/2e13cb90-dabb-11e3-8273-00144feabdc0.html#axzz324oGApWx …
What Do Animals See in a Mirror? http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/what-do-animals-see-in-a-mirror …
Smile, You’re on Worldwide Webcam – http://narrative.ly/the-spies-among-us/smile-youre-on-worldwide-webcam/ …
I went undercover on Ashley Madison to find out why women cheat http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/ashley-madison-why-women-cheat/ …
How will you measure your life http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/pr …
SodaStream’s CEO on Turning a Banned Super Bowl Ad into Marketing Gold http://hbr.org/2014/01/sodastreams-ceo-on-turning-a-banned-super-bowl-ad-into-marketing-gold/ar/pr …
Can Starbucks Do for the Croissant What it Did for Coffee? http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/can-starbucks-do-for-the-croissant-what-it-did-for-coffee-89521645/?all …
The Case for Reparations http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/?src=longreads …
Americans In Paris http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/165/transcript …

Where does Pecking order come from ?

Pecking order also matters. As we strive for status, hierarchies emerge.

Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe discovered that in the world of

hens there is a linear hierarchy where every hen knows its place. Science writer

Robert Wright says in The Moral Animal: "Throw a bunch of hens together, and,

after a time of turmoil, including much combat, things will settle down.

Disputes ... will now be brief and decisive, as one hen simply pecks the other,

bringing quick deferral."

The pecking order determines who gets the first chance to eat, and which hen

can peck the other hens. Each hen knows who it can dominate, and in turn, who

will dominate it.

 

-Seeking wisdom from Darwin to Munger

The Social Animal

The Social Animal

We do not care about our reputation in towns where we are only passing

through. But when we have to stay some time we do care. How much

time does it take? A time proportionate to our vain and paltry existence.

- Blaise Pascal (French mathematician and philosopher, 1623-1662)

David Foster Wallace

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”

 

Via: Intelligentlife           

Americans in Paris

Freak-nomics authors on Charlie Rose[video]

FW: Manhattan and Brooklyn Rents Continue to Rise

Feed: The Big Picture
Posted on: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 14:30
Author: Barry Ritholtz
Subject: Manhattan and Brooklyn Rents Continue to Rise

 

click for ginormous graphic Source: Miler Matrix     Okay, that ought to be enough real estate for a while . . .

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FW: Behavioral Test: What Are the World’s Deadliest Animals?

Feed: The Big Picture
Posted on: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 12:00
Author: Barry Ritholtz
Subject: Behavioral Test: What Are the World's Deadliest Animals?

 

Source: Gates Notes   Continues here

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Linkfest

·         Lunch with the FT: Tim Geithner http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/2e13cb90-dabb-11e3-8273-00144feabdc0.html#axzz324oGApWx …

·         What Do Animals See in a Mirror? http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/what-do-animals-see-in-a-mirror …

·         Smile, You’re on Worldwide Webcam – http://narrative.ly/the-spies-among-us/smile-youre-on-worldwide-webcam/ …

·         Modi won the Indian election on Twitter, too http://theatln.tc/RZWfe9 

·         The leaked New York Times innovation report is one of the key documents of this media age http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/05/the-leaked-new-york-times-innovation-report-is-one-of-the-key-documents-of-this-media-age/ …

·         Tim Geithner : A NYT bio http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/magazine/what-timothy-geithner-really-thinks.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2 …

·         Why no one other than economists are allowed to leave academia and work etc. http://edge.org/conversation/this-thing-for-which-we-have-no-name …

·         The Food Lab: The Hard Truth About Boiled Eggs | Serious Eats: http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/05/the-secrets-to-peeling-hard-boiled-eggs.html#.U3IeAFT4mls.twitter …

·         Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman: the Two Sides of Miley Cyrus http://www.elle.com/pop-culture/cover-shoots/miley-cyrus-may-cover-story … via @ELLEMagazine

·         The Inside Story of Oculus Rift and How Virtual Reality Became Reality | Gadget Lab | WIRED http://wrd.cm/1koNjJK

FW: Most Lethal Actors of All Time, by # of On-Screen Kills

Author: Barry Ritholtz
Subject: Most Lethal Actors of All Time, by # of On-Screen Kills

 

click for larger chart Source: Know More   Da vinner is Ah-nold by a mile . . .

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FW: Modern slavery

 

 

Feed: Graphic detail
Posted on: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 10:49
Author: P.J.W. and L.P.
Subject: Modern slavery

 

Counting the cost of forced labour THE idea of treating other humans like chattel seems as antiquated as it is barbaric. But it is big business. Forced labour produces profits of about $150 billion annually, according to a report published today by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Sexual exploitation accounts for a fifth of all victims but two-thirds of profits. The most lucrative region for this form of slavery, generating more than $30 billion in 2012 alone, is Asia. The average annual profits per victim of sexual exploitation are $22,000—more than four times those gained from non-domestic labour and almost ten times the profits from domestic work. The ILO defines forced labour as involuntary work as a result of force, fraud or deception when a penalty or the threat of a penalty is used to coerce. It puts the number of people in these conditions at 21m. Others, such as the Global Slavery Index, place the number as high as 30m—a partially visible workforce that is about the...Continue reading

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