ConceptsNest

  We may assume that humans buy products because of what they are, but the truth is that we often buy things because of where they are . For example, items on store shelves that are at eye level tend to be purchased more than items on less visible shelves. Here’s why this is important - Something has to go on the shelf at eye level. Something must be the default choice . Something must be the option with the most visibility and prominence. This is true not just in stores, but in nearly every area of our lives. There are default choices in our office, car, kitchen and in our living room. If we design for default in our life, rather than accepting whatever is handed to us, then it will be easier to live a better life. In the book Nudge, authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explain a variety of ways that our everyday decisions are shaped by the world around us . Designing for Default:- . . . Although most of us have the freedom to make a wide range of choices at any given moment,

  A Story: In the 1920s, a German professor named Eugen Herrigel moved to Japan to teach philosophy at a university in a city called Sendai, near Tokyo. To deepen his understanding of Japanese culture, Herrigel began training in Kyudo, the Japanese martial art of archery. He was taught by a legendary archer named Awa Kenzo. Kenzo was convinced that beginners should master the fundamentals of archery before attempting to shoot at a real target, and he took this method to the extreme. For the first four years of his training, Herrigel was only allowed to shoot at a roll of straw just seven feet away. When Herrigel complained of the incredibly slow pace, his teacher replied: When he was finally permitted to shoot at more distant targets, Herrigel’s performance was dismal. The arrows flew off course and he became more discouraged with each wayward shot . During a particularly humbling session, Herrigel stated that his problem must be poor aim. Kenzo, however, looked at his student and re

  The term the “curse of knowledge” was coined in a 1989 paper by researchers Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber. This phenomenon is sometimes also conceptualized as  epistemic egocentrism , though some theoretical distinctions may be drawn between these concepts. The  curse of knowledge  is a cognitive bias that causes people to fail to properly understand the perspective of those who do not have as much information as them . For example, the curse of knowledge can mean that an expert in some field might struggle to teach beginners, because the expert intuitively assumes that things that are obvious to them are also obvious to the beginners, even though that’s not the case. Because the curse of knowledge can cause issues in various areas of life, such as when it comes to communicating with others, it’s important to understand it. The Curse Of Knowledge: Common Occurrences & Influences This can make it harder for experts to teach beginners (also known as th

  The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the "vital few"). Other names for this principle are the  80/20 rule , the  law of the vital few ,  or the  principle of factor sparsity . Management consultant Joseph Juran developed the concept in the context of quality control and improvement, naming it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted the 80/20 connection while at the University of Lausanne in 1896. In his first work, Cours d'économie politique, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. The Pareto principle is only tangentially related to Pareto efficiency. More generally, the Pareto Principle is the observation (not law) that most things in life are not distributed evenly . It can mean all of the following things: The Uneven Distribution What does it mean when we say that things aren’t distributed evenly? The key point is that each unit of wor

The famous French philosopher Denis Diderot lived nearly his entire life in poverty, but that all changed in 1765. Diderot was 52 years old and his daughter was about to be married, but he could not afford to provide a dowry. Despite his lack of wealth, Diderot’s name was well-known because he was the co-founder and writer of Encyclopédie , one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias of the time. When Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, heard of Diderot’s financial troubles she offered to buy his library from him for £1000 GBP (in AD 1765….!!) Suddenly, Diderot had money to spare. Shortly after this lucky sale, Diderot acquired a new scarlet robe. That's when everything went wrong. The Diderot Effect Diderot’s scarlet robe was so beautiful, that he immediately noticed how out of place it seemed when surrounded by the rest of his common possessions. In his words, there was “no more coordination, no more unity, no more beauty” between his robe and the rest of his items