Optimism in Planning Is a Disadvantage

Recently at Lux in New York City, Josh Wolfe invited three celebrated decision and risk specialists for a lunch to discuss the latest academic research and empirical insights from the world of psychology and decision sciences. Our lunch included Danny Kahneman, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on decision sciences. His book Thinking Fast and Slow has been a major bestseller and summarizes much of his work in the field. We also had Annie Duke, a World Series of Poker champion who researches cognitive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books How to Decide and Thinking in Bets have also been tremendously influential best sellers, and she is also the co-founder of the Alliance for Decision Education. Also joining us was Michael Mauboussin, the Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global and who has also taught finance for decades at Columbia. His book More Than You Know is similarly a major bestseller.

In part three of our risk, bias and decision making lunch, Annie Duke, Michael Mauboussin, Danny Kahneman, and Josh Wolfe discuss optimism, base rates, overcoming negative expected values, population versus individual risks, calibrating risk assessments, and infectious amplification of optimism within groups.