How to Maximize Expected Value

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There is sort of a model uncertainty to the whole problem, which is in other words, there's a whole bunch of assumptions baked into these estimates. And those assumptions, you can model the parts that you know you don't know, right? For example, well, we don't know if this value is one or 10. So what if it's not really a uniform distribution one to 10? Well, what if that's not the way it is in reality? What if there's a chance that the answer is 0.1 or 100, right? It's very, very hard to know how to include that kind of uncertainty.

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How can we form good habits more effectively? What roles do reward and punishment play in the habit formation process? And what roles should they play? How should we structure our daily schedules around new habits to maximize the likelihood that they'll stick? If our goal is to do 100 push-ups a day, it's often easier to start with 10 and increase the difficulty over time; but at what level of difficulty should we start, and how quickly should we approach the target difficulty? How does willpower connect (or not) with habit formation? Why should we care about animal consciousness? When it comes to estimating how much good specific interventions will do, are bad estimates better than no estimates at all?

Dr. Jim Davies is a professor of cognitive science at Carleton University. He is the author of Imagination: The Science of Your Mind's Greatest Power; Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make us Laugh, Movies Make us Cry, and Religion Makes us Feel One with the Universe; and Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are: The Science of a Better You. He co-hosts (with Dr. Kim Hellemans) the award-winning podcast Minding the Brain. Learn more about him at jimdavies.org or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

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