Consuming Abstractions is Necessary: Learned v.s. Earned Knowledge

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Abstractions are necessary.
Consuming other people's abstractions is important.
Earned knowledge involves learning through experience and diving into details.
Decisions should consider the cost of failure.
When the cost of failure is low, learned knowledge is appropriate.
When the cost of failure is high, earned knowledge should be used.
Strive towards earned knowledge for higher cost decisions.

My guest today is acclaimed psychologist and longtime Stanford University professor Barbara Tversky who calls on her nearly 50 years in the field of cognitive psychology for an in-depth discussion about how our minds work.

We discuss the Nine Laws of Cognition, why action shapes thought, how the language we use changes what we think, tactics to communicate better on Zoom, why she dove into the work of Leonardo da Vinci, when to use charts and when to avoid them, the importance of perspective taking, learned knowledge vs. earned knowledge, and so much more.

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