I. BATNA

The best negotiation skills are pointless if you don’t know when to accept a deal. That again requires preparation. And determining your BATNA. It’s a key concept that helps you decide when to shake hands or walk away.

BATNA is a term coined by Roger Fisher and William Ury in their 1981 bestseller, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Without Giving In. It stands for “Best ALTERNATIVE TO a negotiated agreement.” Said another way, it is the best you can do if the other person refuses to negotiate with you — if they tell you to “go jump in a lake!” or “Get lost!” So it is not necessarily your ideal outcome — unless your ideal outcome is something you can get without the cooperation of the other person. It is the best you can do WITHOUT THEM.

—Brad Spangler, Beyond Intractability

Imagine you’re negotiating a salary with a new company while already holding a $85k job offer elsewhere. Your BATNA is to take the $85k offer if the new company suggests you “Go kick rocks.”

II. Beyond BATNA

Negotiation guru Chris Voss sees a crucial downside to BATNA. When it becomes too big a psychological anchor, we tend to gravitate towards it. It quickly turns into our target. So what does he tell his clients?

I tell my clients that as a part of their preparation they should think about the outcome extremes: best and worst. If you’ve got both ends covered, you’ll be ready for anything. So you know what you cannot accept and have an idea about the best-case outcome, but keep in mind since there’s information yet to be acquired from the other side, it’s quite possible that best case might be even better than you know.

Remember, never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better. Once you’ve got flexibility in the forefronmt of your mind you come into a negotiation with a winning mindset.

—Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference

Imagine walking into those salary negotiations knowing your worst-case is your $85k fallback offer and your best-case is something a bit above it. To your surprise, $90k is their starting offer. And instead of thinking “Yay, I’ll take it,” you realise the best case you set was just the beginning…

III. A Harsh Negotiation Truth

In business as in life, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

―Chester L. Karrass

…is an often-quoted sentiment from Chester L. Karrass’s classic negotiation Bible. Probably because it’s also the book’s title.

It quietly replaces what Voss calls the subjective and emotional F-bomb (fairness) with something less comforting but more useful: preparation and leverage. It’s all about what you can get someone to agree to without being laughed out of the room. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Mechanistic Dehumanisation

Everyone I don’t know is an NPC.

…seems to be a common sentiment. NPC (non-player character) is a gaming term for people who seem to lack agency and a complex inner life. Instead, they’re following a script someone else wrote for them.

On the morning train, you’re surrounded by silent strangers running their pre-programmed commute routines. In a government office, the customer service staff feel like they’ve been meticulously coded to repeat the same dialogue tree until you select the correct bureaucratic response. That can trigger Mechanistic Dehumanisation.

It’s when we stop treating people as humans with feelings and start seeing them as tools or obstacles. Writer and stick-figure enthusiast Tim Urban (from Wait But Why) says this happens when our “Primitive Mind” takes over.

When we’re stressed or stuck in our own heads, we stop using our “Higher Mind” to see the nuance in others. We drop down to a lower level where people become flat characters or labels rather than complex individuals.

We treat the world like a solo video game where we, and the people we got to know better, are the only “real” players. It’s a useful heuristic that keeps us from getting overwhelmed. But it’s also how we lose empathy. Even the grumpy commuter or clipboard-wielding bureaucrat has a complex inner life and story we just haven’t “unlocked” yet.

II. False Consensus Effect

Everyone driving slower than you is an idiot and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac.

—George Carlin

Oddly enough, there’s also something called the False Consensus Effect, which is kind of the opposite of the NPC mindset. It’s a cognitive bias in which we assume our own beliefs, habits, and quirks are the “default” for everyone else. It leads us to overestimate how much others actually agree with us.

Take me, for example, as an experienced driver and the benchmark for normal and correct driving behaviour. My cruising speed, braking distance and lane choices aren’t just preferences. They’re the objective gold standard.

I’m not just driving. Oh no! I am the calibrated template that every other player should be following if they want to qualify as a functional member of traffic. Obviously, any reasonable person sees it exactly the same way.

You’re welcome.

III. NPC Illusion

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.

―C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

👉 Not long ago, I put together a post with 15+ Hard-Hitting C.S. Lewis Quotes About Life & Human Nature

🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Lying by Omission

A Math Professor Moved To A Cabin In The Woods. Now He’s Serving Time In Prison.

What has the world become? Since when is trying to live a quiet and peaceful life in the wilderness a crime? Shameful. Just Shameful.

Or…this headline is an example of Lying by Omission, which happens when you make a technically true statement but leave out crucial context, so the listener forms a misleading conclusion.

The math professor in question happened to be Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. In between his retreat to the woods and his imprisonment, he went on a 17-year mail-bombing campaign that killed three people. In a biased article, you’d probably find that small detail buried somewhere in a short paragraph that starts with “To be sure…”.

II. Strategic Incrementalism

Another sneaky way to manipulate is Strategic Incrementalism. Game theory YouTuber Christian Rieck explains it in the context of…game theory.

Strategic incrimentalism is simply a method for getting things done in many situations that otherwise would not have been able to get done. […]

This means that they ultimately need a step-by-step method […]: that at each stage of the game that emerges, they repeatedely create a situation of interest that ensures that ultimately many people in this one situation say, “yes, that’s what we want,“ but don’t think further about what the next strategic steps will be. That’s the idea behind strategic incrementalism.

—Prof Dr Christian Rieck, The end of freedom? How the social media ban silently dispossesses you!

Would you read and pay for a newsletter the government made mandatory overnight? Then let’s use Strategic Incrementalism to make it a required reading:

1. Here’s a voluntary critical thinking newsletter for civic enrichment — free of charge, of course.

2. It’s absolutely optional. But it does explain things people keep arguing about.

3. Since most people are reading it anyway, we’ve started publishing important government information in it, too. Exclusively. Purely for convenience.

4. We added a ‘recommended reading’ badge, which everyone seems to treat as mandatory. 🤷‍♂️

5. So anyway, it’s basically required reading now, even though no one remembers deciding that.

6. Guys, this government-mandated critical-thinking newsletter has really blown up. I’m afraid we have to put it behind a paywall. You know, to keep it sharp and relevant for you.

III. Credulity Trap

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer describes a simple technique to deceive a deceiver: setting a Credulity Trap.

If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every world he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself.

Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something from you, but with only partial success, look at though you did not believe him, this opposition on you part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your incredulity.

―Arthur Schopenhauer

🐘

Thank you all for reading the newsletter; your likes, shares, comments, messages and donations mean a lot and help keep this newsletter alive and growing.

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Pendulum Bias

Good decision-making depends on mitigating cognitive biases. Luckily for this newsletter, there are many of them. And people keep making up new ones. Like Pendulum Bias, as explained by former intel analyst Michael Morell in the MasterClass course The Art of Intelligence.

Rather than returning to a balanced, evidence-based position, we tend to overcorrect in the opposite direction after a major mistake. Morell explained it in the context of wrong analysis when it came to the war in Iraq:

We actually missed the nuclear weapons program the first time around. It was much further along than we thought. So we didn’t want to make that mistake again, so the pendulum swung too far back.

👉 In case you’re interested, I recently reviewed The Art of Intelligence and tried to look behind the dramatisation and tense background music.

II. Myside Bias

Myside Bias is what happens when your brain quietly switches from trying to figure out what’s true to trying to defend what you already believe. You still feel rational, but you start to favour information that supports your position and instinctively push back on anything that challenges it.

Two people can read the same article. One thinks it’s solid evidence while the other thinks it’s flawed. The difference usually isn’t the data. It’s what they already believed going in. Once you’ve taken a side, your mind starts acting like a lawyer, building a case, rather than a judge weighing both sides evenly.

It’s one of those ideas you’re reading about a lot here. It’s closely related to Confirmation Bias and Motivated Reasoning. A simple solution is to change the perspective and ask yourself, “Do I still see it that way?”

III. Normalcy Bias

In 2022, a man named Derren Brown hypnotised a stranger to assassinate the beloved British actor Stephen Fry on an open stage during a performance. As the shots rang out and Sir Stephen dropped to the ground, the audience reacted…not at all. They didn’t seem to care.

Of course, this was just a stunt performed by Brown, an infamous hypnotist. He wanted to know if you could manipulate someone into committing a violent crime. To be frank, the whole thing looks so surreal that I’m not entirely sure whether the audience had been primed in some way. Still, it serves as a striking illustration of a psychological phenomenon called Normalcy Bias.

Normalcy Bias is our tendency to assume everything is fine, even when it isn’t. When something shocking happens, we often downplay it or reinterpret it as harmless because the brain prefers familiar explanations.

That’s why people ignore fire alarms or fail to act in emergencies. Especially if others stay calm. In the theatre, the audience probably assumed the shooting was part of the show, so they stayed passive. Since no one else reacted, the implicit signal was that there was nothing to worry about. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Red Sneakers Effect

The Red Sneakers Effect comes from a 2014 Harvard study that noticed something interesting about how we judge people. When you break a norm on purpose, such as wearing red sneakers in a formal setting, observers often interpret it as a signal of confidence, competence or higher status.

Though the key part here is intention. If people believe the nonconformity is accidental (“Look at that silly banana, he doesn’t know the rules.”), it doesn’t create the same positive impression. But when there are shared standards and breaking them looks deliberate, it sends a subtle message: This person knows the norms and feels secure enough to bend them.

Standing out like that doesn’t automatically hurt your credibility. Sometimes it does the exact opposite. But don’t go buy red sneakers yet and blindly imitate the successful.

II. Deviance Regulation Theory

Deviance Regulation Theory explains why we react so strongly when someone breaks a social norm. The idea is that people don’t just try to “fit in” or “stand out” in general. They adjust their behaviour based on what kind of reaction standing out will get.

If a deviation is seen as positive, we’re more likely to lean into it because it brings admiration or status. If it’s likely to be judged negatively, we’ll pull back and conform instead. So it’s less about constant deliberate rebellion and more about a kind of ongoing calibration, depending on which behaviour will create the better impression in that specific situation.

That’s why wearing red sneakers is such a bold move. Once you’ve committed, there’s no calibrating it back. What are you gonna do? Casually downgrade to one shoe?

III. WAIT & WAIST

WOW! He’s droning on about bikeshed designs during our nuclear power plant meeting. What impressive rule breaking!

…is a rather unlikely sentence to hear at your monthly meeting of the “Royal Society for the Astute Advancement of Atomic Affairs & Analytical Assessment (RSAAAAAA)”. Because rambling is typically seen as a negative deviance. It signals low competence and poor social awareness. Not confident nonconformity.

Our hapless rule breaker forgot two simple checks:

• WAIT — Why Am I Talking?

• WAIST — Why Am I Still Talking?

These questions act as a built-in regulator for talkativeness. They also align with Robert Greene’s power law to always say less than necessary.

Bottom line: rule-breaking tends to work when it looks intentional, fits the context and is backed by real competence. Otherwise, you’re just the chatty red-sneakers-guy. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Strategic Inaction

Strategic Inaction is the principle behind what late investor Charlie Munger called the “Too Hard Pile”:

I have a pile on my desk that solves most of my problems. It’s called the Too Hard Pile. And I just keep shifting things to the Too Hard Pile.

Every once in a while, an easy decision comes along and I make it. That’s my system. Everything goes to the Too Hard Pile — except for a few easy decisions which I make promptly.

It sounds like he was joking, but Munger was completely serious. The strategy is to deliberately avoid overly complex decisions while acting on the few clear, easy opportunities. It’s a focus on high-quality decisions over sheer activity. And maybe, with more skill and experience, the Too Hard Pile one day solves itself.

II. Satisficing

You don’t always get the optimal solution out of a decision. And by “not always”, I mean never. Pretty much. That’s why it’s useful to know about Satisficing.

This is a decision-making strategy that aims for a satisfactory or adequate result, rather than the optimal solution. It’s often used because aiming for the optimal solution may mean the expenditure of time, energy and resources (that sometimes you cannot afford). It can also be the case that the optimal solution is not identifiable — i.e. that finding the absolute best of all possible options is so complex that it can’t be done — or in some cases, it is a means of maintaining group status quo (i.e. finding a solution that everyone can agree to).

—A Simple Handbook for Non-Traditional Red Teaming

Sometimes, the issue is that there are only bad options, as this exchange from the espionage thriller Argo (2012) illustrates. The movie is about the CIA trying to exfiltrate Americans out of Iran in the late 1970s by posing as filmmakers shooting a science fiction movie. This is how they pitch the idea to the director of the CIA:

“There are only bad options. It’s about finding the best one.”

“You don’t have a better bad idea than this?”

“This is the best bad idea we have, sir. By far.”

III. Decision Ownership Principle

When making decisions on someone else’s advice, it pays to remember the Decision Ownership Principle. Variations of this idea have been echoed by thinkers like Richard Feynman, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Seneca:

You’re under no obligation to base your decisions on the advice of those people who don’t have to deal with the results.

So don’t blindly trust advice from some bloke penning newsletters about decision-making on the other side of the world. He won’t have to live with the consequences.

But hey — please subscribe. :) 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Permission Tunnel

In IT, a Permission Tunnel is like a “Trojan horse” for access rights. Instead of asking for high-level admin power that triggers alarms, an attacker secures tiny, low-risk permissions: “I just need access to that printer folder. No big deal.” Once that “tunnel” is approved and trusted, it’s used as a bridge to sneak through more dangerous commands or harvest sensitive data.

In daily life, you see this in the shape of the Foot-In-The-Door Technique. A colleague might ask to be “just cc’d” on a minor project for “visibility”. No big deal. But they’ve built a legitimate pathway into your workflow. Later, they use that established presence for nefarious purposes. Weigh in on a major decision. Claim credit for it. Expand their influence. Take over your project. Drive you out of the job. Move into your house…

You get the point. But don’t fall for the Deception Dilemma. Not everyone asking to be cc’d in an Email is after your job. I think.

II. Permission Structure

A Permission Structure is a way of allowing people to change their minds without losing face. People often hesitate not because they don’t want something, but because they’re unsure if it’s “okay” to go for it. A permission structure removes that friction by signalling that the behaviour fits the situation.

In practice, it’s a matter of Framing. You give someone a reason that legitimises the action. This could be timing, norms or shared expectations:

Many people in your situation are now buying a second Lamborghini.

I once thought like you. But then I learned that, with all that new tech, you can drive one and have the other drive itself.

Giving people a Permission Structure reduces perceived risk and makes the decision feel natural instead of pushy or awkward. As long as you keep the reasons practical and realistic.

III. Forgiveness/Permission Principle

It’s often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

—Grace Hopper

I’m sure you’ve run into this idea attributed to computer programming pioneer Grace Hopper. Whether at work or in everyday life, instead of waiting around for approval, you take action and deal with the consequences if they come. It’s less about being reckless and more about not getting stuck in endless hesitation.

Why does it work? Asking for permission creates friction. People default to caution, delay, or outright “no”. But once something is already done (especially if it works), others are much more likely to accept it or go along with it. Had you asked first and got a “no”, this opportunity would have been gone.

Of course, this only makes sense when the downside is limited. If the cost of being wrong is small and reversible, acting first can save a lot of time. But when the stakes are high, irreversible and could damage trust, asking first is probably the smarter move. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Contagion Heuristic

Consider the following experiment. You’re asked to take a sip from a glass of juice/water. So far, so refreshing. But now the researcher asks you:

I have here in this container some sterilized cockroaches. We bought some cockroaches from a laboratory supply company [show box and label]. The roaches were raised in a clean environment. But just to be certain, we sterilized the roach again in an autoclave, which heats everything so hot that no germs can survive. I’m going to dip this cockroach into the juice/water, like this. Now, would you take a sip of the juice/water?

Probably not, and the reason is the Contagion Heuristic working in your brain. It follows the Law of Contagion and goes something like this:

Once two things come into contact, they are believed to transfer some essence to each other — even after the contact is over.

Despite being told that the roach is sterilised and the juice is perfectly safe, the mind treats the contact as permanently tainting it. The reaction is driven by disgust, not by beliefs about actual physical danger. Logical reassurance doesn’t remove the feeling. The same mental rule easily extends beyond food to people and ideas.

II. Moral Contagion

Moral Contagion is the intuitive feeling that once two people or things have been in contact, some kind of invisible connection sticks around. It’s not about biology or germs. It’s a gut-level sense that something has picked up an “essence” from what it touched. This idea shows up a lot in everyday judgments, especially when we’re dealing with things we find morally questionable.

Research in moral psychology suggests that we treat moral and ideological views a bit like pathogens. Ideas can start to feel “tainted” just because of where they came from or who they’re associated with. So instead of evaluating a statement on its own merits, people often react to its perceived origin.

You’d probably feel uneasy wearing a sweater owned by a criminal or engaging with ideas associated with people you despise the most. In each case, the mind treats contact as transferring an invisible moral or symbolic contamination, not just a physical one.

III. Contagion of Virtue

Good behaviour can be contagious, too. Just like a yawn or a laugh spreads through a group, acts of kindness, cooperation or generosity can ripple through social networks. When someone does something virtuous, it can subtly influence friends, family and strangers to act in the same way.

This is called the Contagion of Virtue. It’s the idea that moral qualities, not just moods, can spread from person to person. Seeing someone help, share or stand up for what’s right can trigger a similar response in others.

The exciting part is that virtue doesn’t stay confined to one person. Every small act of goodness has the potential to multiply, inspiring a chain reaction of positive behaviour. So go ahead! Shake hands with your enemies and offer them a refreshing glass of your finest juice/water.

Source: The Social Contagion of Virtue

🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Is-a-Has-a-Error

In complex systems, a common thinking mistake is the Is-a-Has-a Error. “Is-a” defines what something fundamentally is (a dog is an animal), while “has-a” describes something it merely contains or uses (a dog has a collar). That distinction sounds trivial. But when designers blur it, systems can end up assigning authority to the wrong component.

Take aviation. An aircraft has an autopilot, but it is not an autopilot. The autopilot is just one optional control system. When software is designed as if the aircraft is basically an autopilot system, control logic flips. Automation may still be treated as authoritative even when it’s disengaged, while manual pilot inputs are partially ignored.

Occasionally, you may even want to remind yourself that you are not your job. You merely have one, meaning it’s one part of your life and not your entire identity.

II. Reification

Reification is what happens when we start treating an abstract idea like it’s a concrete thing you could point to or put on a table. Our brains naturally like to think in terms of “things”, so we often turn processes or relationships into objects without noticing. It’s a shortcut that makes complex reality easier to talk about.

An everyday example is when someone says, “Stress is attacking me lately.” Stress isn’t actually a physical force doing something. It’s a word for a pattern of bodily and psychological responses. But talking about it like an external thing with its own agency makes it feel more tangible and easier to communicate.

Once you notice the habit of Reification, you start seeing it everywhere…

III. Ultimate Attribution Error

The Ultimate Attribution Error is your mind’s built-in PR team working overtime. [See what I did there?] We attribute negative actions of out-group members to their character while attributing their positive actions to situational factors (and vice versa for our-group members).

Let’s say someone on your side does something good. Your brain immediately writes a glowing character reference: “See? Bob is smart, kind and competent. Bob’s a legend.” But when the same person messes up, the story changes instantly: “That’s just because of all the stress that’s been attacking Bob lately.”

However, if someone we dislike does something admirable, we suddenly become master minimisers: “Well, Ben was just lucky,” or “Anyone could’ve done that”. But when Ben screws up? That was no accident. Now it’s treated as a window into his deep, flawed soul. One mistake becomes proof of “what Ben’s really like”.

What makes this error especially sneaky is how natural it seems. It doesn’t feel like Confirmation Bias, it feels like common sense. In reality, you’re running two completely different explanation systems at the same time. A generous, context-sensitive one for “us”. And a harsh, personality-based one for “them”. So don’t let your internal PR team go rogue. It’s supposed to serve you, not take over. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Strategic Ignorance

Sometimes it’s better not to know. Or to play dumb. It’s not about being uninformed by accident. It’s Strategic Ignorance, choosing to stay clueless about something to avoid stress, responsibility or distractions so you can stay focused on what matters to you.

In its performative form, it shows up as the Columbo Method, named after the TV detective Columbo. His shtick was to act awkward and clueless around suspects. Once they lowered their guard, he would ask a seemingly naive but precise Gretchen Question that pushed them to reveal too much.

In its clumsy form, Strategic Ignorance is easy to spot. Even when faced with clear evidence, someone keeps pretending not to understand or denies awareness. Instead of protecting them, this usually backfires. They lose credibility because the ignorance no longer looks strategic, just dishonest.

What they need is…

II. Plausible Deniability

Plausible Deniability is the ability to say “I didn’t know” and have it sound believable. It usually works because there’s no clear evidence that you did know, even if you were involved somehow. Unlike simple ignorance, this is often prearranged. People keep a certain distance from information so they can deny responsibility later if needed.

You’ll often see this in politics (of all places). A politician might avoid being directly informed about questionable decisions, so if things go wrong, they can honestly claim they weren’t aware. The key is that the denial has to be plausible. There needs to be just enough separation between the person and the action to make the claim believable.

In small doses, it can be a practical way to manage risk. But overused, it erodes trust. Plus, what does it say about a leader if he or she doesn’t know what’s going on under his or her leadership? If people sense that someone is trying not to know, the whole thing starts to fall apart. It no longer sounds plausible, just convenient.

III. Sanity Through Ignorance

Ignorance can also be clarity and even sanity, as British rascal extraordinaire Alan Watts explains:

We also speak of attention as noticing. To notice is to select, to regard some bits of perception, or some features of the world, as more noteworthy, more significant, than others. To these we attend, and the rest we ignore — for which reason conscious attention is at the same time ignore-ance (i.e., ignorance) despite the fact that it gives us a vividly clear picture of whatever we choose to notice.

—Alan Watts

🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Fortune Cookie Fallacy

A pleasant surprise is waiting for you.

The Fortune Cookie Fallacy is when a statement feels very personal and insightful, but is actually so vague that it could apply to anyone. Such as the line above. It sounds specific, so your brain automatically connects it to your own life and fills in the details. You could be lost on a hike, starving to death in a cave somewhere in the mountains. But hey, that last ray of sunshine before you go to sleep. What a pleasant surprise!

This ties directly to the Barnum (or Forer) Effect, which is a psychological tendency where people rate general, broad personality descriptions as highly accurate for themselves. In a famous experiment, people were given the exact same personality profile. Most thought it was uniquely tailored to them. The trick works because the statements are mostly positive, flexible and hard to disprove.

It reminded me of the Narrative Fallacy and an unpleasant surprise that’s supposedly awaiting a dog…

II. Scheinriese

The Scheinriese (“apparent giant”) is an idea from Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver, a German children’s novel by Michael Ende. The supposed giant is a figure who looks terrifyingly huge from far away. But the closer you get, the smaller and more ordinary he becomes. His size is an illusion created by distance, not reality.

It’s a metaphor, of course, but for what? The Scheinriese represents problems, fears or authority figures that appear overwhelming when they are abstract or distant. As long as you observe them from afar. Perhaps through rumour or vivid imagination. Direct engagement collapses the illusion and reveals a manageable reality.

Have you ever applied for a new job, wondering if you could live up to the professionalism and competence at your new workplace? Once you’re in the company, you realise most of your colleagues just put on their pants the same way as you. And some even backwards. You start to see that the Scheinriese isn’t defeated by force or insight, only by approaching him. Distance amplifies fear, proximity reduces it.

III. Placebo Buttons

Sometimes the feeling of control is more satisfying than actual control.

That’s why we have Placebo Buttons. Placebo Buttons are those satisfying little controls that look like they do something important. But actually don’t. A classic example is the “close door” button in many elevators. You press it with determination, expecting instant results, when in reality it’s often disconnected or overridden by automatic timing.

They exist because humans don’t like feeling powerless, especially when waiting. People seem to feel calmer and less frustrated when they think they can influence a system. So instead of removing the button entirely (which would annoy people more), designers sometimes leave it there as a psychological pressure valve.

In a way, Placebo Buttons are like the physical cousin of the fortune cookie. They don’t change reality, but they change how you feel about it. You press, you wait, you feel proactive. And the door still closes at its own convenience.

Now, remember the pleasant surprise awaiting you? Here are some buttons that actually do something. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Time Inconsistency

The problem with unexpected guests is that they arrive unexpectedly. And then you realise you have nothing to offer them. The Horror! So you go to the supermarket to buy a box of chocolate to store away for the occasion. That’s the plan. And it falls apart as soon as you get home. The reason is time-inconsistent decision-making.

Time Inconsistency is when a plan that feels like the best choice today no longer feels like the best choice as soon as it’s set in motion. Your preferences shift over time. You might sincerely intend to do one thing for the future, but when the future becomes the present, you end up wanting something different. Usually, something more immediately rewarding. Like wolfing down that box of chocolate yourself.

Nothing external has changed, except your priorities. It’s why introducing…say… pervasive surveillance laws with the justification that they would only be used against criminals is a Slippery Slope.

Source: Prof. Dr. Christian Rieck, The tricks of politicians (with Strategem 16)

II. Thought-Terminating Clichés

This is Berlin.

…is my favourite example of a Thought-Terminating Cliché. Chronic filth and graffiti in public places? This is Berlin. Normalised rudeness and hostility? This is Berlin. Sidewalks doubling as dog toilets? This is Berlin, mate.

The underlying message is to encourage you to stop complaining and “get all the way off my back” about this. In other words, to normalise things that would be unacceptable elsewhere.

In general, the purpose of Thought-Terminating Clichés is to shut down critical thinking by offering a socially acceptable phrase that ends discussion without resolving the underlying issue. But what can you do? It is what it is.

III. Interpretative Dominance

It doesn’t matter if you’re right; what matters is who gets to interpret reality their way. This is the essence of Interpretative Dominance (or as the Germans call it: Soziale Deutungshoheit).

In society, certain people or groups get to define how events, behaviours or situations are interpreted. It’s not just about who says something first. It’s about whose version of reality becomes accepted as the “official” or dominant one. Think of it as a kind of influence over what counts as “the truth” in social discussions.

Say you’ve gotten into an argument at work. You may have objectively just criticised your colleague. But now the office engages in a game called Russell Conjugation. You say you “criticised”, your colleague says you “insulted”, HR says you “denigrated”. It doesn’t matter if you’re right; what matters is whose version will become the generally accepted reality.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be permanent. If enough people challenge the dominant interpretation and offer a compelling alternative, the social narrative can shift. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Halo Effect

Alan: intelligent — industrious — impulsive — critical — stubborn — envious

Ben: envious — stubborn — critical — impulsive — industrious — intelligent

Who would you consider more likable? Alan or Ben? As this example by famous psychologist Solomon Asch demonstrates, our judgments often depend on the traits we initially associate with someone.

This is due to the Halo Effect, which causes our initial impression to shape how all other traits are perceived. Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, refers to it as exaggerated emotional coherence. An initial positive opinion about one characteristic may lead us to also judge the same person positively in a different area:

The stubborness of an intelligent person is seen as likely to be justified and may actually evoke respect, but intelligence in an envious and stubborn person makes him more dangerous.

—Daniel Kahneman

That’s why Alan seems so easy to get along with. Not like that envious prick Ben, who has all the same traits, just in reverse.

II. Horn Effect

Ben is also judged by his colleagues through a Horn Effect lens, because negative impressions do the same in the opposite direction. A single notable negative trait can taint our opinion about someone entirely. One visible failure, let’s say Ben making negative remarks about Peter’s promotion, is treated as diagnostic of his character.

An awkward first interaction causes someone to be judged as unintelligent, unreliable or unpleasant in general. Subsequent neutral or positive behaviour is discounted or reinterpreted to fit the negative frame.

The Horn Effect is especially devastating in hierarchical systems. Once a negative label is attached, scrutiny increases, errors are remembered and successes are minimised. Ben’s trapped in a self-reinforcing loop that is difficult to escape.

III. Contrast Effect

Ben’s perceived character can also be influenced by the Contrast Effect. This occurs when our judgment of someone is shaped by comparing them to others, rather than by their traits alone. Ben might seem worse or better depending on who we evaluate him against.

For example, if Ben is introduced immediately after a highly competent and friendly colleague, his envious or critical traits may appear even more pronounced. Conversely, if he follows someone rude or careless, the same behaviour may seem less negative, or even relatively acceptable. Truth be told, that never happens to poor Ben.

The contrast effect highlights that our impressions are not formed in isolation. Perception depends on context. Ben’s reputation can shift dramatically simply based on who else is present at the time. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

P.S.: Ben has since landed a high-paying job at a behavioural research lab specialising in bias and decision-making. He’s admired by everyone and lives a quiet life with his wife and three kids on a vineyard in Southern France.

I. Belief Perseverance

Early in the flight, your pilot is convinced that a minor instrument anomaly is harmless. As the flight continues, readings that appear normal are taken as confirmation. Any warnings are explained away as glitches or turbulence. Even when several indicators begin to diverge, the initial assumption stays the same: “It’ll be fine.”

This is Belief Perseverance. Once a conclusion is formed, incoming information is interpreted in ways that preserve it. Data that aligns with the belief is weighted heavily. Data that conflicts with it is discounted, reclassified or ignored. The belief becomes the reference point against which evidence is judged.

But how was this initial conviction formed to begin with? According to Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, it’s mostly just a feeling. The good news is your plane landed safely because aviation procedures are designed to catch and correct such flawed thinking.

II. Misapplied Trial and Error

Don’t give up already! You haven’t even tried!

In many contexts, that’s an understandable reaction to someone refusing to use the Trial & Error Heuristic as a problem-solving strategy. I guess that’s why it drives me up the wall when people misapply it. Misapplied Trial and Error happens when someone insists on “learning by doing” in a situation where the outcome is already predictable.

Why treat a multi-million dollar flight deck like a broken vending machine when pushing random buttons during an aircraft emergency will likely get you crashed faster than doing nothing at all? What’s the point of trying to back up into a 5-foot parking space when you already know your 6-foot truck won’t fit?

Trial & Error is valuable unless the result is foreseeable, or the consequences of failure are irreversible or too severe.

III. Finding the Edge

That doesn’t keep us from arguing a lost cause while others try to reason us out of it. Philosopher Alan Watts had a way of explaining why argument fails against conviction.

People can’t be talked out of illusions. If a person believes that the earth is flat, you can’t talk him out of that, he knows that it’s flat. He’ll go down to the window and see that its obvious, it looks flat. So the only way to convince him that it isn’t is to say, “Well let’s go and find the edge”.

—Alan Watts

Conviction does not tend to collapse under argument, only under experience that reaches the belief’s own boundary conditions. Sometimes you just have to squeeze your 6-foot truck into that 5-foot parking space to come back to sanity. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Fire-Fighting Loop

Many teams know the Fire-Fighting Loop all too well. It’s that pattern where you’re constantly jumping from one mini-disaster to the next. You slap on a quick fix just to keep things running. But since nothing gets repaired properly, the same issues pop up again and again. Crisis. Patch. Repeat.

This tends to happen when understaffing meets tight deadlines and dysfunctional processes. Quick fixes feel heroic in the moment, but they quietly guarantee the next fire emerging sooner than later. Before you know it, the whole team is living in permanent fire-fighting mode.

To escape the loop, you have to slow down just enough to fix the real causes instead of only putting out fires. A bit of structure, some root-cause thinking and a culture that doesn’t reward constant chaos go a long way. The alternative is to stay in the loop and risk burnout. Not of the fires, but of your team.

II. Temporal Optimism Bias

Imagine being trapped in a team in constant crisis mode. It’s wearing you down. And all your boss does is make cheap fire-fighting puns to cheer you up. This just fans the flames of your discontent and adds fuel to your burning dissatisfaction. You still have hope, though.

It’s only a few more weeks. I can endure this. It will get better.

Perhaps after the next meeting, things will really improve. Or once that current project is finished. At least after your upcoming vacation, it’ll all be fine. Or…you’re experiencing Temporal Optimism Bias.

This happens when we believe that the tough or chaotic situation we’re in will magically ease up soon. It makes the present feel temporary, even when there’s no real evidence that things will improve.

This optimism isn’t stupid. It’s a coping mechanism that can get us through a rough patch. But it can also keep us stuck far longer than we wanted. It’s oddly comforting but also dangerously misleading. Like telling yourself the fire alarm is probably just a test while the room slowly fills with smoke.

III. Zugzwang

Zugzwang. It’s when you have no good moves. But you still have to move.

—Michael Chabon

Zugzwang is a German term meaning “compulsion to move”. In the game of chess, it happens when a player is forced to make a move. But no matter what they do, each option leaves them in a worse position because every possible action works against them.

This applies to everyday life whenever you’re forced to make a bad decision. A manager might have to allocate limited resources, knowing that whichever team they underfund, productivity will drop. Sometimes inaction would be ideal, but life rarely allows a “pass”. So what can you do? Either choose the least damaging option or bend reality in your favour. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Masked-Man Fallacy

It took me a while to wrap my head around the Masked-Man Fallacy, so bear with me here. Consider the following paradox:

[S]uppose that you see a man but don’t recognize him as your father because he’s wearing a mask — perhaps it’s Hallowe’en. So, you don’t know who the masked man is, but you do know who your father is, yet your father and the masked man are one and the same. Therefore, you both know and don’t know who your father is, which is paradoxical. The solution to the paradox is to realize that the argument just given is fallacious.

—Fallacy Files, The Masked Man Fallacy

Put differently, the Masked-Man Fallacy happens when someone treats a person under one description (your father) as if they must be identical to that same person under another description (the man with the mask). Even though the two descriptions convey different information.

Why is that so? Because knowledge and beliefs are also about appearances and descriptions, not just facts. Ignoring this leads people to draw false conclusions about identity, even though there is no real contradiction.

II. Ambiguity

Ambiguity as a logical fallacy happens when someone uses a word or phrase with more than one meaning and quietly switches between those meanings to mislead. The argument sounds reasonable at first, but it works only because the audience understands the term one way while the speaker later relies on another. This is especially common in advertising, where vague language makes claims seem stronger than they really are.

Take any product that features the phrase “recommended by doctors”. Most people hear this as “widely endorsed by the medical profession after careful testing.” In reality, it might just mean that two doctors in Canberra were sent free samples, didn’t hate it (and the paycheck), and gave a thumbs-up on WhatsApp. Suddenly, the word “recommended” does a lot of heavy lifting. And the claim shrinks. A lot.

III. False Inference

In his dying moments, Elliott Marsdon (Alan Rickman) is in disbelief. He only forced Matthew Quigley (Tom Selleck) to a duel because he thought the sharpshooter wasn’t good with revolvers. Quigley, though, is not only a quick drawer but also a stickler for logic and the finer details of linguistics. Hence, his iconic line from the Western Quigley Down Under (1990):

I said, I never had much use for one. Never said I didn’t know how to use it.

Marsdon conflated preference with competence. Quigley’s favouring of his Sharps rifle didn’t mean he wasn’t as fast and accurate with a revolver. Elliott’s arrogance made him commit a False Inference.

The logical error happens when someone reaches a conclusion that doesn’t logically follow from the available information. Because we rely on assumptions or incomplete evidence, we fill in gaps without realising it. These errors are common in everyday communication and can easily lead to misunderstandings, unfair judgments and lost duels. 🐘

Share

Donate

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

The last two times I washed my car, it rained the next day. I guess I control the weather now.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc — Latin for after this, therefore because of this — is a common logical fallacy that confuses temporal sequence with causation. It’s the chronological version of the Causation Trap, the infamous principle that correlation does not imply causation.

Just because one event happened after another doesn’t mean the first event has caused the second. It’s tempting to draw such connections where none exist, especially when the timing feels too perfect to be a coincidence. But without real evidence of a causal link, we’re mistaking pattern for proof.

II. Poisoning the Well

Poisoning the Well is a form of propaganda that involves discrediting an opponent’s argument before it’s even presented. This is done by disseminating negative information or making negative assumptions about an opposing viewpoint. As a result, the opposition gets discredited since the tactic creates a bias in the audience before they have a chance to hear the other side.

When the source (or well) of information is corrupted, distrust in the actual message is almost guaranteed. A related phenomenon is the Contagion Heuristic. This mental shortcut leads us to avoid people or objects that were in touch with someone or something we consider contaminated. How comfortable would you be wearing a T-shirt that belonged to the person you despise the most? The same applies if we think of personal beliefs as valuable possessions.

👉 Taken from my article with 10 Propaganda Techniques: How to Manipulate the Masses

III. Typical Mind Fallacy

I love writing these weekly newsletters on critical thinking. I can’t imagine anyone finding them boring. These little nuggets of insight excite me, so I assume it’s the same for everyone. I mean, it seems obvious that 3 Ideas in 2 Minutes is invaluable brain food. I’m genuinely puzzled why half the literate world hasn’t subscribed yet.

Send help, because I’ve fallen victim to the Typical Mind Fallacy (with a hint of self-importance). It’s a cognitive error where someone assumes that their own mental states, perceptions or thought processes are representative of everyone else’s. In other words, people project their own understanding, feelings, preferences or judgments onto others, assuming these experiences are universal.

However, the fallacy isn’t necessarily about being wrong. It’s about mistaking your own experience for a standard. Related concepts include the Curse of Knowledge and Purple Belt Living. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Cognitive Dissonance Reduction

Unfollows and unsubscribes are to social media users and newsletter writers as falling leaves are to autumn. It’s a natural part of the season. For me, most unsubscribes happen quietly and without a trace. But there are a few exceptions, and they follow a fascinating pattern. Whenever someone unsubscribes AND tells me why in an email, the reason has always been the same.

They don’t cancel because I misquoted someone. Not because they disagreed, in substance, with something I wrote. Not because my occasional humour was unbearably annoying and distracting. They all seem disappointed, even outraged, because of a person I quoted. The context can be political, but often is not.

The underlying reason might be Cognitive Dissonance Reduction. If we like a publication but now see a quote from someone we strongly dislike, there’s an internal conflict. The easiest way to resolve this discomfort is to stop the exposure. Unfollowing or unsubscribing restores consistency between our attitudes and actions.

II. Association Bias

You’re quoting Bob? Really?

If we dig a little deeper, we encounter Association Bias. Merely featuring someone’s words creates an implicit association between the writer and this terrible person whose words shall not be uttered, no matter the context. (Damn you, Bob!)

The mechanism is called evaluative conditioning. People’s attitudes toward one thing (the quoted person) influence their attitude toward another (the writer and their content).

Even if Bob’s message was non-political and benign. Even if your stance was neutral. Even if you featured ideas that contradicted each other or otherwise made the reader think. If someone dislikes the quoted person, their negative evaluation can “contaminate” the publication through association.

III. Signal Interpretation

A particularly noteworthy unsubscribe happened explicitly because I quoted BJJ coach John Danaher on Success Strategies. By the reader’s own admission, Danaher had “great ideas”; however, he was a “terribly flawed human being”.

Debatable (the second part), but fair enough. For some reason, though, the reader had firmly placed me in John Danaher’s camp. As if I had just outed myself as the official spokesman for Cobra Kai to a Miyagi-Do disciple.

So our mind can go even one step further beyond mere association. In the age of highly polarised discourse and gym drama, readers often treat references as signals of allegiance and support. Quoting somebody becomes not just a textual act, but a symbolic one.

Put differently, people respond less to the content of a quote and more to the social meaning they assign to the act of quoting; the perceived signal of loyalty behind the choice. And sometimes, only sometimes, or a little bit often, I catch myself feeling the exact same way about a writer or YouTuber I’m subscribed to. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Intimidation Triad

How can an authority enforce obedience?

…asks Professor of Game Theory Christian Rieck in his Methods of Intimidation talk. Due to limited resources, it’s usually impractical to punish every pesky little disobedient underling who doesn’t play by your new arbitrary rule. So Rieck distinguishes three mechanisms of coercive control. I call it the Intimidation Triad.

1. Random intimidation: People are selected and punished at random. This creates unpredictable fear through uncertainty in everyone else. The downside: If a dictator’s resources are scarce, they probably won’t be able to intimidate enough people. The probability of being punished for the average person is simply too low.

2. Selective intimidation: People’s behaviour is reviewed in a predefined order, such as by way of an alphabetical list. You know when it’s going to be your turn, so you don’t misbehave. This creates a sense that everyone has a much higher probability of being punished and is therefore more effective.

3. Pearl Harbour Effect: Selectively making powerful, highly-publicised examples of disobedient individuals. Turning a punishment into a nationwide spectacle creates an eerie feeling: “Oh boy, this could happen to me.” It’s more of a bluff, though, as the resources to punish everyone are still not there. But it works. Until it doesn’t. The disproportionate punishment can create a backlash because people have had enough.

According to Rieck, attempts to use such methods to intimidate citizens in a democracy must be opposed early on:

Once the system has entered a state of oppression, it is the end of democracy because it is irreversible.

II. Gessler’s Hat

There’s a fourth method of intimidation I hinted at above. And it doesn’t quite fit the triad. You know the famous Swiss legend of William Tell shooting an apple off his son’s head. But can you tell how Tell got there? He failed to bow to Gessler’s Hat.

According to the legend of William Tell, a local Austrian official named Albrecht Gessler set up his hat on a pole in the town square. He ordered all locals to bow to it as a symbol of obedience to Austrian rule. Refusing to bow was seen as insubordination. When strong-willed Will walked by and refused to bow, he was arrested and eventually forced to shoot the infamous apple off his son’s head to go free.

Gessler’s Hat became a symbol of arbitrary authority and forced compliance. It also serves as a warning of how those in power sometimes test submission through meaningless acts of obedience.

III. Cognitive Dissonance Trap

The Cognitive Dissonance Trap is an intuitive term for how mental dissonance can entangle us in a web of twisted rationalisation. Because once we comply with a degrading demand, it doesn’t feel pretty.

I know it was ridiculous and humiliating to greet the hat. But I did it anyway.

To reconcile the two contradicting sentiments, we often rationalise it as acceptable to reduce psychological discomfort:

We all did it. Besides, I only did it once. And hey, it was good bowing practice.

Sadly, this makes future obedience easier. So next time an authority asks something ridiculous, watch out for your brain trapping itself.

Oh, I almost forgot: Tell hit the apple, was imprisoned anyway, but later escaped. So if you do challenge power, you’d better have exceptional skill. 🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com

I. Objective Liability

It was a cold, dark winter night, and the clocks were striking something around two. I was in the army. And while I was sound asleep in my bunk bed, two soldiers tasked to patrol the barracks decided to go rogue. They entered a warehouse, took a couple of brand-new computers, and stuffed them into the trunks of their cars. It didn’t take long for someone to notice the missing hardware. Suspicion quickly fell on the two soldiers, who promptly confessed to the crime.

It was then that the police asked them a pivotal question: “When you went into the warehouse, did you leave your rifles outside, or did you take them with you?” The former would’ve been negligence, an unthinkable dereliction of guard duty. So, of course, they had their service rifles with them at all times. The problem was that they were now liable for armed theft, which carried a sentence of up to 10 years (as opposed to the possibility of a mere fine for theft).

That’s Objective Liability, a person being held legally responsible based on the external facts of their actions, regardless of their intentions. As far as I know, the soldiers didn’t intend to threaten anyone with the rifles, nor to use them in the theft. But their intentions were irrelevant. What mattered was the factual circumstance that they pinched a couple of computers while carrying loaded, select-fire HK G3 battle rifles.

II. Eggshell Skull Theory

Take your victims as you find them.

Similar to Objective Liability, that’s the principle behind the Eggshell Skull Theory. It holds that wrongdoers are fully liable for the consequences of their actions. Even if the harm is unexpectedly severe due to the victim’s pre-existing vulnerability.

As a defendant, you cannot argue that the injury was worse than what an average person would’ve suffered. You can’t escape liability merely because the victim was unusually susceptible.

The name originates from a famous illustration used in early English law cases. Imagine a victim with a skull as thin and fragile as an eggshell. Even a light blow, which would hardly hurt an average person, could cause catastrophic injury. Like giving Grandma a warm hug, not realising her ribs are held together by more willpower than calcium.

Tough luck. You have to take your victims as you find them, not as you think they ought to be.

III. Principle of Objectivity

Many debates boil down to “is” versus “ought”. The Principle of Objectivity states that scientific knowledge must describe reality as it is, independent of the observer’s perspective, preferences or values. Put differently, science should be value-neutral and focus on what “is”, not what “ought to be”. The ultimate goal is truth independent of human bias.

A physicist’s political views shouldn’t affect how they interpret experimental data. A doctor’s personal opinions shouldn’t influence how they diagnose or treat a patient. A judge’s personal beliefs shouldn’t affect how they interpret laws or evaluate evidence. Reality has a way of catching up, and the world rarely bends to how we wish it were.🐘

Share

Subscribe now

Have a great week,

Chris
themindcollection.com