Thread by @rdonoghue

If your takeaway from this is to nod sagely and think about how this explains other people's bad behaviors, then take a moment to consider. Not only have you profoundly missed the point, you have revealed yourself as the most vulnerable sort of person.

Look for yourself in it.

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1104822372530601990

I get that's easy to say, so let's talk about what you can do to not be fooled.

Short form? Nothing.

I mean, yes, you can absolutely reduce the frequency with which you get fooled through diligence, skepticism, curiosity and empathy, but nothing will fully protect you.

This is very similar to risk management in practice.

The thing about risk management is that THINGS WILL GO WRONG. The naive thing to do is to try to make it impossible for that to happen, but life is inconvenient that way, and prevention has diminishing returns.

To develop a decent risk management strategy you need to understand what can go wrong, make some guesses about costs and likliehoods, and most critically determine how you are going to know if things have gone wrong.

This is obvious and intuitive, but also incredibly hard to do right because institutions are sufficiently resistant to acknowledging things van go wrong that they can also be resistant to "borrowing trouble". Often, they would rather just hope for the best than acknowledge risk.

But before we get too critical of that, it's more or less the same thing that we do ourselves when dealing with the possibility that we might be wrong. It's easier to assume we're right than build in tests that might call it into question.

So ask yourself: How can you tell when you're wrong or fooled? In concrete, noticeable ways? Or barring that, what concrete things move you away from high risk.

Rules like "Don't make decisions when you're upset" are a good example of strategies for dealign with this.

If you are more likely to make bad decisions on bad information when emotions are high (pro tip, you are) then the time to plan for that is when your emotions *aren't* high. Establish patterns or put in checks when things are good so you're ready when they're not.

Since we're talking about being fooled, let's talk about what that means - we think about it in terms of having bad knowledge, but it's really about the *actions* that knowledge drives.

That's actually good news. States are hard to build rules around. Actions are simpler.

So if you want a simple exercise: What are your rules for resharing a link?

You *have* rules, even if you don't think about them. But if you don't think about them, the rule is probably "This caused an emotional spike, so I will share it!" or something similarly flawed.

Of course, the solution is not to just say "Don't do that". Don't do that is not a rule, and you'll forget the next time you get an emotional spike.

On the other hand, you can hardly vet everything you reshare with academic rigor, nor should you be expected to.

But there's plenty of room in between, even for simple rules like:
* I actually read it
* I've checked that the website isn't trash
* I've stripped tracking bullshit from the URL

None of those fix everything, but they could offer a HUGE improvement, depending on your patterns.

That's just one example, and there are probably hundreds in your life. Approach them the same way: Ask yourself what rules you follow, and if you can't answer the question, mark that as a red flag for an area where you are probably getting fooled.

Control your rules. Control your behaviors. You'll still get fooled, but you can keep it from hurting yourself or others.

And, of course, exercise curiosity and compassion in your dealings. Prevention alone leaves holes that prevention + mitigation can fill.