Annie Duke: Revisiting the Matrix

We are re-sharing our original September 2018 discussion with Annie Duke to announce the Behavioral Grooves 100th Episode on the evening of October 17, 2019 in the Historic Hamilton Auditorium at the Pennsylvania Academy for Performing Arts. It’s a live event and we invite you to join us to hear Annie, Lila Gleitman and other guests discuss the application of behavioral sciences. Seating is very limited for this intimate engagement and we hope to see you there! Links below…

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Annie Duke’s latest book, Thinking in Bets, Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, is a masterful mash-up of her life as a researcher, poker player and charitable organization founder. In it, she explores new ideas on how to make better decisions. Our interview with her expanded beyond the book and we talked extensively about probabilistic thinking and having people hold us accountable for our decision making. As expected, our interview covered an eclectic mix of behavioral biases, sociology, language development and, of without fail, music.

We used the movie The Matrix and the blue pill/red pill metaphor for looking at the world as accurate vs. inaccurate, rather than right or wrong. We discussed how tribes can offer us distinctiveness and belongingness but also confine us with the tribe’s sometimes negative influences. We also examined learning pods and how they can be used to keep our decisions more in line with reality.

If you like this episode, please forward it on to a friend or colleague and help Kurt win his bet with Tim for who pays the donation to How I Decide. You can find more information on or donate to this wonderful non-profit at www.howidecide.org.

Kurt Nelson: Kurt@lantergroup.com

Tim Houlihan: Tim@behavioralchemy.com

Behavioral Grooves 100th Episode Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Behavioral-Science-Meetup-Group/events/264495763/