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fleurdelissaswords-blog · 7 years

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More GZL Member #PLL Solo Theories from the Database! 2017

So I believe the finale is already airing on the east coast. The rest of the world hasn't seen it yet... UGH, THE WAIT! Anyhow Tumblr was being all glitchy last night about letting me add these to the GZL Master Batch so I had no choice but to add them here. It's a collection of member's own theories and past blog posts. Enjoy! CRYSTAL LYNN LAWYER'S "BETHANY HAS A TWIN" SOLO THEORY: If Bethany is still alive then she might look like either Charlotte or Alison and that could mean that she is also Spencer's sister too. Here are some examples why I think that it could be Bethany: The night when Mona hit Alison on the head with a rock, instead of Bethany, maybe they could be twins. When Melissa was talking to Charlotte (that night), that could had been Bethany. I think that they are all related to one another, just like Uber A. D. could be related to someone on the show, like Spencer maybe. ************** SHEENA CLAYTON'S "MELISSA IS AD" SOLO THEORY: Now im certain AD is Bethany OR Melissa! (Cite: @AKnowsAll à PLL clue handle has been dropping Bethany clues about twins and one twin starting with a "B" or clues involving the initial "B," 2017, Twitter) Melissa always said, she's been trying to protect spencer from. Day 1. AD never really hurt the girls. Not like Cece/Charlotte did. AD was just messing up their lives, and trying to get them to admit shiz, and revealing secrets they didnt (already) know. Remember when Mary referenced how Spencer and Melissa could be twins? ... I think Mary knows Melissa is in a Spencer mask, and thats why she stabs her in the promo. And why Mona knocks her out. But I think bethany is the crazy one and is helping. (Cite: @AKnowsAll mentioned blonde twins and how one is a "genius" but "the other is insane," 2017 Twitter) ******************* KKThanks "Melissa almost HAS to be AD...10 million clues and possibilities!": This is long but I NEED you to read!! I always thought it would be interesting Charlotte was Peter Hastings’s child and was jealous that Spencer got so much attention from Peter.. This is especially interesting if we consider the possibility that Charlotte knew that Spencer was adopted the whole time and yet got embraced by the Hastings family. Melissa and Spencer were always at odds too which is interesting since I always thought Melissa was Charlotte’s friend.. The first thing Charlotte said after Spencer introduced herself to Charlotte was “Melissa Hastings’s little sister!” And I have always believed that to be a clue. Peter has been trying to protect his family from secrets that CHARLOTTE could potentially reveal and we never realized this. It seemed at the time that Peter and Jessica had a deal about ALISON.. But this could get a lot more interesting if their secrets revolved around the danger Charlotte presented. After all, when Jessicas initial secrets started coming out, interestingly enough the ones involving Spencer were about a girl dressed in Alis clothes, but NOT ALI. Those secrets came out of a sealed file she had with Jessica, but Charlotte had known the details of these secrets the whole time. Back to my suspicion that Melissa and Charlotte had a friendship/ agreement situation.. Supposedly Melissa had no clue the girl she buried was not Alison, but a “stranger,” Bethany young. And Charlotte had no clue the girl she was hitting with a rock was Ali, not Bethany. Both of them swear that they did what they did to protect a relative (Charlotte claims Bethany was going to attack Jessica, Melissa claims she thought Spencer killed Alison and she buried her to protect Spencer). Melissa and Charlotte DEFINITELY at least know each other, and because of my strong suspicion that they were friends / working together, I must say it’s awfully “coincidental” that each of them ended up killing the other’s enemy. (But they said there are no coincidences in rosewood!) And if anyone doesn’t believe Melissa hated Ali on that level, don’t forget about the NAT video where she barged into Alis room the night she disappeared demanding where she was. She also had told Ian that same night that if he saw Alison again, someone would get hurt. AND DEFINITELY don’t forget about the NAT club. Charlotte and Melissa were both linked to that club too. What was really going on with them that night? The first time Ali asked jason what the movie the club was filming was about (this was in “the first secret”), he said that if he told her, he would have to kill her. Maybe he meant it more than we knew. Don’t forget, Ian was Melissa’s boyfriend at the time and when he met up with Ali, he screamed at her about the videos, threatening that there were things about her and her family on there that could bring everybody down. Charlotte has also claimed that EVERYONE wanted the videos back from Ali, “Spencer’s big sister the most.” Now I find myself wondering which sister of Spencer’s she meant, if not both of them. Most everyone I can think of who wanted those videos had a link to the NAT club. What exactly has the NAT club planned to do that night? Why was an emergency meeting called, by Melissa’s boyfriend, no less? Also, considering that Melissa and Ian supposedly both wanted the videos back and Alison was the one who stole the videos, I find it intriguing that she demanded for him NOT to see her again, as I mentioned above, and even said that someone would get hurt if he did. Obviously I know she didn’t want him dating Ali anymore, but Ali was also the only chance they really had on getting the videos back. It could even be the real reason Melissa wanted to attack Ali. Maybe Charlotte’s real reason as well. This is even MORE likely when considering the fact that Ian eventually tried to kill Spencer because of these videos. He said “I’m doing this because I love your sister,” which is ANOTHER person mentioning Melissa wanting these videos back, badly… (Unless he meant Charlotte) I believe Melissa and Charlotte were in on the video motive together. I feel like Melissa and Charlotte both knew about A (Mona) and wanted to steal the game at this point. Then, I think about the fact that NAT club members have been attacked and killed throughout these A games. And I wonder if Charlotte and Melissa didn’t have a reason / motive for turning on the NAT club and trying to get the videos themselves, way back “before it all started.” Is this the time Melissa has been referring to? Maybe, at the very least, they thought the other members of the NAT club found out too much about them. I also think Jason was drugged for a specific reason, almost as if to distance him from the others. Supposedly our first A, Mona, believed that she had hit Ali, then later on admitted that she was the one who killed Bethany… Although technically, MELISSA killed Bethany. Maybe she just likes to cover for all her bosses. When Mona was revealed as A, it was clear she had revealed herself to Spencer on purpose. She wanted to recruit Spencer on to the A team and if she refused, she wanted her to disappear; she would make her disappear, just like when Alison disappeared. Mona mentioned working for someone all the way back then on the A team, someone who always had a plan. This has been revealed to be Charlotte, but I get strong vibes Melissa was involved too. Don’t forget, Melissa showed up at the masquerade ball as the black swan. She claims that Mona blackmailed her into showing up to distract Jenna. The problem is, that doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t add up. We have never learned of any plan that Mona had that Jenna stood in the way of, except dating Noel Kahn. Mona wouldn’t need Jenna distracted. But Melissa and Charlotte might have had a reason. The intention the whole time was for Mona to go to Radley. Maybe they wanted Mona in there to get answers about their family… Noel’s other girlfriend, Jenna, claims that Charlotte wanted that from her.. When the girls suspected Charlotte as A, they quickly got distracted and moved onto other options. The same has happened with Melissa. They could’ve worried that Jenna was onto them and their plans and therefore needed her distracted. Mona took the blame for everything she had done as A even though supposedly she had a boss.. Charlotte. Later on, when wilden was killed, Mona tried to claim she did it, landing back in Radley, which seemed deliberate once again. Then it came out that Charlotte did it.. But did she? Or was she taking the blame for something uber A did? Part of Charlotte’s story that didn’t add up to me was that she killed wilden because he was never going to let Ali come back and tell her story. Charlotte would be totally screwed if Ali came back to town and told the story of how Charlotte nearly murdered her and left her for dead.. Also, wilden hadn’t been posing an actual threat to Ali, yet the motive behind his death supposedly was “making sure he could never hurt my sister again.” This sounds like something that makes more sense if they were referring to SPENCER. Wilden terrorized Spencer, even beat her up while dressed up as the queen of hearts on the Halloween train, the same costume Melissa wore, sneakily AGAIN, allegedly “protecting Spencer.” The story also makes a lot more sense if instead of occurring with Sara Harvey, it occurred with Melissa, and Charlotte and Melissa’s roles were reversed from the way Charlotte presented in her flashback/ story. After all, Charlotte did refer to Sara as a decoy. I found it odd that Charlotte wasn’t around the night of the Halloween train, considering she was the one calling the shots. But if MELISSA was the one who wanted wilden gone, this would make some sense. Charlotte could have worried about being seen by wilden and maybe some others on the train. So Mona and Melissa show up in disguise and we are supposed to believe only ONE of them was working with Charlotte? If wilden knew what happened with Charlotte, I have a hard time believing he did not eventually find out what Melissa had done that night as well. And Melissa had more to lose by the truth coming out. Charlotte already knew she would probably just go back to Radley for killing and torturing people as opposed to getting arrested. The night Garrett started telling Spencer more detail about the night Ali disappeared and cast doubt on the story the girls currently believed, wilden killed Garrett. Because he worried his involvement might come out? There’s video surveillance of wilden yelling at the other queen of hearts about this, just as Spencer was trying to get Aria so Garrett could talk to her to her face. Also interesting, in Garretts flashback, we see Melissa calling someone frantically calling someone asking “what do I need to call the police to get your attention?!” We never found out who she was calling, but we did later hear allegations that Melissa called Charlotte to get her help with the videos. (Was that them saying part of the A motive outloud?) Melissa probably knew Charlotte and Wilden had a weird connection; maybe that’s why they included the remark about calling the cops. Wilden seemed to believe the person in the other queen of hearts costume shared the exact same concern as he did about the truth coming out. This fits the profile for CHARLOTTE, but if I am right about him knowing what Melissa did, it works for her too. Conveniently, when the other queen of hearts was about to show her face, Mona’s RV computer gets hacked. When Spencer asks who the QOH was, Mona says “your sister” and I ALWAYS wondered if this meant that Spencer had more than one… Since she didn’t use Melissa’s name. And it turns out Spencer does have more than one. The jury is still out there for me on if there was a third QOH, Charlotte. Either way, I believe Aria was drugged so that Garretts story would stop with Spencer. Conveniently, Toby had joined the A team around this time and was being used as a tool to make Spencer crazy and eventually this landed her in Radley. We know that Charlotte was on Ezra’s payroll, I bet she also provided him with info to make Spencer seem crazy also when she suspected him. But maybe the A team needed Spencer in Radley for reasons that go beyond her seeming crazy. I mentioned before that the A team’s games could “all lead back to radley” because answers about their family were in radley. Maybe they needed Spencer there to figure out some lingering unanswered questions they had. When Spencer first went to Radley, I ALWAYS got a weird vibe from Melissa’s reaction. I felt that she was playing dumb/ faking when she showed up at the school looking for Spencer. I think she already knew exactly where she was. I also found her word choice interesting when she visited Spencer at Radley and she said she felt like it was her fault Spencer was there because Melissa was supposed to be in charge of her. Maybe it WAS Melissa’s fault Spencer was there on a much larger scale. Melissa seems a little bit more connected to Radley than what meets the eye, don’t forget wren also said that Melissa was the one to connect Mona with Charlotte back in the early A days.. And maybe she was. Another thing that gets to me is that Melissa and Charlotte have both downplayed and/ or lied about how well they knew wilden. ALSO, Melissa refused to answer Spencer when Spencer asked if Melissa killed Wilden. A simple NO will usually do if you haven’t murdered someone and you’re asked if you did.. I think Charlotte covered for Melissa because Melissa knew a lot of secrets about her too so she “owed her.” Another Wilden/ Melissa / Charlotte link is the lodge fire night. At this point, Melissa and Charlotte both allegedly shared a motive again, they both wanted to find out if Ali was alive. This was the night Charlotte “used Sara as a decoy.” When asked if Sara was the other red coat, Charlotte said “when I needed her to be.” Does that mean that at other times, someone else was calling the shots? This plan was likely contingent on Spencer’s safety, hence Toby double crossing Mona and taking Spencer outside. Charlotte wanted Spencer and the other girls to help her find Ali, and Melissa wanted to find out if Ali was alive as well, so that works.. But Charlotte and Melissa describe what happened at the fire differently. Charlotte claims she didn’t plan on the fire, Shana showed up and the plan went to hell according to her. But Melissa blamed the fire on wilden, and had been seen telling Jenna and Shana that “those bitches would be at the lodge” that night. I think Charlotte was working with Melissa and therefore DID know the fire was going to happen; that’s why Spencer was not inside. Melissa could have been “distracting Jenna” again; Jenna finding out Ali was alive would mean trouble for Melissa and Charlotte. Melissa would make so much sense as AD. One might question why she would work with someone who staged her husband’s suicide note.. But Melissa could have been playing Ian. Married for love or an alibi? Maybe she was the one who married for an alibi because she didn’t want all her secrets coming out. And considering how well Mona did staging a scene at the bell tower back in the day, maybe Melissa enlisted her help faking Charlotte’s death. I’m bouncing between whether Melissa would still be working with Charlotte at this point or if she turned on her and actually attacked her, but either way she’s the perfect AD." Cites: KKThanks Tumblr: https://kkthanks.tumblr.com/post/160355130008/melissa-almost-has-to-be-ad10-million-clues-and *********************** KKThanks "COULD Caleb be A?!" I found motive... So “I had a bad thought.” Lol. As much as I usually am against the idea of one of the girls or significant others (besides Toby) being A, I couldn’t help but notice that one of the girls would have a HUGE motive to turn Mona into Alison, ie) making her call herself Alison, sleep in her “room,” wear her clothes, blonde hair.. BE her pretty much. That girl is Hanna, because Mona caused her to have an identity crisis because Mona admitted to actively changing Hanna and making her become a new version of Alison. Hanna went through such a terrible time after that, and a lot of her problems were caused by Mona. And Caleb found out about this and he wasn’t pleased. WE SAW THIS. He lied to Hanna about the brain in Mona’s locker; he never came out and told her it was him who did it, and he acted like he found out about it by hearing other people talk. The note that Mona found with the pig in her locker greatly resembled an A note, almost as if the the person who had written it stole Mona’s game and was now beating her. We once saw an “A” ending with A hacking into the Radley computers to get Mona’s visiting privileges that. People jumped to the idea of assuming Wren was involved.. But maybe we were seeing somebody FIX what Big A had done. CALEB is the one who caused Mona to lose her visiting privileges. Maybe that angry scene between Caleb and Mona was a CLUE. And maybe Hanna figured out by now that he is involved. Maybe this is why Caleb was able to hack in what seemed like very little time, to find the girls. Maybe he already knew where they were. After all, the dollhouse SUCKS for the girls, Mona especially since she has been there the longest. Maybe Caleb orchestrated this knowing that this unknown, mysterious “A” person would be blamed and nobody would suspect him. Like I said, it sucks there, but Hanna is OUT OF *JAIL* now at least which is where she was prior to this! One thing Caleb did agree with Mona on was taking Alison down too which is why she was left in jail. When the girls tried to turn A in, A cleared out their phones of all things A related. This A seems to possess the same technological skills Mona did. Caleb OPENLY fits that category, and before Mona’s “DEATH,” this was acknowledged out loud when she asked for Caleb’s help with hacking. Caleb probably found more things to use against her by doing this. He needed the girls to think that “A” was to blame for the dollhouse, so he couldn’t have them turn over that evidence at this point. Caleb never said that he stopped trying to take Mona down, so why do we assume he did? And Hanna obviously wanted to leave jail, and maybe she was willing to let Caleb do this if it meant her name would be cleared and even that she could leave jail. They showed her describing how awful it was in the finale for a reason. Tanner also said out loud in the finale that he suspected Caleb knew exactly where the girls were. Caleb does strike me as the kind of guy who would become A just to take the other A down for good. Could Caleb have stolen the game from Mona? And could Hanna be helping him? Didn’t Caleb wear a phantom of the opera costume once? The theme of Charles’s prom... Another point: I wrote this BEFORE Caleb put a tracking device on Hanna’s car and then the girls learned that Charles had put tracking devices in their bodies. I didn’t miss this clue; it just hasn’t happened yet :)" Cites: KKThanks Tumblr: https://kkthanks.tumblr.com/post/138998263338/could-caleb-be-a-i-found-motive *************** No matter who ends up being correct here, GZL is having a party later in the group to either celebrate another win or mourn. Lol. HEY ITS PLL SERIES FINALE DAY! The very last PLL Day ever for fans... kinda sad. So let's make it special. Share some stories of fan friendships you've made over the past 7 years! I'll repost some of them.

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themoneybuff-blog · 6 years

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Thinking in bets: How to make smarter decisions

I read a lot of books. Nearly every book has some nugget of wisdom I can take from it, but its rare indeed when I read a book and feel like Ive hit the mother lode. In 2018, Ive been fortunate enough to read two books that Ill be mining for years to come. The first was Sapiens, the 2015 brief history of mankind from Yuval Noah Harari. I finished the second book yesterday: Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. Duke is a professional poker player; Thinking in Bets is her attempt to take lessons from the world of poker and apply them to making smarter decisions in all aspects of life. Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out, Duke writes in the books introduction. Those two things? The quality of our decisions and luck. Learning to recognize the difference between the two is what thinking in bets is all about. We have complete control over the quality of our decisions but we have little (or no) control over luck. The Quality of Our Decisions The first (and greatest) variable in how our lives turn out is the quality of our decisions. People have a natural tendency to conflate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome. Theyre not the same thing. You can make a smart, rational choice but still get poor results. That doesnt mean you should have made a different choice; it simply means that other factors (such as luck) influenced the results. Driving home drunk, for instance, is a poor decision. Just because you make arrive home without killing yourself or anyone else does not mean you made a good choice. It merely means you got a good result. Duke gives an example from professional football. At the end of Super Bowl XLIX, the Seattle Seahawks were down by four points with 26 seconds left in the game. They had the ball with second down at the New England Patriots one-yard line. While everbody expected them to run the ball, they threw a pass. That pass was intercepted and the Seawhawks lost the game. [embedded content] Armchair quarterbacks around the world complained that this was the worst play-call in NFL history. (Ive linked to just four stories there. Theyre all brutal. You can find many more online.) Duke argues, though, that the call was fine. In fact, she believes it was a smart call. It was a quality decision. There was only a 2% chance that the ball would be intercepted. There was a high percentage chance of winning the game with a touchdown. Most importantly, if the pass was incomplete, the Seahawks would have two more plays to try again. But if the team opted to run instead? Because they only had one time-out remaining, theyd only get one more chance to score if they failed. The call wasnt bad. The result was bad. Theres a big difference between these two things, but humans generally fail to differentiate between actions and results. Duke says that poker players have a term for this logical fallacy: resulting. Resulting is assuming your decision-making is good or bad based on a small set of outcomes. If you play your cards correctly but still lose a hand, youre resulting when you focus on the outcome instead of the quality of your decisions. You cannot control outcomes; you can only control your actions. Note: As long-time readers know, I grew up Mormon. One of the songs we were taught as children has this terrific lyric: Do what is right, let the consequence follow. This has become something of a mantra for me as an adult. If I do the right thing whatever that might be in a given context then I cannot feel guilty if I get a poor result. Its my job to do my best. Beyond that, I cannot control what happens. Luck and Incomplete Information Why dont smart decisions always lead to good results? Because we dont have complete control over our lives and we dont have all of the information. Fundamentally, Duke says, results are influenced by luck. Randomness. Chance. Happenstance. She writes: We are uncomfortable with the idea that luck plays a significant role in our lives. We recognize the existence of luck, but we resist the idea that, despite our best efforts, things might not work out the way we want. It feels better to imagine the world as an orderly place, where randomness does not wreak havoc and things are perfectly predictable. Duke contrasts poker (and life) with chess. Chess is a game of complete information, a game of pure skill. Theres no luck involved. At all times, all of the pieces are available for both players to see. There are no dice rolls, nothing to randomize the game. As a result, the better player almost always wins. (When the better player doesnt win, its because of easily identifiable mistakes.) Because chess is a game of complete information, luck isnt a factor the outcome is only a matter of the quality of your decisions. In poker, however, theres a lot you dont know. What cards do your opponents hold? What cards remain in the deck? How likely are your opponents to bluff? And so on. Experienced poker players learn to think in terms of odds. With this hand, I have a 74% chance of winning. I should fold. These cards only give me a 18% chance of coming out ahead. Its because our decisions are made with incomplete information that life sometimes seems so difficult. You can do the right thing and still get poor results. You can opt not to drink on New Years Eve, for instance, but still get blindsided by somebody who did to drink and drive. You made a quality decision, but happenstance hit you upside the head anyhow. Duke cites a scene from The Princess Bride as an example of how incomplete information affects the outcomes of our decisions. Criminal mastermind Vizzini and the Dread Pirate Roberts engage in a battle of wits: [embedded content] Vizzini pours two goblets of wine, then Roberts (actually our hero, Westley, in disguise) poisons one of them with deadly ioacane powder. The challenge is for Vizzini to choose the non-poisoned goblet. Vizzini cackles with glee when Roberts/Westley downs the poison but then falls dead after drinking his own goblet. It turns out both goblets had been poisoned, but Roberts had spent the previous few years building an immunity to iocane powder. Vizzini made a quality decision based on the information he had, but he didnt have all of the information: both goblets were poisoned, and his opponent in this battle of wits was immune to the poison in the first place! Thinking in Bets Duke argues that in order to make smarter decisions, we have to embrace both the idea that theres a lot of luck in life and the reality that were swimming in uncertainty. Theres a stigma in our culture about appearing ignorant, about being unsure. Duke says that becoming comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing is a vital step to becoming a better decision-maker. Admitting that we dont know has an undeservedly bad reputation, she writes. What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge. That state of knowledge, in turn, is some variation of Im not sure. Duke suggests that by moving to a framework of Im not sure, were far less likely to fall into the trap of black and white thinking, of false certainty. She cites Stuart Firesteins TED talk about the pursuit of ignorance: [embedded content] We should be pursuing high-quality ignorance. Based on all of this, how then can we make smarter decisions? Duke says that we should stop thinking in terms of right and wrong. Few things are ever 0% or 100% likely to occur. Few people are ever 0% or 100% right about what they know or believe. Instead, we should think in bets. Decisions are bets on the future, Duke writes, and they arent right or wrong based on whether they turn out well on any particular iteration. An unwanted decision doesnt make our decision wrong if we thought about the alternatives and probabilities in advance and allocated our resources accordingly. Duke says that because pro poker players learn to think in terms of odds during their games, they transfer this way of thinking to everyday life. Job and relocation decisions are bets, she writes. Sales negotiations and contracts are bets. Buying a house is a bet. Ordering the chicken instead of the steak is a bet. Everything is a bet. Just as each poker bet carries a different chance of success (based on the quality of the hand, the hands of the other players, etc.), so too the bets we make in life carry different chances of success. And our personal beliefs have (or should have) varying degrees of certainty. Duke wants readers to begin thinking about their beliefs and decisions in terms of probabilities rather than in terms of black and white. Turns out I already do this to a small degree but usually for minor stuff. In fact, Ive done it several times in the past week. A few days ago, I was listening to a Big Band station on Pandora. The song Green Eyes came on. I wonder what year this is from? I thought. I listened to the vocals, to the band, to the recording quality. I think theres an 80% chance this song is from 1939 give or take two years, I thought. I looked it up. The song was released in 1941. (I listen to a lot of older music, and I play this game often.)Because its been hot in Portland lately, folks in my neighborhood have all been taking early morning walks. We all tend to follow the same two-mile loop because its easy. Ive started playing a game when I pass somebody. Okay, the dog and I passed David Hedges at the llama farm. Where will we encounter him on the top side of the loop? Ill be its between Roys house and the bottom of the hill. Its fun for me to see how accurate my guesses are. Duke believes that we should each do this sort of thing whenever we make a decision. Before we commit to a course of action, we should think about possible outcomes and how likely each of those outcomes is to occur. Lets say youve only got $200 in the bank and its a week from payday. Should you join your friends for that weekend motorcycle trip? Or should you save that cash in case something goes wrong? Or, thinking farther in the future, what outcomes are you seeking in life? What decision will improve the odds of achieving those outcomes? Or, imagine that youre trying to decide whether or not to buy a home. As you consider the possibilities, think about the probability that each possible future will occur. Dont simply cling to the outcome youre hoping for. Be objective. If the odds of success seem reasonable, then pursue your desired course of action. But if they dont, then pull the plug. Duke writes: In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing. We are constantly deciding among alternative futures: one where we go to the movies, one where we go bowling, one where we stay home. Or futures where we take a job in Des Moines, stay at our current job, or take some time away from work. Whenever we make a choice, we are betting on a potential future. Every choice carries an opportunity cost. When you choose to save for the future, for instance, youre giving up pleasure in the present. Or, if you choose to spend in the present, youre giving up future financial freedom. Final Thoughts

For a long time, Ive argued that the best books about money are often not about money at all. Thinking in Bets is another example of this. While Duke uses plenty of personal finance examples, the book itself is about self-improvement. Its not a money manual. Yet the info here could have a profound impact on your financial future. Theres a lot more in this book that I havent covered in my review. (Ive really only touched on the first third of the material!) For me, the biggest takeaway comes early: Its vital to separate decision quality from results. The rest of the book explores how to improve the quality of your decisions. Among the strategies Duke advocates are these: Learn to examine your own beliefs. Be your own devils advocate. If youre certain about something, explore the opposing viewpoint. (If youre liberal, seek conservative opinions. If youre conservative, look for liberal voices.) Be skeptical of yourself and others.Build a network of trusted advisors, people who can give you feedback on your beliefs and decisions. But dont make these support groups homogeneous. Draw on people from a variety of backgrounds and belief systems. If you only associate with people who think the same way you do, you never give yourself a chance to grow, and youll never spot possible errors in your thinking. (This is like the current problems Facebook is facing with its deliberately-created echo chambers, which only serve to reinforce the way people think instead of challenging them.)When you make decisions, think of the future. Use barriers and pre-commitment to do the right thing automatically. Practice backcasting, a visualization method in which you define a desired outcome then figure out how you might get there. The book is dense dense! with ideas and information. When I finished it, I wanted to go back and read it again. Plus, I wanted to plow through the nearly 200 other works that Duke lists in her bibliography. I feel like I could spend an entire year diving deeper into this book and its related reading. But, as much as I wish it were, Thinking in Bets isnt perfect. A strong argument could be made that this material would work better as a TED talk or a 5000-word essay in The Atlantic (or on Get Rich Slowly!). The book is so packed with info that it sometimes loses its way. Theres also a lot of repetition too much repetition. Plus, it seems to lack a clear sense of organization. These quibbles aside, Thinking in Bets has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf. If I ever get around to putting together a Get Rich Slowly library (a project Ive been planning for years!), this book will be in it. I got a lot out of it. And I bet you will too. https://www.getrichslowly.org/smarter-decisions/

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themoneybuff-blog · 6 years

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Thinking in bets: How to make smarter decisions

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