Daniel Kahneman said that meeting Amos Tversky changed the course of his life. Amos was already a rising star … the most intelligent man any person knew. He was sharp, charismatic, funny, and unnervingly clear in his thinking.
Yet what Kahneman admired most was his curiosity. His refusal to settle. His ability to listen without defence and to keep on searching deeper and deeper for answers. To challenge his own biases. And, most of all, his desire to prove himself wrong.
A Working Pattern Built on Exploration
One of their famous working patterns would offer an intuitive answer, and the other would pull it apart … not to win but to get to the truth of what was really going on. They treated every question as a small experiment. They wanted to know why their first impressions so often misled them.
That curiosity led them to discover that even experts are poor intuitive statisticians. We jump to conclusions. We cling to familiar patterns. And we trust the wrong things with confidence.
Looking Ahead
One of the problems they uncovered was resemblance prediction, which we will explore in the next article.
Reflection question
When was the last time you enjoyed discovering that your first answer was not the right one?
About This Series
This article focused on Curiosity, which is the first dimension of our Nine Dimensions of the Very Best Consultants.
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