Читать книгу Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World - Noreena Hertz - Страница 26

In a world of data deluge, distraction and uncertainty, a world in which we increasingly have to determine ourselves which information we should use to make our decisions, it’s understandable that we tend to focus on particular forms and types of information over others. Ultimately, it’s a kind of coping strategy.

But what we are most naturally or most instinctively drawn to may not actually be the best information to help us make decisions. What’s in the foreground, what’s most glittery, what’s biggest and boldest, stands out the most and grabs our attention, as do numbers over words, information that reinforces what we want to hear over information that jars, and the past, with its promise to be our lodestar. Yet all of these are potentially tigers consuming all our attention, while a snake slithers dangerously towards us on the ground.

We need to be aware of this; to re-calibrate how it is we see the world, re-adjust our focus and deploy others around us to help pull off the blinkers.

But once our blinkers are off, there’s more to consider. In keeping with life’s complexity, making smart decisions can be thwarted for other reasons too. For we are massively influenced by how others shape and form what it is they convey to us – by the words they use, the colours they choose, and even, as we will see, by touch. By factors in the ether that we’re not even aware of.

How to strip bare what we are told, so that we can evaluate the information before us, see beyond packaging and wrappers and spin and misleading cues, is what the next chapter is about.