From Instinct to Insight - How Do We Really Decide? Bayesian Thinking - Future IQ
7,456 views
•
Apr 11, 2025
Description
Do you really believe in facts? Or are you just believing what you want to believe? In this episode, we talk about something called Bayesian Updating – a fancy way of saying how your brain mixes your past beliefs (priors) with new evidence to make decisions. But here’s the twist: your priors (like what your family, school, or culture told you) can change how you see the evidence!
We use a fun example with an aptitude test and talk about how your bias can sneak in, even if you think you're being smart. Learn why people sometimes ignore good data, how your brain builds beliefs, and why you should always check if your thinking is based on facts or old stories.
This episode connects to lots of cool Future IQ topics like bad decisions, groupthink, preference falsification, and costly signaling. So if you understand this, the rest will make WAY more sense!
More Videos For You:
Believing is Seeing: https://youtu.be/bxx-My8J_kM
You are in a Cult: https://youtu.be/eEfmHpstjSg
Showing Off Is Important: https://youtu.be/0YEBK7eR3Ek
Your Unpopular Opinion Is Popular: https://youtu.be/Pwh90BkWRt8
Why We Make Bad Decisions: https://youtu.be/CBIm7TqXQ4w
Rohit Sharma Lost 12 tosses in a row - Fixed or Coincidence?: https://youtu.be/EY4WCmIJLcY
Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant
Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference : Wikipedia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZGCoVF3YvM : 3blue1brown on Bayesian Theorem
https://lesswrong.com : community for understanding priors and helping reduce your biases
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bJ2haLkcGeLtTWaD5/welcome-to-lesswrong: Intro to LessWrong
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/towards-a-bayesian-theory-of-willpower: Theory that willpower can be explained using bayesian updating
00:00 True Future IQ Style
00:11 Are You An Evidence Based Person?
01:49 Evidence Isn't Evidence?!
03:15 Let's Get Deep Into This
05:35 Beliefs & Priors
06:21 How Does Prior Affect Evidence?
08:04 Where Do These Bias Begin?
10:11 Is All Of Life Bayesian Updating?
13:09 In Professional Life?
13:53 In Social Life?
14:13 In Politics?
14:55 Why Is This Important?
16:23 Science Of Incorrect Decisions
#futureiq
Transcript
Subscriber transcript
Subscribe to @TheFutureIQ, then sign in with Google to unlock full transcripts and transcript search.
Sign in with Google