Cognition, Opportunity, and Learning a New Language

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English has a wider global reach than any language in history.

It has become the world’s lingua franca in a range of domains, including business, politics, science, technology, academia, and entertainment.

On top of that, real-time language translation technology continues to get faster and more accurate.

Why, then, would a native English speaker in today’s world want or need to learn another language?

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Fast and Frugal Heuristics for Making Decisions Under Uncertainty

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We all make decisions every day, usually a lot of them, some more important than others. Almost none of these choices are made under optimal decision-making conditions.

One condition that can complicate decision-making is uncertainty.

Sometimes we can’t reliably predict the results of our decisions. We can’t figure out the probable outcome. We don’t know all of the possible alternatives, and we can’t estimate the probabilities. Important information may be lacking, and a strategy that may have been optimal in the past might not work now.

Some situations may also simply be too novel to provide any useful data, so we can’t rely on probability or statistics to guide us. Any analytical approach we attempt to take to the problem will likely lead to significant prediction errors.

Uncertainty inherently involves inaccurate or incomplete information. Therefore, to make fast, accurate decisions under uncertainty, we may need to rely on cognitive strategies that deliberately ignore some information.

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Improve Your Intuition to Hone Your Hunches

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Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs both regarded the intellect as secondary to intuition. Jonas Salk spoke of intuition tossing ideas up to him “like gifts from the sea.” Alan Turing said that mathematical reasoning resulted from two facilities: intuition and ingenuity. Henri Poincare believed that we prove things through science, but that we discover them through intuition.

Many of the world’s great thinkers and doers have been strong believers in the power of intuition. Probably because they were naturally gifted at applying their own well-developed intuitive abilities.

But what about the rest of us? How do we understand intuition better, and can we do anything to make ourselves more intuitive? Can we get into a mindset where we trust our hunches enough to follow them through?

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In Luck We Trust: Believe to Receive

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Luck has fascinated philosophers for millennia.

Solon believed that all human success was just good luck, while Democritus consistently downplayed the influence of luck on people’s lives. Aristotle devoted a great deal of thought to luck, and considered the topic at length in his texts on ethics and physics.

People still debate the existence of luck, its nature, and the extent of its influence on the outcome of human affairs.

Whether we believe in the existence of luck largely depends on how we view the concept of luck.

Is luck an external force or a personal attribute? Is it stable or unpredictable? Is it nothing more than a way for us to frame happenstance in terms of whether the result was favorable or unfavorable?

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How Your Emotions Influence Opportunity Evaluation

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Ideas are not opportunities.

We often have great ideas, but for us to determine whether an idea represents a genuine opportunity for us, we must assess several internal and external factors.

Does this idea relate to my interest or vision? Does it suit my knowledge, skills, and experience? Do I have the resources to support its development? Does this idea have the potential to generate revenue, or to produce some other desired benefit? Are there any major personal, financial, market, legal, or regulatory obstacles that would prevent me from implementing this idea?

And sometimes we will evaluate an idea and see its opportunity, only to ultimately decide that it might be a great opportunity for someone, but that it isn’t suitable for us. At least not at the time.

Many people – most notably entrepreneurs – may be quite adept at the sum and substance feasibility analysis of opportunity evaluation. But they may entirely overlook the impact that their own emotions can have on this evaluative process.

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