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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Perhaps the 70/30 weighting reflects how much advise is influenced by differing preferences in typical advise situations?

After all, I am the one who has to live with the consequences of my decision.

That is a difference in preferences in most advice situations: since I am responsible for my decision, my penalty for error is larger than that of a colleague, who is simply motivated to do the best possible choice (while I am strongly motivated to avoid the worst).

So there are many circumstances where we should give much more weight to others opinions, especially in low risk/high reward ventures.

I noticed that Harvey and Fischer's paper used a point reward system. If, instead, they were to deduct points from a set total, that could test whether people behave differently when it's their "responsibility" (using status quo bias in our favour!).

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Robin Hanson's avatar

Anne, even when you do ask for and hear reasons, you usually do not understand all the details of their reasons.

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