A premortem might be a useful technique to use to counteract overconfident pessimism. It’s another variant on “consider the opposite”, discussed in Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and this LW post (among other places). With standard overconfidence (e.g. “our project will succeed”), you do a premortem by saying “it’s two months from now and the project has failed; why did it fail?” Suddenly your brain can generate various pathways to failure which had been hidden.
With overconfident pessimism (“there is no way that we’ll develop that technology in the next 50 years”), you’d do a premortem by saying “it’s 20 years from now and we have that technology; how did we get it?”
It doesn’t lead to any new insights. I can’t generate any thoughts by pretending that it’s now the future and that I’m looking back into the past. I don’t know whether or not other people do somehow generate new thoughts this way. It sounds plausible while also sounding ridiculous, so I’m unsure whether or not it’s legitimate.
A premortem might be a useful technique to use to counteract overconfident pessimism. It’s another variant on “consider the opposite”, discussed in Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and this LW post (among other places). With standard overconfidence (e.g. “our project will succeed”), you do a premortem by saying “it’s two months from now and the project has failed; why did it fail?” Suddenly your brain can generate various pathways to failure which had been hidden.
With overconfident pessimism (“there is no way that we’ll develop that technology in the next 50 years”), you’d do a premortem by saying “it’s 20 years from now and we have that technology; how did we get it?”
Does anyone find this useful, personally? I’ve heard it as advice before, but it never helps me.
In what way does it not help? Does it leave you frozen, inactive? Perhaps also do a premortem for the failure modes caused by doing nothing?
It doesn’t lead to any new insights. I can’t generate any thoughts by pretending that it’s now the future and that I’m looking back into the past. I don’t know whether or not other people do somehow generate new thoughts this way. It sounds plausible while also sounding ridiculous, so I’m unsure whether or not it’s legitimate.