Tom Griffiths: 3 ways to make better decisions – by thinking like a computer

If you ever struggle to make decisions, here’s a talk for you. Cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths shows how we can apply the logic of computers to untangle tricky human problems, sharing three practical strategies for making better decisions — on everything from finding a home to choosing which restaurant to go to tonight.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxSydney, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you.

Books to Read

Book
The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive
Brian Christian
Anchor, 2012
One concern I sometimes hear is that recognizing the parallels between people and computers might start to rob us of our humanity. Christian’s first book, The Most Human Human, is the perfect antidote to that. Participating in a Turing test, where he had to convince the judges that he was not a computer, led Christian to reflect on how intelligent machines can help us come to recognize what it is that makes us human.

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Book
The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children
Alison Gopnik
Picador, 2017
One of the big ideas in the talk is that understanding the trade-off between exploration and exploitation can help us understand how our approach to decision-making should change as we age. Alison Gopnik’s wonderful book explores this idea in more detail, making the argument that the very structure of human childhood is in part a consequence of navigating this trade-off.

Book
A Long Bright Future
Laura Carstensen
PublicAffairs, 2011
At the other end of the life span, Laura Carstensen tells us why we should be optimistic about old age.

Book
Algorithms Unlocked
Thomas H. Cormen
The MIT Press, 2013
For people who want to learn more about algorithms, this book does a great job of translating an undergraduate curriculum in computer science into a form that somebody with a little bit of mathematical background can easily appreciate.

Book
In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation
William J. Cook
Princeton University Press, 2014
Focusing on one problem in particular, this book is a great illustration of how computer scientists tackle the hardest computational problems — using approximations, shortcuts and a lot of ingenuity.

Book
Finite and Infinite Games
James Carse
Free Press, 2013
An inspiration for Algorithms to Live By, this book takes a single mathematical idea and then unpacks it into a manual for living a fulfilling life.

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