Key Insights on Decision Making

"Once the present turns into the past, everybody's a genius" - Lloyd on the danger of using after-acquired information to judge past decisions

• The 1976 Judgment of Paris shocked the wine world when Californian wines defeated French in blind tastings
• Early technology decisions at Stripe like Ruby and MongoDB still define the company 15 years later, demonstrating how "initial conditions" shape decades of engineering work
• Index fund investing has been 'solved' - the challenge is psychological discipline to avoid checking portfolios and making emotional decisions
• Most things in business are two-way doors that swing both ways - very few decisions can actually kill your company
• The third archetype plays for love of the game itself, drawn to psychology and high-level decision-making with limited information
• High-stakes poker attracts those who enjoy "seeing the results of making high-level decisions with very limited information"
• The delayed choice experiment shows particles retroactively change their past behavior based on future measurement decisions

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