#25 Resulting

When we judge our decisions by the outcomes they produce

Imagine you are playing poker and you have the following situation:

Your opponent makes a bet and you have a decision to match the bet or fold. You quickly calculate in your head and realize that there is around 70% chance of having better cards than your opponent. You think about it and make the decision to match the bet. Then your opponent opens his cards and shows that he has a stronger set of cards. He wins and takes your money.

Now, the question is - did you make a bad decision to match the bet?

Unfortunately, the answer too often is yes. When we think whether a certain decision was good or bad, we judge it by the outcome they produced. If the outcome was great, then the decision was great. If the outcome was bad, then the decision was bad. And we tell ourselves, and others, that we are never going to do so and so again. That’s the worst way to learn from experience. And in poker, this concept is called resulting.

Resulting is when we judge the quality of our decisions based on the outcomes they produce.

In reality, the decision you made was solid. If you played the same hand 100 times over, you would win in ±70 of them. On the other hand, if you took away the wrong learning from the situation, then you would lose 70/100 times. In life, we don’t get to make the same decision 100s of times, so it’s harder to see the trends. So we have one bad outcome, and stop doing things that were actually right.

There is a difference between the decisions you make and the outcomes they produce. Don't conflate the two. Don't be resulting.

I learned it from this book.