Podcast: Aron Ralston with Blair Braverman
- fivestarsbarb
- Jan 20
- 1 min read
Five stars. (★★★★★)
This Jan 12, 2025 episode of You're Wrong About checked a couple of boxes for me. I read Between a Rock and a Hard Place when it came out in 2004, only a year after Ralston's incident. It was interesting to revisit 20 years later with a fresh perspective. Also, I'm a fan of Blair Braverman; her podcast appearances are solid and she seems like the real deal. (I listened to her 2022 book Small Game and liked it enough, although I'm not a huge fan of fiction in general.)
What stuck with me (as I was wading through knee-deep snow this morning) was her synopsis of "Evidence of heuristic traps in recreational avalanche accidents" - which can be applied to any in-over-your-head scenario. The heuristic traps are:
1) Familiarity: The tendency to believe that our behavior is correct to the extent that we've done it before.
2) Commitment: The tendency to believe that our behavior is correct to the extent that it is consistent with a prior commitment. ("I set out this morning to climb this mountain; regardless of what obstacles I encounter, I should trust the decision I made earlier.")
3) Social Proof: The tendency to believe that our behavior is correct to the extent that other people are engaged in it.
4) Scarcity: The tendency to distort the value of opportunities we perceive as limited, and to compete with others to obtain them.
I am definitely prone to the Commitment trap. I try to be self-aware, but it might get me some day.