Introduction: Why Smart Indians Make Dumb Decisions

Part 1 of 9 in How to Think Better: Harnessing the Power of CounterintuitionPart 2 →

This chapter introduces how intelligent people make costly decisions when uncertainty, social pressure, and information overload affect their judgment. It helps founders, parents, doctors, policymakers, investors, and others recognize cognitive traps and use structured thinking and AI to reduce avoidable mistakes.

Michael Mauboussin’s Think Twice is one of the most practical books ever written on decision-making. It does not lecture about willpower or positive thinking. Instead, it shows that even highly intelligent people—CEOs, doctors, investors, and policymakers—routinely make expensive mistakes because their mental software is poorly designed for modern complexity.

In India, these mistakes are amplified. We operate in an environment of high uncertainty, rapid change, family and social pressures, information overload, and a culture that often rewards confidence over calibration. Whether you are a founder raising capital, a parent choosing a school, a doctor recommending treatment, a government official designing policy, or an angel investor evaluating a pitch, the same cognitive traps appear again and again.

I have seen these traps in the clinic, in the boardroom, and in family discussions. A couple is told by a relative that a particular IVF clinic is “the best” because a cousin had success there. They anchor on that anecdote and ignore base rates of success for their specific diagnosis. A founder insists his consumer brand is different from the dozens that failed before it. A parent in Kota is convinced that full-time coaching is the only path because everyone around them is doing it.

This book adapts Mauboussin’s core ideas for an Indian audience. Every major concept is illustrated with Indian stories and case studies—some famous, some personal, some drawn from healthcare and early-stage investing. More importantly, it shows how artificial intelligence can help you think twice more systematically and more cheaply than ever before.

Mauboussin’s framework is simple but powerful: Prepare (learn the common mistakes), Recognize (spot them in real time), and Apply (use specific tools to correct them). This book follows that structure and adds a fourth element: Amplify with AI.

The goal is not to become perfectly rational. That is impossible. The goal is to make fewer unforced errors and to create decision processes that improve over time. In a country where one bad decision can destroy a family fortune, a startup, or a patient’s health, that improvement compounds.

The chapters that follow can be read independently or in sequence. They are written so that each can stand alone as a published piece on IndianAngel.in while together forming a coherent guide. At the end of each major idea, you will find specific prompts you can use with Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, or any capable AI system today.