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When dealing with particularly toxic people I find the exponential backoff to be an excellent strategy.

In my case, I hate cutting people off because I know people can change. What I do to manage relationships is run a forgiving version of exponential backoff. Start off friendly and forgiving. If someone becomes transgressive, increase the latency between interactions. If the transgressions continue, double the latency. If bad interactions persist, the time latency can go on to months or even years which means you'll probably never interact with that person again. Conversely, if an interaction goes well, reduce the delay for when you're willing to meet again. E.g. say an irritating individual causes the latency to go to once a month. If you have an interaction that goes well then the latency drops to 2 weeks. If interactions continue to go well they drop further to say no latency, i.e. you're willing to meet this person whenever. Obviously it's not perfect but it suites my needs quite well.

I also found his chapter on "overfitting" excellent. I like to think of it as "smart person disease." Big idea is that having more data can actually hamper decision making instead of enhance it because you winde up solving the wrong problem.



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