Working from foundations rather than analogies produces different conclusions than what received wisdom suggests. Sometimes the conclusions are wrong; sometimes they are…
Ethan
A pre-mortem asks: assuming this project failed, what went wrong? The question produces different answers than the optimistic ones we usually start…
Ethan
When you state an opposing view, state it in the strongest form you can find. This single discipline improves the quality of…
Ethan
Most of what you know, you know from sources. Evaluating those sources is the underrated skill that determines whether your beliefs track…
Ethan
Bayes’ theorem sounds technical. The intuition behind it is not. Updating beliefs in proportion to evidence is the single most important practice…
Ethan
A mental model is a simplified representation of how something works. Building a library of them is one of the most useful…
Ethan
The same information presented differently produces different decisions. The framing effect is small in any single instance and enormous in aggregate.
Ethan
Losing $100 hurts more than gaining $100 feels good. The asymmetry shapes economic behavior, political behavior, and personal decisions in ways we…
Ethan
Expected value is the simplest tool for evaluating risky decisions. It is also the tool that, in practice, most people fail to…
Ethan
People with low competence in a domain often overestimate their competence. The effect is real, but the popular version has drifted from…
Ethan
