July 2026
June 2026
- Jun 5, 2026ConceptsCognitive Bias Evidence Map: Robust vs. Failed-to-Replicate BiasesNot every famous bias is equally well supported. This map rates ten effects by the strength of the record behind them, separating the ones tested at large scale and failed from the ones never tested at large scale at all, like the planning fallacy. The sharpest case is ego depletion: a pre-registered replication across 23 labs with 2,141 participants returned d = 0.04, a confidence interval straddling zero.
- Jun 1, 2026ConceptsBetter Decisions Under Uncertainty: A Practical Guide and ToolkitA sound decision can still produce a bad outcome, and luck can hide weak reasoning, so the only thing you can improve is the process. The sharpest figure here is a calibration one: when people say they are 90 percent confident, studies consistently find them right roughly 70 percent of the time. From there it works through availability, sunk cost and anchoring, Gary Klein's premortem protocol, Bezos's two-way door test, and a ten-item checklist.
March 2026
- Mar 6, 2026ConceptsDecision Frameworks Used by High Performers to Think ClearlyPaul Meehl's 1954 review compared intuitive clinical judgment against rule-based prediction across 20 studies. Actuarial methods matched or beat the experts in 17 of them, and Grove and colleagues' 2000 meta-analysis of 136 studies found clinical judgment won in only 6 percent. This walks through eight frameworks: reversibility, regret minimization, 10/10/10, pre-mortem, decision journals, expected value, inversion and calibrated probability.
- Mar 5, 2026ConceptsMental Models That Make Every Decision SharperA working set of decision models, each with the conditions under which it fits: second-order thinking, inversion, first principles, opportunity cost, margin of safety and probabilistic thinking. Gary Klein's Recognition-Primed Decision work found experienced experts rarely compare options at all, and Chase and Simon's 1973 chess studies showed masters rebuilt positions from 5-second glances by chunking patterns, not better memory.
- Mar 5, 2026ConceptsWhat Is Decision Making Under Uncertainty?Frank Knight separated risk, where probabilities are known, from uncertainty, where they cannot be meaningfully assigned, and most big decisions sit on the second side. This guide maps four levels of knowability, then covers satisficing, reversible bets, scenario planning and Bayesian updating. Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment study, spanning about 20 years and more than 28,000 forecasts from 284 experts, found most specialists predicted little better than chance.
February 2026
- Feb 21, 2026ConceptsHow Values Shape DecisionsValues shape choices through five mechanisms: what you notice, which options you generate, how you weight outcomes, where you draw non-negotiable lines, and how you justify the result afterward. The stated-versus-revealed gap is measurable. Griskevicius, Tybur, and Van den Bergh found that activating status motives raised willingness to buy green products in public contexts but lowered it in private ones, evidence that environmental values can be partly instrumental.
- Feb 19, 2026ConceptsAnalytical Models vs IntuitionGary Klein found that expert firefighters and commanders rarely compare options, instead recognizing a situation and simulating one response, while Kahneman documented where confident intuition fails. Their 2009 joint paper sets the condition: trust intuition only where real practice meets a high-validity environment with fast, clear feedback. The page contrasts calibrated weather forecasters with stock analysts and revisits Meehl's actuarial formulas.
- Feb 18, 2026ConceptsHow to Choose the Right Mental ModelModel selection is the meta-skill: matching problem type to thinking tool, testing fit by retrodiction and boundary cases, and triangulating with two to four models from different traditions. Tetlock's forecasting research found that foxes, who drew on many models, outperformed hedgehogs organized around one central model, with the gap widest on long-range forecasts inside their own expertise. Foxes noticed a failing model sooner and switched.
- Feb 16, 2026ConceptsWhen Frameworks FailFrameworks fail in patterns you can spot in advance, among them context mismatch, rigidity bias, static models in changing markets, and mistaking the map for the territory. The Gaussian copula is the sharpest case: David Li's correlation formula was calibrated on corporate bond defaults in stable credit conditions, then applied to mortgages in a housing market that had never fallen nationwide, with his own warning left out.
- Feb 2, 2026ConceptsThe Limits of RulesRules fail in recognizable ways: they cannot cover infinite situations, they get gamed, they ignore context, they pile up, and they still need judgment to interpret. Andrew Haldane's 2012 Jackson Hole speech traced Basel from roughly 30 pages to about 347 and then 616, and argued a simple leverage constraint predicted which banks failed better than the risk-weighted version. The article sets out where rules genuinely work and where principles serve better.
January 2026
- Jan 29, 2026ConceptsUnderstanding Cognitive Biases with ExamplesCognitive biases are systematic deviations from rational judgment, not random error, and they affect everyone regardless of intelligence or expertise. Tversky and Kahneman showed a spun wheel landing on 10 or 65 shifted estimates of African nations in the UN from 25% to 45%. Confirmation bias, anchoring, the availability heuristic and Dunning-Kruger, with mitigation that actually works.
- Jan 24, 2026ConceptsWhy Smart People Make Bad DecisionsIntelligence and rationality come apart, and the gap has a name: Stanovich's dysrationalia. In his research IQ accounts for roughly 20 to 30% of variance in rational thinking tasks, with thinking dispositions carrying the rest. Worse, Kahan found higher numeracy and scientific literacy were associated with stronger motivated reasoning, not weaker. Long-Term Capital Management, with two Nobel laureates on staff, lost $4.6 billion in under four months.
July 2025
November 2024
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